Messages

51

General Mach Discussion / Re: Keygrabber 'sticking'?

« on: July 08, 2010, 05:37:34 PM »

Just tested using my brother's flight simulator stick too, and had the same results. Unfortunately, it's the same brand as the others, so I can't really say that I learned anything.

Budman, were you having the same problem? Similar controller? Where might I find this xbox plugin?

52

General Mach Discussion / Keygrabber 'sticking'?

« on: July 08, 2010, 05:09:16 PM »

Hey guys,

To be honest, I'm not really expecting to find an answer to this, I feel I might have exhausted all of my choices already, but I'm going to ask here anyway, because the Mach community has surprised me in the past.

I started with a Saitek P880 game controller, which I've been using for quite a while. Every once in a while, one of the analog controls would 'stick', and the machine would keep moving instead of stopping. As you can imagine, that's not good for bits, or for fingers. I was convinced that it was because of a crack in the analog sticks, that it was physically sticking. I found a brand new controller (a Saitek P2500) on ebay, and to my surprise, not only does it still happen, but it's actually worse than before. It can happen any time, on any axis. Once in 20-30 movements it might happen.

I've gone through every setting I can find in Keygrabber, which I'm pretty familiar with, but had no luck. I tried installing the Saitek controller drivers, thinking maybe the generic windows drivers were causing problems, no help there either.

It came with a diagnostic program that shows that the joystick actually is centering, but for some reason, keygrabber or mach 3 decides to keep moving anyway. What's strange is, it will keep moving sometimes at a very slow rate, or sometimes close to rapid speed. It just depends on how fast you were moving the machine before releasing the analog stick back to center. All you have to do to stop it is lightly touch the axis again.

My machine is pretty large, and it's impossible to reach the keyboard many times while taking measurements, auto z zeroing and such. I've become pretty reliant on using the controller, but after having the thing smash blades into material, I really need to figure this out.

EDIT: I've tested, and this happens on my nice home pc, as well as the shop pc's.


Thanks for reading, and I look forward to any suggestions.
Z

53

General Mach Discussion / Re: There is a God!!!!!Keygrabber Axis Gain question

« on: July 05, 2010, 05:21:21 PM »

If I recall correctly, keygrabber is included with mach3. There should be an EXE file in the main mach3 directory. It has a smiley face icon

54

General Mach Discussion / Re: Setting machine Coordinates

« on: June 28, 2010, 01:45:26 PM »

Castle,

Very good! Glad you figured it out.

As far as the Z going the wrong way, have you tried changing the 'home neg' box for the z axis in homing and limits? Not being able to jog Z one direction probably means that mach thinks its at the soft limit for Z.

55

General Mach Discussion / Re: Setting machine Coordinates

« on: June 25, 2010, 12:03:37 PM »

It sounds to me like you've got everything set up then. I'm sure we're just missing something simple here, but it's so hard to tell without seeing the configuration. If you'd like, you can post your XML file and I'll take a look at it when I can. Problem is, over the last few months, I've quoted a bunch of jobs and, just as expected, they all showed up at once, with deadlines that are painfully close. I won't be around again until later tonight or tomorrow.

Off to make some chips

56

General Mach Discussion / Re: Setting machine Coordinates

« on: June 25, 2010, 09:53:51 AM »

Kevin,

Have you configured the input pins under Ports & Pins?  I guess I didn't go over that. The input signals tab lets you set up what pins are for what signal in mach.

For example, XHome enabled, port 1, pin 11 for me is my X limit switch. I'm betting this is what you're missing.

57

General Mach Discussion / Re: Setting machine Coordinates

« on: June 24, 2010, 02:55:31 PM »

As for your question about homing, I have a modified screen set, so the wording may be a bit different, but the basic idea is the same. Make sure you've got your steps per unit all figured out before you work on this, or your numbers will be wrong.

First, move your machine manually to somewhere in the middle, well away from any limits, and click reference all home, but be ready to hit stop. Note which direction each axis is moving. If any of them are moving away from the limit switch, click Config->homing & Limits, and check reversed, or home neg to correct it. Also make sure Auto Zero is enabled. Once you have all axes moving towards their respective limit switches, you can start setting up the limits.

Click reference all again, and let each axis hit the switches, but again, be near the e-stop button in case they don't stop like they should. If this all works as it should, this will tell mach3 where 0,0,0 is at, and will reset each machine coordinate to zero.

Next run each axis manually as far as you'd like it to move, and enter the number from the respective DRO into the homing and limits config page.

Last, soft limits must be enabled if you want the machine to actually use these constraints.

The setup is different for each machine depending on its configuration, wiring, LH/RH screws, etc. so you may have to fiddle with the settings in the homing & limits page to get things working as expected.

Hope all this helps
Z

58

General Mach Discussion / Re: Setting machine Coordinates

« on: June 24, 2010, 01:36:46 PM »

Forgot to ask, how many starts do your screws have?

I'm no pro with this stuff, I've only done it a few times, but here's my calculation, based on a single start screw:

direct drive motors, so no gear reduction.
1.8 degree motors = 200 steps per rev.
10x microstepping = 2000 steps per rev. (according to gecko's website for the G203V)
5tpi 1 start screws = 10000 steps per unit (inch in this case).

If you want to run metrics, divide 10000 by 25.4 = 393.700787 steps per unit (mm this way)

Someone please correct me if this is wrong.

59

General Mach Discussion / Re: Setting machine Coordinates

« on: June 23, 2010, 11:37:14 PM »

Well, you'll need to straighten out problem number 2 first, but we'll need some more info to help, are you running stepper motors or servos? Other info needed is screw TPI, additional gearing, microstepping?

60

General Mach Discussion / Re: Developing new macropump, faster way to retest?

« on: June 17, 2010, 09:34:52 AM »

Hmm, that's very interesting. Thanks for the info, Ian, I've done a lot of reading around here and I've never come across anything like that.