Messages

1

Modbus / Re: Lag between Mach3 and ModIO output turning on

« on: May 27, 2014, 02:20:56 AM »

Hello Peter,

I'm so sorry, can I bother you with a newbie question? What should I set the hex value on 102 to be?

I am reading the manual on 6.2.3 and I see that I need to set bits 5-7 as 101 in order to change the baud rate to 115,200. But I'm not figuring out how to map all 8 bits to a new hexadecimal number which I can use to write to the register.

Thanks,
Sam

2

Modbus / Re: Lag between Mach3 and ModIO output turning on

« on: May 23, 2014, 03:55:23 AM »

Thank you so much Peter! I thought I had checked through the manual before I asked this question, but apparently not sufficiently!

Will check it out!

Many thanks,
Sam

3

Modbus / Re: Lag between Mach3 and ModIO output turning on

« on: May 23, 2014, 03:24:39 AM »

Hi Peter,

This is such an elementary question, but I haven't been able to find how to update the baud rate in the ModIOs themselves. We are using the modbus plugin-enabled interface. I can update the baud rate there for Mach3 to communicate, but how do I reset the baud rate inside of the ModIO itself? Do I do it inside of the "Test Modbus" window?

Thanks so much,
Sam

4

Modbus / Re: Lag between Mach3 and ModIO output turning on

« on: May 22, 2014, 08:28:12 AM »

Hi Peter, so we went ahead and changed the delay to 50ms and that seemed to help a bit but there's still a delay of at least half a second. I haven't been able to confirm this to the ms but it's enough to get us out of sink.

I tried to set the baud rate to 115200, but realized I don't know whether I need to reset the boards or do something else. When I change the baud rate to 115200 and click "Apply" all the error lights blink on and off slowly. When I change it back to 57600 they go off and the data send and receive lights come back on blinking. What am I doing wrong?

Thanks!
Sam

5

Modbus / Re: Lag between Mach3 and ModIO output turning on

« on: May 17, 2014, 01:58:09 AM »

Thank you so much Peter! I will go try that and let you know how it goes!

6

Modbus / Lag between Mach3 and ModIO output turning on

« on: May 16, 2014, 05:43:18 AM »

Hey Everybody, got a problem that may or may not have a fix. Hoping there is one.

We have a CNC-controlled painting machine that turns on and off 50 pumps (different colors of paint) using outputs from Homann Designs' ModIO. We have 7 ModIOs connected together to get this many outputs. We've got the system working by issuing VB commands to turn on/off OEM Leds which are then read by a brain to set the corresponding output in the ModIO. (Buffer times are set for 25ms in the Modbus config page)

Problem: There is a 0.5 second lag (roughly) between the issuing of the macro command to turn on the pump and the moment when the pump actually turns on (or off). Also, it seems the lag is different for different boards (further down the chain the delay seems to be slightly longer).

Does anyone know whether this is an issue that we can fix or do we just have to try to work around this lag using dwell times and design changes?

Thanks!
Sam

7

G-Code, CAD, and CAM discussions / Re: How do I do an XY axis tool offset rather than a Z?

« on: May 16, 2014, 01:55:51 AM »

Russ, thank you so much. That looks amazing! I didn't realize that I could use G59 to do that many offsets.

I can't wait to get this tested out. Many, many thanks!

-Sam

(Like your quotes, by the way!)

8

G-Code, CAD, and CAM discussions / How do I do an XY axis tool offset rather than a Z?

« on: May 15, 2014, 05:49:27 AM »

We are building a modified CNC machine that will drip a stream of paint instead of turning a spindle. The way the machine is built the table moves and the paint heads are stationary. The paint heads will be laid out in several rows together and there will be 50 of them. (See attached picture for an illustration)

My Question: When we switch from one paint head to the next, how would you recommend doing this "tool change" in the G-code?

A normal tool change would account for a Z axis tool offset. In this case all of our paint heads are the same Z position (stationary), but the X and Y positions are different for each. Should I handle this as a tool change? Or write a custom macro? Or should I just write Gcode to move at relative coordinates to the new tool position?

Would love to hear from some voices of experience before starting down one of these roads!

9

Modbus / Re: Problem with Test Modbus Function

« on: May 05, 2014, 03:35:43 AM »

Thank you Peter! I will try extending the timeout to 200ms. That sounds like it may work. Will let you know!

We are connecting directly to the COMM port on the computer.

Cheers,
Sam

10

Modbus / Re: Problem with Test Modbus Function

« on: May 05, 2014, 02:19:09 AM »

Hi Peter,

Thanks for the reply! In the end, we managed to get it working, but it's still reading out a receive timeout even though it's reading and writing data correctly.

I originally had three boards hooked together and they were all getting a receive timeout when I'd click to read register 103 (or 1040, so on). I was only reading one register. Then I unplugged the boards and switched in another board, trying to communicate with that. If I remember correctly it was getting the same receive timeout. Then I unhooked that board and reattached the original 3. These then read correctly! No receive timeout. I wrote to register 103 and it worked perfectly.

After that we hooked up 4 more boards together (so 7 boards daisy-chained). When I'd try to communicate with these new boards using Test Modbus I'd get a receive timeout again. But I just went ahead and inputted register 103 as "FF", opened the port, ignored the "receive timeout" message, clicked write, pushed the reset button on the board and then tried opening an output on the board. Every board was set correctly this way (no blinking)!

So things are working and we're happy! But it would still be nice to understand why I'm getting the receive timeout message. Quite likely a setting I've got wrong somewhere.

Thanks,
Sam