Messages

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Mach4 General Discussion / Re: When (and how often) will the next Mach4 update occur?

« on: December 23, 2017, 02:20:15 PM »

And when you go above the Soft Max Limit it says you went "over" it, but when you go below the Soft Min Limit, it also says you went "over" it.

When you set the Home position with physical limit switches, and you set Soft Limits below/beyond the physical limit switches, then after you "Home" the machine, you always have to jog inside the Soft Limits before you can enable the Soft Limits.  As a suggestion, if one or more axiis are outside the Soft Limits, Mach4 should warn you about it then hold the "enable request" in stasis (like flashing) until all axiis are within the Soft Limits, allowing you to move (either jogging or moving programmatically). And then when all axiis are within the Soft Limits they are automatically enabled.  Thus ensuring they are not left disabled unintentionally.

Also as a suggestion, if the Soft Limits are defined, Mach4 should initialize with them enabled.

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Mach4 General Discussion / Re: When (and how often) will the next Mach4 update occur?

« on: December 23, 2017, 12:15:55 PM »

And, there seems to be massive memory leaks because sometimes my programs run fine and other times Mach4 just goes bonkers.  So I close Mach4 down and fire it back up again and the programs run fine again.

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Mach4 General Discussion / Re: When (and how often) will the next Mach4 update occur?

« on: December 23, 2017, 11:58:22 AM »

Anomalies? Where do I begin?

How about if you jog into a Soft Limit, it bumps all three axiis by a few thousands - hit it a few times and pretty soon you are way off.

If you have a Fixture/Work Offset selected (i.e. G54) and you Zero a DRO, it actually zeros the respective cells in the Fixture Offsets table.

The Backlash Compensation is totally broken.

And regarding the forums, I hate to spend time reading a bunch of opinions.  Without a moderator who deletes guesses and trial-and-error suggestions, I find them counter-productive.

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Mach4 General Discussion / When (and how often) will the next Mach4 update occur?

« on: December 22, 2017, 01:44:55 PM »

I've been running Mach4 2.0.3481 for quit a while now, and have observed all kinds of anomalies; and was wondering when the next update might come along, and how often will they occur?  And while we're on the subject of updates, what about an update to the documentation?  Presently it's pretty brief and cryptic.

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Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach4 MDI Password

« on: July 01, 2017, 02:31:01 PM »

I'm running Windows 10, and attempted this install just the other day; so I also got Mach4_Hobby build 2.0.3390.  This is my first peek at Mach4, so I don't know anything about locking screens; all I did was create a profile per the install instructions.  It looks like I used the OrthoMill screen set, and it looked ok, so I kept it.  I went back and created another profile and selected the wxMach screen set, and it looks ok and it doesn't have the password prompt.  So, I guess the problem was with the OrthoMill screen set.  Anyway, thanks for the hint.  I think I am up and running now.

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Mach4 General Discussion / Mach4 MDI Password

« on: June 28, 2017, 09:14:42 AM »

I downloaded and installed the Mach4 demo, and it fired up ok.  Clicking the MDI tab prompts for a password, but the documentation doesn't mention it. Any suggestions?

7

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: New people welcome !! Come in here and introduce your self!

« on: July 18, 2015, 02:23:31 AM »

Hi!  My name is Mike.  I've been a computer programmer for a LOT of years, but I studied Mechanical Engineering in College.  So I built a CNC mill in my garage, and I want to merge my career skills with my passion for tinkering, and cut some chips!

I've been studying g-code a little, and recognize it's strictly an output language; so my first dumb question is does Mach (3 and/or 4) support some kind of programmability that includes geometric I/O?  For instance, say I have a setup, and I put some stock material in the vice, and I manually jog out to a position, and run a program which reads the current position and performs some intelligent operation, like cutting down to a target Z-face between the current XYZ position and the origin.  Can I write a program to do something like that; even if the program just generates and/or launches g-code program files?  I hope that isn't what plugins are for; that's too immutable - I'm thinking of something more like a user-level thing.

Anyway, I'm very excited to join the family of Mach users.

Mike