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Messages - kmxsoft

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1
SmoothStepper USB / Re: SYIL UK + ESS = OMG
« on: September 10, 2014, 03:45:41 PM »
I just bought my smoothstepper thru SYIL UK, and I have no complaint about pricing - it included next day delivery where the carrier sends email and text message early in the morning telling you an hour timeslot which they will deliver in. Which means I don't have to hang around all day as I would with ParcelForce, TNT and others. I also get 12 months support in case I need replacement - which would be very problematical should I need to arrange replacement through the US source.

What you have to bear in mind when comparing UK and US charges is that government automatically slap on a 20% uplift for VAT (unless you are a business, in which case you can reclaim the VAT). So add that plus shipping and compare to what you will get hit with when (not if) customs and excise slap duty on and you are quite probably quids in by buying from SYIL.

There are no free lunches.

2
VB and the development of wizards / Re: Auto Tool Zero macro required
« on: September 10, 2014, 03:31:42 PM »
All of the scripts I've seen for download have had a dependency that I didn't like - they assume that the probe tip which touches an earthed plate will make good contact with that plate. Unfortunately, sometimes after milling the probe tip can have non-conductive debris on it - meaning it won't make contact with the earth plate, and if that happens then the Z motor gets stressed trying to drive thru the earthing plate.

I developed my own solution for this problem where my 'earth plate' has been replaced by a plate which activates microswitches - and the microswitches provide reliable shorting to earth. So it really doesn't matter if the tip of the probe (drill or whatever) has debris on it - the earthing plate will work and produce the required signal to the Mach3 probe circuit.

I made up a plate for this action which has 4 tactile switches (see ebay) - one in each corner. Those tactile switches are wired in parallel, so if any one is activated it shorts to earth. That means I am not dependent on aligning the plate to the probe - so long as the plate is within the distance covered by the plate it will work.

Accuracy: Not brilliant, but good enough for my needs. I'm a happy bunny if my Z zero is within about 0.1mm - that might be too high for some people.

I developed the attached script to manage this process. Note comment halfway down about the surface being 2mm below the top of the alignment plate. The plate which causes microswitches to activate will be a certain height above the actual zero point you are trying to set your Z axis for, and you need to change that 2mm to be the actual distance you need, so when the probe triggers you will have to add/subtract that distance to get the required Z offset (hmm, looking at that script now I think the '2mm' comment might need to be '15.45' - sorry about that).

3
Mach3 under Vista / dinput8.dll fails to install
« on: November 16, 2013, 01:12:01 AM »
I'm a new mach3 user, trying to get onto 1st base.

When I install Mach3 it mostly goes okay, but towards the end I get the following popup:

Unable to register component C:\Mach3\dinput8.dll

That component does exist in the C:\Mach3 folder. I tried manually registering it with regsvr32 but it didn't want to know.

Windows 7 64 bit. I have applied the memory upgrade register patch.

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