Messages

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General Mach Discussion / Re: Parallel port for PCI bus that works with Mach3 - just passing along info

« on: July 01, 2009, 06:30:25 PM »

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815166007

I have been running this one for a while now , you can occasionaly find it at cyberguys for less than $10 , mine didnt work with the driver supplied on the cd either but works well with the one on the chip manufacturers website

That is the same card that the OP linked to.

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General Mach Discussion / Re: Jog keys switch themselves on Mach startup

« on: June 19, 2009, 02:03:45 PM »

That should not happen, are you using any external devices such as the shuttle to jog?
 Can you attach your xml please.
Hood

No shuttle.  I did have the XBox 360 controller plugin up and running, but when I upgraded Mach, I don't think I ever re-enabled it and the controller has been unplugged.

I can attach my XML as soon as I am near the machine later today.

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General Mach Discussion / Jog keys switch themselves on Mach startup

« on: June 19, 2009, 09:09:10 AM »

New Mach user here so I apologize if this has been asked 400 times before.  When I first startup Mach, one of the first things I do is jog the machine around to make sure I've got a good connection.  I have been finding that on startup, I'll try to jog the Y axis in the positive direction and what will happen is the Z axis will travel in the negative direction?!  It seems to cure itself if I jog the Z and X axis around and then everything works as it should.  As I test, I opened up Mach and didn't touch any jog keys, just loaded up some test G-code and ran the machine.  Sure enough, Mach thought the Z axis was the Y and moved it accordingly causing some undesirable results.  I stopped the program, jogged all of the axes around until everything was "normal" and reran the program and it was fine.

Any thoughts?

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General Mach Discussion / Re: Parallel port for PCI bus that works with Mach3 - just passing along info

« on: June 19, 2009, 08:52:01 AM »

You are very welcome.

Since I posted the info, I have discovered that although for me 90% of the time the second port (ribbon cable) was assigned LPT2, the physical ports on the card are not locked in any order and either can be assigned LPT2 or LPT3.

To get the addresses, follow this sequece:

Start>Control Panel>System>Hardware>Device Manager>Ports>Printer Port>Resources

What you seek is the first hex address given for LPT2 and for LPT3. For the port physically on the card, give Mach3 the address shown for LPT3 (that's USUALLY what it is). If that does not work, then just try the address for LPT2 and it should spring to life.

I did some testing of my own as soon as I installed the card to figure out which port was which.  Like you said, it assigned LPT2 to the ribbon cable and LPT3 to the card.  Before realizing I could swap them around via Windows Config, I physically moved them in my computer case so that there were in order from top to bottom

I wish I would have seen this thread a few days ago...I just ordered this card. http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?Sku=C250-3706
Crossing my fingers it will work 

It may, but keep us informed.  We could make this thread into a "various PCI parallel ports that play nice with Mach3" thread.

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General Mach Discussion / Re: Parallel port for PCI bus that works with Mach3 - just passing along info

« on: June 18, 2009, 12:57:20 PM »

Thanks for the info - I purchased this card earlier this week and installed it yesterday with your recommended drivers.  Everything worked great and it plays nice with Mach.  I now have an extra parallel port which I could later use to hook up another machine

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General Mach Discussion / Re: slave axis suddenly reverses while jogging

« on: June 18, 2009, 12:53:32 PM »

i havent solved it yet sashco, but am going to get a lot of screening "sock" today so we can screen from interference. we think that interference and possible bad earthing could be the problem. check back with me in a couple of days

I'm also signing on to hear of a possible remedy.  I have this problem with my new plasma table, but only in the Y++ direction - everything else seems to perform fine.  I can get rid of it by increasing the step pulse setting to 5 under config->motor tuning, but that's not the way it was tested and setup by my manufacturer, so something is amiss.