Messages

1

General Mach Discussion / Re: Mach3 driver doesn't restart after WinXP wakes up from sleep mode

« on: April 08, 2016, 10:37:32 PM »

Hi Keith
This I find a strange behaviour. It is about 8 machines which I am involved with but I have not seen this before. As you are suggesting mabe we should look at changing the pc. But another thought we had, with Mark, who is an expert on the servdrives, that they also could have a sleep mode. These are from Busselato, the Italian routers which we are involved with few customers who get them at low cost and then we help to retrofit them with a pc and Mach3. We will have to more consistently make a notes when this happens, under what conditions, to come to some conclusions and then hopefully find the solution. If you have a time and like to call me for a chat, my number is 02 9636 2873 or 0437 783 958.
Best regards
Michael Haber

2

General Mach Discussion / Re: Mach3 driver doesn't restart after WinXP wakes up from sleep mode

« on: April 05, 2016, 10:07:23 PM »

We have a similar issue of Mach3 stopping to send data to the machine servodrives, after machine was not working for a while, some 20-30min. Pc is not in a sleep mode, this has been disabled. When the operator gets back to it, he can try to do MDI or jog, but machine is not reacting.
How can one disable a drive sleep mode, if there is such thing in Mach3?
Thanks for any advice.

3

FAQs / Re: Homing/Limits

« on: April 23, 2014, 03:18:29 AM »

Just found the solution to my question. There is a small window under General Logic Configuration which I did nit tick, This activates Home Slave  with Master

4

FAQs / Re: Homing/Limits

« on: April 23, 2014, 02:13:18 AM »

After many years of running my router I decided to add homing and limit switches. It seemed ok when I tested the switches and connections to Mach3, diagnostics shows homing OK.
But when I tried to use homing cycle, Z and Y were ok but X had a problem. There I have main X axis and B as a slave. For some reason slave is not driven during the homing cycle.
Gantry is not moving, just making terrible sound. Looking at the forum I did found some reference to this in 2007. I have downloaded the latest version R3.043.066 but it did not make
any difference. I assume there must be a solution to this issue. I hope someone can point me in the correct direction. Thanks

5

General Mach Discussion / Re: New machine - Jogging Problems - Suggestions?

« on: November 05, 2012, 06:17:02 PM »

Thanks again, it was a simple solution in the end,
and we learned something new about Mach3.
After resetting the assignment also of keys for jogging
(strange how they changed again) machine works OK
Best regards
Michael Haber

6

General Mach Discussion / Re: New machine - Jogging Problems - Suggestions?

« on: November 04, 2012, 07:40:01 PM »

Thanks Hood,
Attached is the xml file for Biesse-Router, zipped.
The machine is at PS Fabrications, old Italian router
converted in Nov2010, to do aluminium extrusions and
ocassionally doing plasma cutting of steel extrusions.
Hope we can get to the bottom of this problem.
I have not experienced this type of problem
on my 5axis router, running for past 7 years.
Results of having my machine can be seen on
www.soloray.com.au
Regards
Michael Haber

7

General Mach Discussion / - Jogging Problem suddenly appeared

« on: November 03, 2012, 12:32:13 AM »

Greetings
Our problem of sudddenly loosing the jog control probably has been experienced by others. Intitally it was working OK. We plugged in pendant -USB with manual pulse generator and that worked initially also OK. Then it stopped and even keyboard jogging stopped. After checking the pendant on another machine there it did not work either. Another pendat which works on the second machine is not working on first either. After checking the correct mapping of keys for keyboard jogging, these needed resetting. But even then keyboard jogging is not working. Otherwise keyboard allows MDI and other functions OK. One thought is, since we ocasionally run plasma cutting on this machine, as well as router spindle, wheather plasma may have done some damage. Changing the keyboard did not do any good. Should we reinstall Mach3, or is there likelyhood of PC being somehow damaged?
Any thoughts and suggestions would be apreciated
Thanks
Michael Haber

8

Brains Development / Re: Ethernet connection for Mach3

« on: January 02, 2012, 03:56:25 PM »

 :)Thanks for the good news reply, All the best to ALL for N.Y.2012

9

Brains Development / Ethernet connection for Mach3

« on: November 10, 2011, 03:35:07 AM »

Is there a development going on to offer Ethernet type of connection with Mach3, which would offer longer cables connecting the servo motors and faster connection for many axis, spindle motors,  including limit switches and and other sensors and outputs?

10

General Mach Discussion / Re: Laser Gunsight

« on: March 24, 2008, 03:24:42 PM »

Maybe this could be of interest. Some time ago I have started to play with laser measuring probe, mounted on the head of my 5 axis router running with Mach3. Mainly to do 3D digitizing and tracing. The probe I have is Micro Epsilon NCDT1401 (quite expensive). It has range of 100mm, it’s claimed linearity is +/-0.2mm and resolution +/-0.01mm. This is reasonably independent of the target flatness, so to some extent it is possible to get contours of the shape, by simply stepping over the shape and getting reading at given intervals. This is bit faster then using touch probe. But Z is limited by the probe range.

By adding a PC camera this allowed observing the laser spot. (It was good move when cross hair was added in Mach3, rather then me having to use a piece of Plexiglas in front of the camera with cross hair scratched into it.) This allows manually jogging over the target and picking up the coordinates. By lowering the head to get the same reference reading from the laser probe one gets XYZ coordinates of each point while tracing over specific contours. This way Z coordinate is no longer limited to the laser range. This is possible even on the 5 axis head, where the head is tilted also in A and C angles. This way I have managed to digitized a 5 axis trimming path. Laser probe is useful, where its distance reading would represent the position or the length of the trimming tool. Again much faster then what I have seen on other routers, trying to see tool location by eye (and in the process often breaking the tool).

My next experiment is to eliminate the expensive laser probe, just using the inexpensive pointing laser mounted vertically and PC camera mounted at 45 degrees, one should be able to get XYZ coordinates when one can see the laser spot aligned with the crosshair in the camera. There may be some loss off accuracy, but I will let you know how I went.