Messages

11

SmoothStepper USB / Re: Installed SS today and having a few problems

« on: June 04, 2009, 12:56:04 AM »

I just plugged in a smoothstepper briefly today and it loses comms with mach pretty much as soon as the spindle turns on so I suspect electrical noise.  Red light on the smoothstepper goes out and mach locks up. Unplugging the smoothstepper wakes mach up with an error saying it's lost contact with the SS.

Spindle is a chinese, VFD driven, water cooled unit and I have the smothstepper mounted temporarily in a plastic enclosure with ribbon cables to the parallel ports on the back of the router.  I'll need to check the shielding and grounding from the VFD to the spindle and see if I can find somewhere shielded for the SS to live.

12

General Mach Discussion / Re: Any way I can get Mach to send me an email when it's finished?

« on: May 12, 2009, 08:38:27 PM »

That looks similar to the code I found....

here's my new M5 script works when run manually - haven't tried it from a real job yet - obviously replace username, password, server, and email addresses. It's probably possible to omit the username and password but I don't have an email client setup on the computer running mach...



=====================
DoSpinStop()
Code "(sending mail)"

Const cdoSendUsingPort = 2 'Send the message using the network (SMTP over the network).
Set objMessage = CreateObject("CDO.Message")
objMessage.Subject = "mach finished"
objMessage.Sender = "youremail@blah.com"
objMessage.To = "youremail@blah.com"
objMessage.TextBody = "mach finished."
objMessage.Configuration.Fields.Item _
("http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/sendusing") = 2

'Name or IP of Remote SMTP Server
objMessage.Configuration.Fields.Item _
("http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/smtpserver") = "smtp.server.com"

'Type of authentication, NONE, Basic (Base64 encoded), NTLM
'objMessage.Configuration.Fields.Item _
'("http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/smtpauthenticate") = cdoBasic

'Your UserID on the SMTP server
'objMessage.Configuration.Fields.Item _
'("http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/sendusername") = "username"

'Your password on the SMTP server
'objMessage.Configuration.Fields.Item _
'("http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/sendpassword") = "password"

'Server port (typically 25)
objMessage.Configuration.Fields.Item _
("http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/smtpserverport") = 25

'Use SSL for the connection (False or True)
objMessage.Configuration.Fields.Item _
("http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/smtpusessl") = False

'Connection Timeout in seconds (the maximum time CDO will try to establish a connection to the SMTP server)
objMessage.Configuration.Fields.Item _
("http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/smtpconnectiontimeout") = 60

objMessage.Configuration.Fields.Update
objMessage.Send

13

General Mach Discussion / Any way I can get Mach to send me an email when it's finished?

« on: May 11, 2009, 10:29:00 PM »

Is is possible to hook up a bit of VB to M5 to send me an email letting me know mach has finished?

I can think about 6 ways to make a linux machine send me an email -  but windows and VB are a mystery...

14

General Mach Discussion / Mach3 on iPhone

« on: February 06, 2009, 07:41:18 PM »

Actually it's just VNC lite but it means I can check where my job is at from anywhere within wireless range. I tried remote desktop but I hate the way you have to keep logging in when you get back to the machine running mach...

15

General Mach Discussion / Re: Weird pulse coming from pc

« on: August 13, 2008, 11:16:48 PM »

I was testing a relay board on the PC under my desk (not one of the PC's I normally run Mach from) a couple of months ago and every 10 seconds it would pulse all 8 outputs. I tracked it down to a printer driver which was polling the port to see if a printer was there.  Check to see in anyone has installed any printer drivers recently...

16

Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) / Re: My growing collection of CNC machines...

« on: July 06, 2008, 09:40:14 PM »

Added Emco compact 5PC to my collection.

http://www.b26354.co.nz/CNC/pictures/img_0044.html

Replaced the stock steppers with some surplus nema23's and a mach compatible controller.

Only took about an hour to convert and get it cutting:

http://www.b26354.co.nz/CNC/pictures/img_0054.html

I still need to hook up the optinterrupters for spindle speed and build a decent enclosure for the electronics. I have a bigger motor on the way for the Z-axis to get faster rapids and a decent speed for threading.

17

General Mach Discussion / Re: PCB manufacturing

« on: July 01, 2008, 06:08:15 AM »

Thanks athomas - been looking for something that'll output PCB g-code for a while and just tried one of the eagle example PCB's - now I just need to figure out how to use Eagle

Hello Anthomas:

How did you export the g-code from Eagle PCB? I can not find this function from Eagle PCB.

There is a plug-in (ULP) that allows the exporting of g-code from eagle.  I also use a neat plug-in plug-in called Eagle PCB power tools for importing gerber files.

I have included the links.

ftp://ftp.cadsoft.de/eagle/userfiles/ulp/pcb-gcode-3.3.2.zip

ftp://ftp.cadsoft.de/eagle/userfiles/misc/eagle_pcb_power_tools4_16.exe

18

General Mach Discussion / Re: feedrate override and G00's

« on: June 30, 2008, 06:06:07 AM »

downloaded version 3.041 and it seems to be behaving. Don't often mess with the override on my router but while getting a feel for a new milling machine (and first time cutting something harder than aluminium) I started out slow.

Thanks
--

Jon

19

General Mach Discussion / Re: feedrate override and G00's

« on: June 30, 2008, 03:57:23 AM »

version is R2.63.

Just did a test by setting the tuning to 100mm/min on all 3 axes and I can definitely override the feeds (either g00 or g01) past the tuning values.

20

General Mach Discussion / Re: feedrate override and G00's

« on: June 30, 2008, 12:55:45 AM »

That's how I thought it was supposed to work. Spindle was going up when it lost steps BTW so no chip load. I heard it happen and the z motor definitely sounded like it was trying to spin faster than it should. I'll edit the g-code with a longer z-up move to see if I can see what the feedrate is really doing.