Messages

121

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Newbie trying to understand mach 4

« on: December 21, 2015, 10:10:53 PM »

actually pin 2 = x = green when in position
pin 4 = y = red when in position
pin 10 = z = red when in position
pin 15 = E = red when in position

Ummmm....  presuming you are referring to SmartBOB-USB (and Zero3 25-pin parallel port) pin numbers, pin 2 is a motor step or direction OUTPUT from the SmartBOB, as is pin 4.  Pins 10 and 15 are indeed an input signals.

According to page 12 of the Zero3 manual that Steve linked to earlier, you should have the following input signal configuration (Configure->Mach, then click on the "Input Signals" tab):

   E-Stop input on pin 11
   X axis home on pin 13
   Y axis home on pin 12
   Z axis home on pin 10

But the "Input Signals" tab doesn't mention "axis", only "motor".  So there is one more level of mapping that you need, and that is found on the Configure->Mach, then "Axis Mapping" tab.  There you will see which motor is mapped to which axis.  If you started with the PMDX-Sample profile, Motor0 will be the "X" axis, Motor1 the "y" and Motor2 the "Z" axis.  If this matches YOUR configuration then set the input signals as follows:

   E-Stop on SmartBOBUSB "Pin11"
   Motor 0 Home on SmartBOBUSB "Pin13"
   Motor 1 Home on SmartBOBUSB "Pin12"
   Motor 2 Home on SmartBOBUSB "Pin10"
 
Whether you put a red "X" or green check mark in the "Active Low" column depends on your switch configuration.  I believe the EStop should be active high (red "X").  If your limit switches are normally closed switches, then the home signals should be active high (red "X").  If your switches are normally open, then make the home inputs active low (green check mark).

Try this configuration and look at the indicators on the Mach4 Machine Diagnostics screen and see if they behave as you expect.

Bob

122

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: How do I get mach 4 to run with Heiz xero3 controller?

« on: December 21, 2015, 01:36:00 PM »

See this thread: https://www.machsupport.com/forum/index.php/topic,31512.0.html

123

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Newbie trying to understand mach 4

« on: December 21, 2015, 01:35:03 PM »

1. The first problem is homing the device. In winpc nc it would go to xyz 000, but i have no idea how to do this with mach 4 it just keeps crashing into the sides. How do i fix this?

This sounds like you don't have home switches configured in Mach4.  Look for "Mach4 CNC Controller config.pdf" in your C:\Mach4Hobby\Docs\ directory.  This describes where to set the homing parameters.  See also the "Input Signals" section for a very brief description if where to go to configure the home switch inputs.  Once you have the home input signals configured, you can use the "Machine Diagnostic" tab to view what Mach4 thinks are the states of the home switch inputs.  Toggle or activate each home switch and make sure it shows up in Mach4.  If it doesn't, then bring up the PMDX real-time display (go to the Diagnostic menu and select the PMDX SmartBob, then click on the "Real Time Display" button).  This will show you the signals as the SmartBOB device sees them.

2. The tool path... when I loaded the software initiallY i could see the complete toolpath and build on screen now I only see part of it... just a red line at a right angle. i have no idea how to restore it. Is there a factory reset?

sorry - we need to wait for someone else to answer this.

3. Winpc nc was pretty buggy so We had to write a converter to change x + to x- and y+ to y - in some cases. So now the axis are the wrong way around again. rather than having to rewrite the converter is there any simple way to switch the polarity of the axis?

To change the direction of a MOTOR, go to the "Configure" menu and select "Mach".  Then click on the "Motor Config" tab.  Click once on the desired motor to show its configuration, then check (or un-check) the "Reverse?" box.

Note that since you are using a PMDX SmartBOB there is a second way to accomplish this: Go to the "Configure" menu and select "Plugins".  Click on the "Configure" button for the PMDX-SmartBOB, then click on the "Motor Config" tab.  For each motor that you want to change the direction, change the "Dir Polarity" setting.  This setting reflects the same configuration item that you changed in the other method.  Changing it one place will also change it in the other dialog.  So you only need to change it in ONE of these two places.

4. How do I change A to E axis? again i can rewrite the compiler but I'd rather change the settings in mach 4.

For "coordinated motion", Mach4 supports 6 axis and as far as I know they are hard-coded as X, Y, Z, A, B and C.  I'm not sure if there is a way to tell Mach4 to re-map axis E to some other axis.  Perhaps someone else on this forum can chime in with a way to do this in Mach4.

Bob

124

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: How do I get mach 4 to run with Heiz xero3 controller?

« on: December 21, 2015, 02:06:01 AM »

A general tip - if the topic of your questions changes, it is better to start a new thread on the forum, rather than to keep appending to this thread.  Specially now as your questions move more towards generic Mach4 operation questions than Xero3 specific questions.  That said...

For writing macros, Mach4 uses a programming language called "Lua" for its macros.  Search this forum and look in the :Mach4 Toolbox" sub-forum for samples.

How do you change the orientation of an axis?  I'm not sure what you mean.  Do you mean something like change the direction of the X axis to positive moves travel to the left instead of the right?  Or do you mean something like make the Y axis move left & right, and the X axis move in and out?

Ref All Home **should** start homing the machine.  But there are a couple of things that need to be configured before this will work.  But that shouldn't cause the machine to stop working.  What exactly does "stop working" mean?  When this happens, do you see any error messages in the status line?  The status line is down near the bottom of the Mach4 screen - though you may need to click on the "History" button to see all of the messages.  If you exit Mach4 and re-start it, can you then run the machine again?  Or do you have to also unplug the PMDX SmartBOB also?

You need to have home switches defined for each axis (see Configure->Mach, then click on the "Input Signals" tab).  You also need to set the homing order for each axis.  See the Configure->Mach menu, then click on "Homing/SoftLimits" tab.  Homing order values are non-zero (if you want the axis to "home"), with 1 being the first axis to home, and higher numbers following in order.  You can assign the same value to multiple axes and Mach4 will attempt to home them at the same time.  If the "Home in Place" column is enabled (a green check mark), Mach4 won't actually move that axis, it will simply declare that whatever the axis' current position is, THAT is home.

Bob

125

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: How do I get mach 4 to run with Heiz xero3 controller?

« on: December 18, 2015, 01:56:40 PM »

To enable the charge pump on the PMDX-411, do the following:

(1) Go to the Mach4 "Configure" menu and select "Mach...".

(2) When the configuration dialog appears, click on the "Output Signals" tab.  Scroll all the way to the bottom of the signal list.  Look for a signal named "Charge Pump #1".  This should be right after "Limit Override" and right before "Charge Pump #2" and "Current Hi/Lo".  If instead of "Charge Pump #1" you see "Reserved #1", go ahead and use that.  Our plug-in will still interpret this as the charge pump signal.

(3) On the "Charge Pump #1" line, click on the red "X" in the "Mapping Enabled" column to change it to a green check mark.  In the "Device" column select the "SmartBOBUSB" device.  In the "Output Name" column, select "Pin16".  You can leave the red "X" in the "Active Low" column.  Click on "OK" to return to the main Mach4 screen.

(4) Now go back to the Mach4 "Configure" menu and select "Plugins...".

(5) Click on the "Configure" button on the PMDX-SmartBOB-USB line.

(6) When the configuration dialog appears click on the "Feature Config" tab.

(7) Look for a section titled "Charge Pump Configuration".  Make sure the frequency is 12500 Hz, and that the "Charge Pump On only when Machine is Enabled" option is selected.  NOTE: The Zero3 manual does not say what frequency it expects on the charge pump signal, so we are using our plug-in's default value.

( 8 ) Click on "OK" until you are back at the main Mach4 screen.

(9) With Mach4 disabled (the button in the lower left corner should be flashing green and say "Enable"), look at the LEDs on the front of the Zero3 box.  The 2nd LED from the left shows the charge pump status, and this LED should be off.  now enable Mach4 by clicking on the flashing green "Enable" button.  The button should turn red and say "Disable".  On the Zero3 controller, the 2nd LED from the left should now be on.

Now see if you can get any motion from your motors.

Bob

126

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Use probing for tool zeroing

« on: December 04, 2015, 12:31:33 AM »

Sounds like a bug in the PMDX plugin. Be sure to report this to them.

and

You shouldn't have to turn off the softlimits to probe, I don't think.

I can't rule anything out at this point, and it *may* be an issue with our plug-in, but at first glance I would be surprised.  Soft limits are handled entirely by the Mach4 core and motion planner.  Our plug-in has nothing to do with them.  Probing motion comes to the plug-in through the Mach4 motion planner, same as GCode motion.  Well, up until the point where the probe makes contact - then the SmartBOB takes over the motion and halts movement (decelerates to a stop).

Since the purpose of this sequence is to set a new zero point for the Z axis, what *may* be happening is that changing the Z position in the DRO and then moving for the probe motion might be exceeding the soft limits.  Your profile that I have here has the Z axis soft limits as -7.5 to 0 (presuming that you have fixed the max/min values in the proper, non-intuitive columns).  If the canned probing routines try to move the Z axis up (which I presume is toward a more positive position) it may trigger the soft limit when it moves above the zero that you just set.  This is pure speculation on my part as I haven't tested any of this.

If you want, enable our debug log to a file, run the tool zero sequence with soft limits enabled, then send us the log file (or the Mach4 package if that is easier).  That should tell me pretty quickly if the issue is in our plug-in.

127

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Auto Tool Zero

« on: November 25, 2015, 08:38:10 PM »

I think he was starting with our sample profile, which still uses the wxMach screen set.  I really need to update our sample profile for the new screen sets.

FYI - to change screen sets, go to the "View" menu and select "Load Screen".  When the file select dialog pops up, change into the "Screens' directory to find all of the screen sets.

Bob

128

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Spindle Problems

« on: November 22, 2015, 11:38:22 PM »

See the PMDX support forums (this question was posted to both forums):

http://www.pmdx.com/PMDX-Forums/index.php?topic=197.0

I'll re-post the final resolution here when we get one.

129

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach4 soft limits reverse axes

« on: November 21, 2015, 11:37:49 PM »

For everyone's benefit here is a summary of my answer from the email I sent you:

This is a truncation issue in the Mach4 core.  Looking at your Machine.ini, your "steps per' is 1909.8610.  Internally Mach4 uses "steps", not inches or mm for position calculations. So 49 inches is 93583.189 steps.  I just now looked back in the INI file and found this: the soft limit is stored in the INI file as a floating point number *BUT* is it indeed truncated to an integer.  So in your INI file the soft limit is stored as 93583.0000.  If you then convert this back to inches (divide by 1909.861) you get 48.9998.

Bob

130

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: No spindle rpm dro readout

« on: November 21, 2015, 11:28:34 PM »

Answered here:

http://www.pmdx.com/PMDX-Forums/index.php?topic=196.0

Bob