Messages

1

General Mach Discussion / Re: Non-continuous motion

« on: November 16, 2017, 06:45:17 PM »

There's G80 and S500.  Still no luck.

Could this have anything to do with the Apollo III controller I'm using?

2

General Mach Discussion / Re: Non-continuous motion

« on: November 16, 2017, 04:06:10 PM »

This makes sense, but for whatever reason it doesn't work.  I turned on the constant velocity mode, and added G64, but it behaves exactly the same way.  What else could it be?

3

General Mach Discussion / Non-continuous motion

« on: November 11, 2017, 08:47:11 PM »

I'm having trouble getting continuous motion from my winding machine.  When I run this snippet of code, the machine moves in discrete steps, coming to a complete stop after every line.  This is making things terribly slow.

Code: [Select]

G91 (Relative positioning)
G1 A120 C1080  F10
G1 A120 C-1080 F10
G1 A120 C1080  F10

Curiously, when I add a linear axis, the machine behaves as I would expect.  The A axis rotates continuously, without stopping.

Code: [Select]

G91 (Relative positioning)
G1 X1 A120 C1080  F10
G1 X1 A120 C-1080 F10
G1 X1 A120 C1080  F10

I've already tried adding a dummy "X0" command, but it doesn't help.  What can I do?

4

General Mach Discussion / Re: Long programs crashing

« on: September 06, 2016, 02:40:32 PM »

%f is used in presentational string formatting, and has no effect on the underlying counter.  It's still nice to make a more readable DRO though.

joeaverage, that paper sounds very interesting, and could prove very useful for my application.  Do you think you could find it again?  Thanks!

5

General Mach Discussion / Re: Long programs crashing

« on: September 06, 2016, 01:51:58 AM »

How do you change the unit sizing?  The DRO on my setup currently displays thousandths of a degree, which is far more precise than I need.  One revolution per unit is too coarse for me, but one degree per unit would be just fine.

Does the Rot Rollover affect any internal counters, or is it just a modulo 360 on the DRO user interface side?

6

General Mach Discussion / Re: Long programs crashing

« on: September 05, 2016, 01:25:22 PM »

It doesn't seem like electrical noise to me.  Once it gets to a certain point in the program, it E-stops.  If I use the reset button and try to continue the program, it will immediately E-stop again.  It refuses to progress past this point, but I can still manually jog without a problem.  I'll try playing with the debouncing when I get a chance though.

joeaverage, my application is probably very different from most.  I'm using only stepper motors instead of a continuous spindle, because I need accuracy rather than speed.  I'm winding fairly complex patterns, not simply a helix.  I don't have encoders, so I'm relying on dead reckoning of the steppers, which seems to work well enough.  I actually wrote my own Python script to generate G code.  I set G91 relative coordinates, so I could simply tell it how far to move for the next step.

7

General Mach Discussion / Long programs crashing

« on: September 05, 2016, 02:24:27 AM »

I'm using mach3 to run a winding machine, where the A axis is a mandril which rotates continuously in one direction for hundreds, if not thousands of revolutions.  It seems to more or less work with shorter programs, but longer ones will crash part way through.  The E-stop is triggered, often without an error message.

I suspect the problem might be due to an internal counter for the A axis which maxes out.  I'm only using relative movements in my G code, and have 360 rollover turned on, but it still seems to be storing absolute degrees.

Can anyone help me find a solution to this problem?  Is there a way to reset the internal counter?  I'm using an Apollo 3 motor controller.

Thanks!