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Messages - Mc2

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1
Hello every one,
My name is Joe and I am a machinist. After being employed in a few different shops for the past 32 years I am finally getting my own
shop together. About a year ago I purchased an old Bridgeport, it is in very nice condition now, so I decided to do a CNC upgrade to it.
I purchased a ClearPath servo motor and downloaded Mach3 on a  windows 7 pc. The installation went pretty smooth and everything seems to be working except one very important thing. I am not able to get any motion from the x axis motor.
If anyone has any input on this it would be very much appreciated.
Thanks,
Joe.
Plug in the usb cable to the back of clearpath motor and run the clearpath software. This will give you an idea of why your axis is not moving. I do know that there is a bug in their tuning software. When you run the automatic tune routine the motor is not switched back into a step and direction mode.

Jim.

2
General Mach Discussion / Stepper Servo Hybrids with Mach 3
« on: October 30, 2015, 08:02:32 PM »
Just wanted to let you know that I have started using clearpath motors from Teknic. These would fall under the hybrid you are talking about. The SDSK motors work great.  I will never buy another stepper motor.  The enhanced ver. has 6,400 steps per rotation of the motor. The motor is a self contained unit with two connectors. One for signal and one for power. You will need to send an enable signal, step, and direction. If there is a fault a feeback signal can put mach into a reset state.  I used an ESS smoothstepper as a printer port is too slow to provide the pulse stream. They are worth looking into.

Jim.

3
I have been playing around with a brain to enable a clearpath motor with feedback signal. Basically I need to send an enable signal to the clearpath motor and when the motor is enabled I get a signal back from the motor (feedback). The feedback signal will transition from on (5v) to off (0v) if the motor stops working ie a crash.

I have been semi successful in the setup as I used the enable signals from mach to drive the enable signals of the motors. The feedback does change and when a crash happens ( I did this on purpose) I can cause an estop to happen. What I am concerned with is that with this setup I boot up mach 3 and the motors are coming up ready and feeback is active. I want to start in a reset state. Anybody have any experience in this area? Also it would be nice to have some sort of message pop up with information as to what axis caused the alarms.


Jim.

4
General Mach Discussion / Mach 3 StartUp Message
« on: March 25, 2015, 10:45:36 AM »
Either no power or bad smoothstepper.

5
General Mach Discussion / Re: Mach 3 StartUp Message
« on: March 04, 2015, 04:49:48 PM »
Your smooth stepper needs to be powered down for a reset. Then power smooth stepper back up and then run mach 3.

Jim.

6
General Mach Discussion / Spindle index pulse question for Mach 3 Turn.
« on: October 02, 2014, 05:00:58 PM »
Thanks Hood. That is what I wanted to know.

7
General Mach Discussion / Spindle index pulse question for Mach 3 Turn.
« on: October 02, 2014, 08:44:06 AM »
I am getting ready to add an index signal to my cnc lathe. I have not made anything up yet a decided to do some research. I noticed that in the Mach 3 turn manual that a 4 slot optical disc was used. I also noticed that several threads here state that Mach will now only use one index pulse. Could someone please clarify?

Also was wondering if the optical sensor is the best way to go? I am already familiar with them so it would not be hard. Just looking for best solution.

I should point out that I am using a Smoothstepper ESS and a PMDX 126. I don't believe that I will have an issue with setup and the PMDX can stretch the index pulse if needed.

thanks for any information.

Jim.

8
General Mach Discussion / Re: Brains and MPG from CNC4pc.
« on: July 03, 2013, 08:19:09 AM »
Well that, I have not tried. The reason brains is in play here is that it performs a few functions. This MPG pendant has selector switches for axis selection and increment sizes. I will give your way a shot however I am sure that I will revert back to brains to control the MPG switches. This is faster and easier than bringing up the MPG screen and selecting the function.

Thanks, Jim.

9
General Mach Discussion / Brains and MPG from CNC4pc.
« on: July 02, 2013, 07:15:49 PM »
I have had my MPG for a few years now and set it aside when I could not get my MPG to work like they should. I used the brains examples provided by CNC4PC and was not happy. I recently dug it back out and attached it to my Smooth Stepper ESS and got it working again. I am much more familiar with brains now and fixed a few issues I was having. First of all I used the inputs from the MPG to drive continues on off timers that pulsed on and off every second. This fixes a possible read of an oem button getting activated. If Mach misses the signal the first time, it comes back within the next second or two. This completely fixed that bug. The next issue that I have is that when I am in MPG mode motion is too choppy at lower speeds or multiple single steps. I have tried using both step and muti step and both are too choppy. Can anyone give me any hits on how to smooth this out? I was wondering if it would be possible to play with ACC/Dec temporarily while the MPG is on.

Any information would be great.

By the way, in its current state this MPG is tons better than any pendant that runs through a keyboard interface.

Jim.

10
SmoothStepper USB / Re: Questions about a ESS from a Mach newbie
« on: March 13, 2012, 09:58:58 AM »
Shawn, you will need to setup the inputs and outputs of Mach 3 as if you have a printer port. The smooth stepper emulates 3 of them. Do you have any documentation at all from the dealer? You will need motor step and direction pin information. Ask them if they have a profile already made up for this machine and Mach3. Don't through in questions to them about the smooth stepper. They obviously don't have one and will not support that. You do not need there help on that. Just try and get the information that you need to run off a printer port. You will need to config that way even if you are using the smooth stepper to drive the cnc.


Jim.

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