Messages

1

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: New Forum!

« on: February 15, 2020, 03:16:16 PM »

I would love to see a section on whats new in each release along with any documentation on the new features.

2

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Shuttlepro looses button assignments

« on: January 24, 2020, 08:36:57 PM »

I have the same thing happening as well.  Not every session but it seems to be if I have not used the machine for a while.  Restart does not bring back the settings. I have to go through the button reassignment each time

3

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: 3D printing and fan speed control

« on: December 31, 2016, 10:53:50 PM »

Temp control at this point is completely open loop as far as Mach 4 is concerned.
I have the print head temp controller set manually with its own PID temp controller with thermocouple. I got the controller off of Ebay from Golander. I want to be able to print nylon eventually so I went with thermocouple sensor and it rules out a thermistor. Next step for that is to provide an on / off control from Mach 4. Most pressing is to be able to turn it off automatically at the end of a long print run.  I am still early in the use of the system but it SEEMS that setting the first layer 5-10 degrees hotter and then manually backing down after that to normal extrusion temp is going to be adequate. 

So far I have been printing PLA and adhesion with blue painters tape is adequate. I have been having some warping issues with the 1/4" phenolic substrate I have been using (bows upward slightly on larger parts). I will switch to glass soon but was looking for something a bit more rugged at first (due to crashes).

Print bed heater (not yet built) will be the same sort of thing. PID temp controller with thermocouple . With the much lower temps used here turning it on and off will be nice to have via the Mach 4 control but not a necessity.

The extruder temp and bed temp are seemingly relatively constant for a given filament. What appears to need to change most drastically is the cooling fan speed for the printed part. This ranges form off for the first layer to varying speeds depending on exactly what you are doing (perimeter vs infill, etc). 
I am using Slic3R to generate the gcode to drive the system.

4

Mach4 General Discussion / 3D printing and fan speed control

« on: December 31, 2016, 08:49:02 PM »

I have added 3D print head (Micron EME Cobra) to my router.
My setup was originally for inches.
I had problems with G21 swiitching to mm scaling on the A axis which is the feed for the printer filament. It always seemed to stay in inch mode. So I reconfigured for mm and reset all of the motor settings appropriately.
It now prints. However I am fighting infill sagging and top layer issues and suspect this is due to not having cooling fans for the print. I have a couple of tiny fans on on order.
However I was digging through the docs and I cant see how to set up another PWM output which would be ideal for fan speed. I use the existing PWM spindle output for the VFD for the router.
Has anyone else done something like this?  I could see using 2 outputs to get 4 speeds (which might be enough) but then I have to do more custom coding to make this work.

Is there any documentation on using the 3D printer config mode vs Mill mode? Currently I am using Mill.

5

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Use probing for tool zeroing

« on: January 09, 2016, 07:27:22 PM »

Thank you. This works great.
This was my first time screen editing and adding scripting. On button added to the tool panel, convert the measurement values from mm to inches and I was off and running.
Huge time saver. 

6

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: X-axis reverse not working

« on: April 11, 2015, 07:47:37 AM »

I had the same problem. No amount of saving and restarting would reverse the motor directions.  Just swap the leads on one of your motor phases as others have said.

7

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach 4 Bug Reports

« on: April 06, 2015, 09:18:53 PM »

setting the home speeds in ESS did work. However if I try homing 3x in a row then Mach logs up with sometimes a warning about a bad MDI state.
May seem like an odd thing to do but I was looking for a quick way to test home switch repeatability.

8

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach 4 Bug Reports -- Homing issues

« on: April 05, 2015, 07:53:31 PM »

I am using mach4 with ESS
The machine will home but:
1. Homing speed is extremely slow. It does not matter what speed percentage I set in the config homing config screen, it alwasy is just a crawl. I have not measured theactual speed but it is << 0.1 inches / sec and rapids are currently set for 300 IPS.
What would be desirable would be a routing to go rather quickly to home (if not already at home), back off then crawl in for accurate stop
2. The home offset does not seem to work.  My Z axis trips the home switch when it is all the way up (roughly +6.5" compared to the table top). I cant get the home offset to set a value, it is always 0 when homed.
I have saved these values and restarted multiple times but no luck.

9

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach 4 install problems with smoothstepper

« on: February 16, 2015, 09:54:23 PM »

Thank you. Your suggestions got me on the right path. It LIVES and moves.
I don't know which changes exactly made the difference (sort of a shot gun approach).
I moved the simulator files out of the plugins folder.
Reset the ESS as the output device.
Now I could configure the pins for the ESS in its plug in i/o configuration.
Then go back to the Configure Mach outputs and inputs and make selections (the pin pull down menus now work).
Charge pump is working now.
Y and Z motors and carriages are moving. Hitting close to 200 ipm despite having the wrong pitch ball screws (5mm sent rather than 10 )
I still have to mount the X axis screws and motors.  
eStop has to be disabled. Otherwise it shows always active (I think a previous post said this was broken in Mach4).  It shows as working in the ESS diagnostic panel
Next will be troubleshooting the inputs. I have inputs 1-4 configured but no results even in the ESS diagnostic panel.  

10

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach 4 install problems with smoothstepper

« on: February 16, 2015, 09:07:14 AM »

Here are my config screens. I dont know if I need all of these plugins enabled other than ESS or not. I have tried both ways.
The inputs I would expect that in thepicklist it would have ESS ports and pins but the list is blank and wont let me type. IN the device columns I can select ESS but when I close and reopen the selections are gone. the only thing things that seem to "stick are the enable/ disable and the active high/ low invert.