Messages

21

General Mach Discussion / Re: G28 command causes "Soft limit exceeded" message.

« on: March 30, 2017, 05:48:14 PM »

Craig,

That could work, but I haven't had the time, or need to mess with them since you helped me solve the problem. Right now, I have G28 set in a more comfortable location for tool changes.

Thanks again

Z

22

General Mach Discussion / Re: G28 command causes "Soft limit exceeded" message.

« on: March 26, 2017, 01:51:39 PM »

Craig,

Thanks very much for the response. I had convinced myself that all of the locations for the G28 being zero was not the problem, but I took your advice, tried some other numbers in there, and yes, the program will run now! Now I can keep working on the other 75 issues I have to solve.

Thanks!
Z

23

General Mach Discussion / G28 command causes "Soft limit exceeded" message.

« on: March 21, 2017, 04:44:33 PM »

Hello all,

On my 3 axis mill, I have home switches on X, Y and Z.

Soft limits have been configured, and appear to work as expected. The problem comes when the program runs the G28 command.

After homing all axes to zero, (Z zero is home, downward travel is negative) using G28 causes "Soft limit exceeded" to appear in the status box on the main screen, after the Z axis gets to the home position. No soft limit popup box appears when starting the program, and the Z did not trigger the home switch.  Once this happens, the code will not continue. I get the error even with the home switch disconnected.

I can run the same program with soft limits disabled, and it will run just fine.

I can duplicate the problem by homing, jogging away from the home switches, and running a G28 in the MDI screen.

Any thoughts on this? I've done hours of research, but haven't found a solution.

Thanks,
Z

24

General Mach Discussion / Re: Completely disable G43 tool length compensation / offset

« on: December 12, 2016, 02:28:55 PM »

Just as a follow up, I did remove the G43 commands from the post processor, so no new files will use it, and I wrote a program to scan, and remove (hopefully) all of the G43 commands from existing files. The testing I've done so far indicates success.

 If I ever figure out what was causing these erroneous entries in the tool table, I'll report back here.

Z

25

General Mach Discussion / Re: Completely disable G43 tool length compensation / offset

« on: December 11, 2016, 10:55:04 AM »

Thanks guys, I was hoping that wouldn't be the answer, since I have literally thousands of files. I will remove it from the post processor, and write some code to remove it from existing files, I don't think it will be too difficult.

There was no G49 at the end, instead it was near the beginning of each file. I had also checked the box in config to cancel tool offsets at the end of the file, or rewind.

Z

26

General Mach Discussion / Completely disable G43 tool length compensation / offset

« on: December 10, 2016, 08:15:09 PM »

Hi folks,

I've been using Mach 3 for many years, and from time to time I've run into this problem, but lately it's becoming more of an issue, since we're very busy.

I do not, and never have used tool length offsets. All of the entries in the tool table (should) be zero. I use a touch plate for zeroing my Z.

My Gcode processor puts out a G43 command for every tool change, in thousands of files, and normally everything works fine. Occasionally, a tool offset will appear in the table, that I did not put it there. It's seemingly random. Sometimes the offset is on one tool, sometimes on another, completely unrelated to the first. Sometimes the offset is 1 mm, sometimes 3mm, other times it's over 10mm! I just don't know where they come from!

I can run the same two files all day long, and suddenly, in the middle of a batch, this stupid tool offset appears in the tool table, changes my over all depth of cut, breaks a blade, ruins the part, or often causes a crash from cutting too deep.

It's our busy season, and short of doing a re-install of Mach 3, I'm at a loss what to do next. I'm aware of the offsets menu, and the Tool Offset LED is off. Normally, all the entries in that screen are zero. When I see this problem occur, I DO see the offset in the Z Offset box on the right side of that screen.

Is there some way to completely disable the tool length offset? Any other ideas?

Thanks!
Z

27

General Mach Discussion / Re: Machine started crashing, numbers appearing in tool table - I'm baffled

« on: March 25, 2015, 08:20:17 PM »

TP,

I do think I have a backup within the last month or so, I'll give that a shot. I haven't had any power outages that I can think of, but who knows, it's worth a try.

Thanks,
Z

28

General Mach Discussion / Re: Machine started crashing, numbers appearing in tool table - I'm baffled

« on: March 25, 2015, 07:30:17 PM »

Rich,

No, I didn't find a G10 anywhere. After it happened this morning, I ran another 14 tool paths without incident. I'm keeping an eye on that Z DRO though, I predict it will happen again, hopefully I'll see some sort of pattern and get this sorted.

Thanks,

Z

29

General Mach Discussion / Re: Machine started crashing, numbers appearing in tool table - I'm baffled

« on: March 25, 2015, 07:14:31 PM »

Rich,

Thanks for that, I'll work out a regex grep to check if there is.

Z

30

General Mach Discussion / Machine started crashing, numbers appearing in tool table - I'm baffled

« on: March 25, 2015, 03:42:55 PM »

Hello again all,

Short version: Within the last couple weeks, numbers have started appearing in my tool table that I did not put there, I don't use the tool table at all, every entry should be zero.

Full version:
I've been running mach3 on my machine for several years, I've run thousands and thousands of programs through the machine, but something has started happening within the last couple weeks I just cannot seem to solve. I should probably first mention that I generally run the same gcode I've been using for a very long time, this is not new code. I haven't touched the mach configuration at all for many months.

I use my touch plate to zero my Z axis, it touches, retracts, and sets the Z to 5mm above the surface as expected. - Sometimes - but not always - this oddity occurs when I start the program, right before the first tool change. If I watch the Z DRO on the main mach screen, it starts at 5mm, but when I run the code pictured below, the number suddenly changes, the first time I caught it a week ago, it was just over 26mm. It should stay at 5mm. I did some digging, and found an entry in the tool table length that matched the 26mm. The thing is, I have never used the tool table for anything, all the entries should be zero. I set the offending entry back to zero, pushed apply, and went on with my work. Yesterday, it happened again. This time, the magic number was -33.7268 on tool number 46. Once again, I checked the tool table, and sure enough, -33.7268 was entered into tool length for number 46, while every other entry in the entire table was zero. Again, after setting the table cell back to 0.00, pressing apply, everything worked fine for the rest of the session.

I haven't found a pattern to the problem. It seems it can happen with any tool.

Thinking it must be caused by the gcode itself, I used the Linux grep command to search through file contents of all the files I use, trying to see if that  -33.7268 number existed anywhere in any of my gcode, but it found nothing. I did some testing to make sure my grep command was right, and it works for other numbers. (Fyi, the files are stored on a Linux server, hence the grep command)

Code: [Select]

grep -r -e '-33.7268' /home/z/machine/
Here's the header from the file I ran when it happened last. All my files use the same post processor, and have the same header. I broke it up a bit to make it more readable.


Is there anything you guys can think of that would cause this? I'm drawing a blank here. How in the world are these numbers getting into the tool table?

Thanks for reading,

Z