Messages

1

General Mach Discussion / CV vs. Full Stop option

« on: September 14, 2009, 02:51:57 PM »

I have tried to switch to Full Stop option from Constant Velocity and cant quite understand how it works. The whole feed began to slow down, jumping up and down with considerable finish degradation. What is the point in full stop option? Also there are two CV options under settings screen. What do those do?

2

General Mach Discussion / Struggling connecting Mach3 to a controller

« on: July 24, 2009, 07:29:19 PM »

I got a mid size mill a with controller (professionally built) but still struggling to get any connectivity PC-to-Controller. Standard parallel connection, straight through cable. Tried 4 different computers with onboard parallel ports and 2 plug in PCI parallel cards no luck. So decided to test parallel port pins on the computer side with an occilloscope.

Launch Mach 3, scope charge pump pin (pin 9 in my case) = 6.8Khz !?!?! Close Mach3, reopen charge pump = 11.83Khz !?!? Sometimes it comes to 12.2Khz but never 12.5Khz claimed by Mach manual. My pulse freq reported by Mach in diagnostics is about 23656 to 24500 Hz.

I tried to output a frequency on stepper X (pin 7 in my case) and it comes out properly each time and is inline with Mach freq. So when I dial 25000Hz on stepper X it shows exactly Mach 3 pulsing frequency, say 23656 Hz.

But I am a little confused on the charge pump as it obviously way out of range. Does that mean my parallel port is no good? What is charge pump used for anyway? Can I disable it at all? How else can I ensure that the parallel port has suitable characteristics? How can I debug the problem?

I tried 3 different computers and on board parallel ports and they all output charge pump at 6.8Khz (sometimes jumping to 11.8Khz).

Any ideas?