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Mach3 under Vista / Caution - Stupid questions within
« on: February 19, 2017, 09:18:51 AM »
Hi Folks
First post & yes I need assistance.
I'm trying to sort a combo lathe/mill machine on a Win7 laptop through a smooth stepper board.
It was retrofitted with a commercially built controller many years ago but has never been successful, probably from lack of time to sort it, rather than any fault of the controller, or so I hope!
Situation is -
- I have jogged all axis drive motors in both directions so I presume (?) that outputs are correct.
Which of these will actually work has been very random however.
- Spindle has not moved with the message "PWM bumped to min setting" displayed on any attempt. The min setting is not zero.....
- A couple of attempts to home have been sort of successful out of dozens of attempts, however the x axis has been first which I can't imagine is correct.
The contact with the home switch caused an E stop however.
I can't find a setting to change the order as suggested by the controller manufacturer, so I suspect the axes may not be set to the right pins??
- The 1 or 2 times that the x axis has retracted after homing has been pretty violent, despite my having set the homing speed very low.
- Other times any contact with the home switches has resulted in the switch remaining tripped with me having to manually move the axis until it untrips.
- I have checked that operating the home switches manually does not cause an E stop
- Basically most of the time any attempt to jog will move a small amount (ie less than a millimeter) before the message (E stop requested)
I've found that even moving any axis manually by turning the motor by hand will do the same.
- I have presumed that the .xml file supplied by the controller manufacturer would be correct but now I'm not so sure.
I have manually activated the home (/limit?), door etc switches & they don't match the pin #s in the settings as I would presume they should??
- If I try to "Ref" X, Y or Z axes in the diagnostic window, I get "Requested home axis switch is active please fix, then home" displayed despite this not being the case in the plug in control monitor.
- It seems completely random just what, if anything might decide to work. A completely dead machine one day might be quite happy to work on 1 or 2 axes next day for no apparent reason then just as randomly s..t itself.
- I've completely been through the actual mechanics & made sure everything is lubricated & free to move.
I don't know how much of this info is actually relevant & I realise that I am presenting as a complete idiot.
I'm completely new to this & although I'm on a fast learning curve, it isn't fast enough & a lot of the info in the manual etc goes straight over my head @ the moment, hence my hope that some kind soul can give me a hand here??
Regards
Jim
First post & yes I need assistance.
I'm trying to sort a combo lathe/mill machine on a Win7 laptop through a smooth stepper board.
It was retrofitted with a commercially built controller many years ago but has never been successful, probably from lack of time to sort it, rather than any fault of the controller, or so I hope!
Situation is -
- I have jogged all axis drive motors in both directions so I presume (?) that outputs are correct.
Which of these will actually work has been very random however.
- Spindle has not moved with the message "PWM bumped to min setting" displayed on any attempt. The min setting is not zero.....
- A couple of attempts to home have been sort of successful out of dozens of attempts, however the x axis has been first which I can't imagine is correct.
The contact with the home switch caused an E stop however.
I can't find a setting to change the order as suggested by the controller manufacturer, so I suspect the axes may not be set to the right pins??
- The 1 or 2 times that the x axis has retracted after homing has been pretty violent, despite my having set the homing speed very low.
- Other times any contact with the home switches has resulted in the switch remaining tripped with me having to manually move the axis until it untrips.
- I have checked that operating the home switches manually does not cause an E stop
- Basically most of the time any attempt to jog will move a small amount (ie less than a millimeter) before the message (E stop requested)
I've found that even moving any axis manually by turning the motor by hand will do the same.
- I have presumed that the .xml file supplied by the controller manufacturer would be correct but now I'm not so sure.
I have manually activated the home (/limit?), door etc switches & they don't match the pin #s in the settings as I would presume they should??
- If I try to "Ref" X, Y or Z axes in the diagnostic window, I get "Requested home axis switch is active please fix, then home" displayed despite this not being the case in the plug in control monitor.
- It seems completely random just what, if anything might decide to work. A completely dead machine one day might be quite happy to work on 1 or 2 axes next day for no apparent reason then just as randomly s..t itself.
- I've completely been through the actual mechanics & made sure everything is lubricated & free to move.
I don't know how much of this info is actually relevant & I realise that I am presenting as a complete idiot.
I'm completely new to this & although I'm on a fast learning curve, it isn't fast enough & a lot of the info in the manual etc goes straight over my head @ the moment, hence my hope that some kind soul can give me a hand here??
Regards
Jim