Messages

5441

General Mach Discussion / Re: Slave not synchronized

« on: July 25, 2011, 02:32:40 AM »

Hi Jens,

Welcome to the forum.

Ideally all cable shields should only be connected to ground at the controller end. This avoids 'earth loops' which are notorious at collecting electrical noise and spoiling the step pulse train.

Try disconnecting your shields at the motor ends and also increasing the "Inputs Signal Debouncing/Noise rejection" setting in Config / General Config.

Tweakie.

5442

General Mach Discussion / Re: Z axis help

« on: July 25, 2011, 02:10:28 AM »

Hi Isaac,

Welcome to the forum.

When machining stuff the top surface of the part is usually set to Z Axis zero (0.0000) then any cutting into the work will be a negative number. Many of the free GCode creation programs produce the code this way whilst the 'professional' programs allow a choice of zero position.

Tweakie.


nb. There is a price to pay for any help you get here - you have to teach us all about flight simulators.  

5443

Show"N"Tell ( What you have made with your CNC machine.) / Re: Cylinder Heads

« on: July 25, 2011, 01:56:37 AM »

Great work Steve.

That "eagle eyed" Sam doesn't miss much. 

Tweakie.

5444

General Mach Discussion / Re: missed steps on Y axis

« on: July 24, 2011, 12:09:55 PM »

If you don't have any luck re-arranging your wiring ;
You could purchase a surge suppressor (these are commonly fitted across the switch connections inside the casing of power tools) and when fitted across the mains switching relay contacts it will reduce the noise spike considerably.
Personally I prefer to use an (SSR) solid state relay (which switches at the zero crossing point of the mains waveform) in place of the mechanical counterpart. These are extremely quiet as far as electrical noise is concerned and can, if necessary, be switched from an existing relay.

Tweakie.

5445

General Mach Discussion / Re: Computer problem after running mach3

« on: July 24, 2011, 11:51:06 AM »

Hi Nigel,

Sorry that I cannot suggest a solution.
I am sure you will get there in the end but just how complicated can things get ? 

Tweakie.

5446

General Mach Discussion / Re: Wireless Xbox controller cautionary tale

« on: July 24, 2011, 10:55:28 AM »

Hi Mark,

Thanks for drawing our attention to a potentially dangerous situation.

I agree with Jeff's comments 100% here.

If it is possible for something to go wrong then sooner or later it will happen and personal safety should always be paramount in our minds at all times.

Tweakie.

5447

General Mach Discussion / Re: Computer problem after running mach3

« on: July 24, 2011, 10:41:48 AM »

Hi Nigel,

I just made a special trip to my workshop to check the PC connected to my router which uses two parallel ports.

It has Award BIOS and under;
Integrated Peripherals
Onboard Super IO Device
Parallel Port mode

It allows selection of the onboard pp mode between ECP/EPP/SPP/ECP+EPP

My second pp card, as mentioned earlier, was set as EPP 1.9 during install.

Don't know if this helps.

Tweakie.

5448

General Mach Discussion / Re: Turn X axis swapping from + to - during cycle

« on: July 24, 2011, 07:02:57 AM »

Could this be related to the same problem we have just started to see occurring with Mach3 Mill ?    http://www.machsupport.com/forum/index.php/topic,18990.0.html

Tweakie.

5449

General Mach Discussion / Re: Computer problem after running mach3

« on: July 24, 2011, 06:53:54 AM »

Hi Nigel,

This is totally untested but you could try uninstalling the device then - Control Panel / Classic View / Add Hardware wizard to install it again, inserting the disk when prompted. (if you remove the PP card and insert it in another PCI slot it should be seen as a new device without uninstall).

Tweakie.

5450

General Mach Discussion / Re: Computer problem after running mach3

« on: July 24, 2011, 04:19:33 AM »

Hi Nigel,

You are correct, I was wrong   

I just checked the G540 data and yes it does require the EPP mode to communicate the stop / reset in Mach.

When I last installed a parallel port card the ECP / EPP option was a choice during install but I used an install disc that came with the card. I don't know if the standard windows installer will give you the option.

Tweakie.