Messages

1

General Mach Discussion / Re: PWM to 0-10v voltage linearity problem?

« on: July 29, 2013, 12:16:19 PM »

I should have mentioned my pulse train looks fine, its 50/50 at 5000 rpm which as i have "max" set at 10000 would be correct? but my 0-10v output voltage is 8.1v!

Regards
Stuart

2

Mach SDK plugin questions and answers. / Re: Dual Boot XP & win7 32bit can't install plugins on win7 d drive access denied

« on: July 29, 2013, 11:14:17 AM »

Oh dear it seems i was to hasty, the plugins now install fine but then tell me they are defective when i start Mach3, they have installed fine on my win7 64 machine though! 

I have been in programs and turned net 3.5.1 on but it has still made no difference.

Contour Shuttle pro installed ok though!

What am i missing?

Regards
Stuart

3

General Mach Discussion / Re: PWM to 0-10v voltage linearity problem?

« on: July 29, 2013, 07:55:20 AM »

I Gerry
         I have set my pulley speed to 0 & 10000 for this experiment and i attach the resultant graph with what i think it should output i.e. a linear ramp "red" and what i am measuring "blue" which is ?   

Any advise would be most welcome

Regards
Stuart

4

Mach SDK plugin questions and answers. / Re: Dual Boot XP & win7 32bit can't install plugins on win7 d drive access denied

« on: July 28, 2013, 07:53:08 AM »

Hi Gerry
           Thanks for your reply, you were 100% correct, it was indeed a permissions problem.

I had all ready set the slider in the admin account to the one above the bottom as i hate it questioning my every move.

To load plugins I had to go to USER ACCOUNTS & set the "changes slider" in "user account control" to NEVER NOTIFY

All is now well in the plugins department 

Regards
Stuart

5

General Mach Discussion / PWM to 0-10v voltage linearity problem?

« on: July 27, 2013, 09:27:43 PM »

Hi there I have one of the boards in the attached file. It proudly states it has on board PWM to voltage converter (I haven't traced the circuit yet but it appears to be based around an opto coupler then into an LM358 op amp.  Well it does indeed convert PWM to voltage but sadly not linearly!

My spindle VFD is set to 22000 for ten volts so you would think that 5v would be 11000, but no its roughly 7.5 volts at 11000.  The PWM signal is however 50/50!
Can anyone advise me on what the problem might be, and if there's a fix for this board as I assume its the breakout board that has the problem?

Regards
Stu

6

General Mach Discussion / Re: VFD Help

« on: July 27, 2013, 09:12:56 PM »

I think i can help a little here, I've just spent 3 days setting my Siemens Micromaster420 to work with a new Chinese Breakout board and mach3.

There are several pit falls i have come across.

1) Its easy to get pins confused, excel spread sheets are your friend! Write all your parallel board breakout pins down and check your mach 3 assignments to them and your feeds to VFD and drivers etc.

2) I spent ages fiddling in PORTS & PINS before realising I had to configure this lot

In MOTOR OUTPUTS tab:-

Spindle
Step Pin (to pin one in my case) that's the pin your PWM signal will come out of your parallel port on.
Step Low Active
Step Port (1) for most people with a single Breakout board

In SPINDLE SETUP tab:-

Relay control un-ticked
Clockwise output 1
CCW       output 2

Motor Control 
tick    use spindle motor output
tick PWM control

OUTPUT SIGNAL tab

output 1 enable, port one, pin 2 (2 In my case to operate one of my Breakout board relays that connects to my VFD for forward direction of spindle)
output 2 enable, port one, pin 3 (3 In my case to operate another of my Breakout board relays that connects to my VFD for reverse direction of spindle)

This should get you on the right path, two slip-ups i made were not assigning the spindle to "parallel port one" & and forgetting to select active low for my PWM output. If you forget this your spindle will get a full 10v regardless of your speed setting!

The problem i now have is my PWM to voltage converter doesn't appear to be linear on my Breakout board! Or am i still missing something?

I assume as i have a VFD I don't touch the spindle setup in the motor tuning page, that's just for stepper type spindles?
The same goes for pulleys, its a 1 to one from the VFD so that should be left alone also.

I will post separately regarding my linearity problem!

Hope the above is some help to you :-)

Regards
Stu

7

Mach SDK plugin questions and answers. / Dual Boot XP & win7 32bit can't install plugins on win7 d drive access denied

« on: July 27, 2013, 08:30:48 PM »

Hi There
          Am wondering how plugins actually get installed as i cant install any on my win7 32 (on the D drive) of my dual boot system.

XP (on the C drive) I installed plugins no problem.

I can also install plugins on my main work Pc win7 64 (C drive)

My theory is that the plugins look for the C drive only? Is this true?  If so how can i install plugins on my Win 7 D Drive?

I am trying to evaluate win7 against XP so the dual boot seemed a good idea!

Hope there's someone out there that is able to advise me 

Cheers
Stu