Messages

5501

Tangent Corner / Going Off on One (again).

« on: May 11, 2011, 01:12:35 PM »

Going off on one.

Although we have all, probably, used pirate software at some time or another (and I must hold my hand up to using a time limited trial beyond it’s 30 day limit by winding the clock back) I really do despise software piracy and condemn it’s use.
It appears that there has been an increase in the number of pirate copies of Mach recently and since the release of a Mach licence file generator the illegal copies are impossible to distinguish from ones that are genuine. Perhaps version 4 will address this issue but that would almost certainly be underestimating the cunning of the crackers.
Vectric, who produce an excellent range of software have now been targeted by the cracking teams making their flagship Aspire v3 the most widely ripped off software currently in the CNC world. Unable to get a perfect working model from the demo version a cracking team advertised for contributors and within a few weeks obtained enough $$ to purchase the full version of the software. The complete cracked version appeared a few weeks later.
When I see new members of both this forum and the Zone who are unable to set up their own machines but are using Aspire v3 then I wonder – Did they really pay $2,000 for it.

Sorry to moan but I just felt it coming on.

Tweakie.

5502

General Mach Discussion / Re: Outputs activated by hotkey?

« on: May 11, 2011, 11:53:43 AM »

Hi Dave,

Yes it's pretty easy to do.
As an example if the spindle control is configured to output#1 the the F5 key will toggle your relay on and off.
Easy enough to change this, just experiment a bit and you will get the hang of it.

Tweakie.

5503

Mach SDK plugin questions and answers. / Re: Impact engraving plugin

« on: May 11, 2011, 11:24:55 AM »

Hi Stitos,

Interesting one this.
I just ran two examples at the same power settings etc. The top one with 40uS unchecked and the lower one with 40uS checked and I was going to say that there is no difference between the two - until I saw the photo which does reveal a slight difference (the top one being better, perhaps).
I will investigate this further and see if I get a difference with other work.

Tweakie.

(please excuse typo in earlier post 40mS should read 40uS)

5504

General Mach Discussion / Re: How can I configure Mach3 for motor enable with step??

« on: May 11, 2011, 10:56:30 AM »

Tom's excellent work should not be dismissed but control has moved on leaps and bounds with the introduction of cheap stepper motor controller chips from, for example, Toshiba et al.
These chips can incorporate microstepping, automatic current reduction when idle and provision to combat mid band resonance amongst many other refinements over the basic, home constructed driver using discrete components.
It may even be cheaper to purchase the TB6560 and associated components, copy Toshiba's recommended circuit and build your own controller that way. Alternately the multi axis imported boards from China which use the TB6560's may be an even better solution.

If you have ever seen the difference between a stepper controller operating in full or half step mode compared with a stepper motor operating in 1/8th step mode you will know exactly what I mean.

Tweakie.

5505

Mach SDK plugin questions and answers. / Re: Impact engraving plugin

« on: May 11, 2011, 07:45:52 AM »

As far as I am aware it is the length of the impulse on the digital trigger with 40uS for laser and 10uS for magnet.
I have only ever used the 40mS setting.

Anybody else have any more info on this ?

Tweakie.

5506

General Mach Discussion / Re: How can I configure Mach3 for motor enable with step??

« on: May 11, 2011, 01:28:06 AM »

I would be relatively easy to do this externally to Mach with one TTL gate and a couple of components but……….

Imagine cutting a near horizontal line which may have 100,000 horizontal step pulses but only 2 vertical step pulses. If the federate was slow the vertical step pulses may only occur every 5 seconds or so.
What sort of time frame would you choose to say that the vertical axis was inactive so it is OK to release the enable signal ?

Perhaps if you could give us some more detail of the reason or application for this a reasonable solution could be found.

Tweakie.

5507

General Mach Discussion / Re: Help needed with Sable 2015

« on: May 10, 2011, 12:04:31 PM »

I don't know if this helps.

Tweakie.

5508

General Mach Discussion / Re: problem setup mach3 under g540

« on: May 10, 2011, 11:13:05 AM »

Have you checked that your steps per unit are correct. Al's calculator is here http://www.machsupport.com/forum/index.php/topic,16315.msg110286.html#msg110286

Tweakie.

5509

Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) / Re: The Laser Project.

« on: May 10, 2011, 07:29:59 AM »

These are the prototypes of a solder paste mask for a small SMD circuit board. It was really just a test of Art's mathematics to see if the engraving plugin maintained it's scale and aspect ratio which, of course, it does. So easy to make that they are throw away items and don't really have to last for that many uses but we will see how they hold up. The cut-outs are the same size as the solder pads on the pcb which is perhaps a mistake as I now think that they could be made smaller and thus apply slightly less paste. As with everything new, you read-up on it first but practical experience always wins out in the end.

Tweakie.

5510

General Mach Discussion / Re: motors not turning - please help (newbie)

« on: May 10, 2011, 05:00:53 AM »

Thys,

Really glad you got it sorted.
Now the learning really begins. 

Tweakie.