Topics

1

Feature Requests / conditional execution

« on: May 14, 2011, 12:28:38 PM »

About time some conditional execution features were added to Mach - I found to my horror today that even the latest release does not support even the most basic of conditional functions.  

I really cant believe that in this day and age we're reduced to the equivalent of trying to programme the internet in Assembler and doing web page graphics by manually setting every bit in a bitmap image - this sort of thing went out over 30 years ago in the rest of the computing world.

Every other 'dialect' of gcode supports these functions, and to be taken seriously in the future Mach needs to support at least the obvious capabilities - 'IF-THEN-ELSE' and 'DO WHILE' along with the logical comparison functions (GT, GE, LT, LE, NE, EQ).

 I need to machine some parts that have repetitive reatures and thus simple to do in a loop - six lines of code - but bloat to a couple of hundred lines if I have to expand it out manually. Yuk. Not to mention the vastly increased chances of an error (typo) and additional maintenance overhead.

Named variables (rather than #1 etc) would not go amiss either. Collectively these changes would at least bring Mach up to par with 1970's programming languages - and maybe sometime we might even catch up with the 21st Century!

Rick

2

General Mach Discussion / Trouble with lathe spindle speed in Mach3Turn

« on: March 19, 2011, 01:00:03 PM »

I need some help configuring Mach to correctly operate the spindle on a lathe. I have two issues to solve, which I suspect may be related:

1) the speed the spindle turns at doesnt match the speed specified in the command; if I enter for example M3 S10 on the MDI line I get a spindle speed of around 30 rpm. I have tried adjusting the 'steps per' figure in the motor tuning config screen but so far, have not been able to get the two to match. In fact, changing the steps per doesnt always behave logically - one would think that doubling steps per would halve (or double) the spindle speed but this does not seem to be the case.

2) the 'actual speed' reported by Mach is incorrect; in the case above (M3 S10 / ~30 rpm) I get the spindle speed reported as 87 rpm actual - which it patently isnt, just from looking at it. Also, if I enter say M3 S100 then I'm getting around 1500 rpm on the spindle, but the reported actual is 125rpm. My speed sensor is an opto-switch and slotted disk, and this is working just fine - if I put a multimeter across the input terminals that it connects to on the breakout board, I can see the needle 'tick' every time the slot goes past. This sensor is attached to input 1 on my (Uniport) breakout board, and that input maps to (port 1) pin 10, so I have configured Mach's 'index' to look at this port/pin.

It's driving me slightly nuts trying to figure out what is going on, so any pointers or help will be greatfully received!

Regards, and thanks in advance,

Rick

3

General Mach Discussion / "PWM Bumped to Minimum Setting" message

« on: July 02, 2008, 03:11:26 PM »

Team,

I'm having trouble getting the speed on my mill to match what is set in the g-code, and when I do so I get the information message in Mach "PWM bumped to minimum setting". I cant find any explanation for this message in the docs or online, so can somebody please tell me what it means, and how I fix it?

The speed problems I am having are a bit odd. If I put say 'S500' into my g-code, the mill will start up at 740 rpm. If I put S900 into the code, then I will still get 740 rpm. If I then use the manual override in Mach, and boost the speed, it will do nothing for two or three clicks and I will end up with a situation where Mach says 'normal speed 900', 'speed override 1140', and a mill still doing 740 rpm...... At some point, the speed override does kick in but incorrectly - in this case, upping it again to say 1200 manually will make the mill jump to maybe 1420 rpm. This is driving me nuts, as you might imagine.

I've tried auto-calibrate on the spindle speed, but it simply does not work. Sits there indefinitely doing nothing.

All suggestions etc gratefully received!

Regards,

Rick
 

4

VB and the development of wizards / Need help with manual toolchange macro

« on: June 05, 2008, 03:30:41 PM »

Hi All:

I have a new mill running under Mach3 and need to create a macro for manual tool changing, since it is a single tool machine. The g-code files that I am using contain an M998 call and this simply causes the machine to stop and wait for a cycle start press. I could change the tool then but usually the head is too close to the workpiece, and in any event, I still need to reset the Z offset for the new tool since they're not standard length.

What I want to be able to do therefore is to have the machine move 'home' and pause so that I can manually change the tool and set a new Z offset for it. Then I want to hit cycle start and have the machine return to the point where it originally stopped (and then hit cycle start again to recommence machining).

It's not complex, but I am tearing my hair out trying to figure out how to do this. I'd like to be able to 'trap' the G998 call in some way and modify the behaviour. VB is no problem for me but I cannot find where this macro is coded in Mach3 or how to modify it (the documentation is kinda sparse here, as far as I can see).

Any pointers as to where to get started (and to Mach3 programming docs) would be appreciated, as will any existing examples or code skeletons that I can 'borrow' from or modify.

Regards,

Rick