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General Mach Discussion / ess + g540... think I'm setup but afraid to hit the ref all home!

« on: July 15, 2023, 10:10:03 PM »

sorry, I know this topic is hashed so many times... and I've read up a fair amount... but I still have questions.
 
Have been running my machine for a 2+ years just being careful never to bounce it off the boundaries and now I've decided I want to setup my machine to be able to consistently go to center.

so... I've got home switches setup on my machine.  looking at the debug screen I have yellow boxes for all 3 axis.  If I manually move my machine to trigger the x switch (for instance) I can see the yellow box goes black.  sm with y and z.
I have not set soft limits yet... because I have no idea what direction the machine is going to move when I hit ref all home.

so q: my z axis only has a switch for the up position... how can I confirm that when I try to home this it isn't going to bury my router collet into my spoil board?  should I just start it with the z home switch triggered and if it moves hit my stop button?

q2: I saw that for parallel port there is a setup screen for the home switches... sure would be nice if it would let me test there... but again it is apparently only for parallel port setups?  Is there somewhere else I can test my setup or is it just going to be a leap of faith here?

q3: ref all home - i would assume hitting this it is going to move my machine until it triggers the home switches... AND THEN IT WILL SET ALL AXIS TO ZERO AUTOMAGICALLY?

q4: assuming I home the machine as is... I have not set any offsets... I would assume I should home it... manually drive to trigger the opposite switch, take the measurement from mach3 and divide by 2... and set an offset of that?

any/all help, advice, pitfalls you can illuminate would be appreciated!

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General Mach Discussion / A question if I may... is there a way to default all axis to zero on startup?

« on: December 14, 2021, 12:24:12 PM »

have searched this forum and google in general for this, but maybe just haven't hit the right keyword sequence?  If I missed it, please rub my nose in it, and apologies in advance.

What I'd like to do: whatever position the cnc spindle is in at startup... I'd like that position to be defaulted to zero value for all 3 axis. 

I'm not interested in homing via limit/home switches and not asking about that. 

for example.  I'll have those three axis set to zero for my current spindle location.  I'll exit out of mach3 and go back in... when mach3 opens these values are set to some number.  I am guessing those numbers are based on where the soft limits are set and where the machine is in relationship to that.  What I'd like: for those values to be defaulted to 0 without having to go set zero on each axis manually. 

the reason?  well in case you care... I freq work off of a material zero that may not be able to be positioned over the machines actual center, and it may move around a lot. 
use case: I recently had a scenario where my machine was zero'd on all 3 axis... I wanted to shut down for a bit (many reasons for this... my garage power is such that running my cnc + my tablesaw + a vaccuum will result in tripping a breaker... so I am careful to not have all things running at once).  Went back to the machine and started mach3, forgot to set everything to zero (despite the fact that machine was at physical zero on my piece)... mistakenly started her up and ran the bit right through my piece.  this is/was all my fault... but if I was able to "automagically" have all 3 axis initialize to zero on startup... there would be much less chance of drilling into my work piece or burying a bit in my workpiece(when you hit goto zero but have not zeroed your axis prior), etc.

very much appreciate any info you might bestow.

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SmoothStepper USB / pretty green here... nightmare trying to get ESS setup with G540 and Mach3

« on: March 13, 2021, 06:39:53 PM »

so... full disclosure "I KNOW NOTHINK".  Got a "turnkey" setup from automationtechnologies and really struggling.  also turnkey does NOT mean what I thought it did (apparently)!
 
EDIT: this is an ESS + Gecko G540 setup.  the drives are new nema 23 381oz motors.

so... if I load in the g540 xml file... all things seem configured (if I look in ports and pins) but I could not get to the ESS screen to update the IP.  So... created a new profile... setup the IP for the ESS... and on a wing and a prayer I have green light on g540, I can hear my motors are on... the emergency button seems to work... but obviously all the setup stuff that would have been loaded via that G540 xml file is not there.  Is there a way I can reconcile the two?  any help would be appreciated... and if you just want to slap me at this point I think that might help.

sometimes just writing something out... helps somehow.  I just found a thread that answers this question... (even tho I looked b4)... so going to try that.