Topics

21

General Mach Discussion / Need Help with power Relay setup for steppers

« on: September 08, 2008, 08:12:29 PM »

I have got my spindle motor relay working, now I would like to set another relay that would cut the power to the stepper motors on an e-stop and bring the power back on with reset.  How can I make this happen? Do I need to edit the button in screen 4? If so what would I add.

Thanks, Tom

22

General Mach Discussion / Need relay setup help

« on: September 05, 2008, 07:27:59 PM »

I was wondering if someone could give me an easy tutorial for setting up my output relay to turn on my router motor in Mach3.  I have a relay and just need the steps to follow to get it up and working. I was reading that I may have to edit the M3 macro, if so what should it be changed to?

Thanks,
Tom

23

General Mach Discussion / Softlimits not working with smoothstepper

« on: August 13, 2008, 05:25:00 PM »

I have come accross another problem, my softlimits no longer work after installing my smooth stepper. They were working fine with the parallel port configuration.  I have checked my settings everything seems OK but softlimits won't work at all. Does anyone have any ideas.

Thanks,
Tom

24

General Mach Discussion / Smooth Stepper Homing error

« on: August 13, 2008, 12:17:57 PM »

I just installed a smooth stepper from warp9. Everything is working well except when I try to home the machine, the Z axis will hit the home/limit switch the slowly back off, but when the y axis hits the home/limit switch it seemes as it starts the mach goes into e-stop limit switch error. I have tried different setting in the smooth stepper config and in mach Debounce, nothing seemes to help.  I have read the Manuel but it is incomplete and I just am lost right now.

Thanks,
Tom

25

General Mach Discussion / Almost there, But

« on: August 07, 2008, 09:10:21 PM »

I have finally worked out most of the bugs in my v90 mill.  I can get my rapids without binding and all seems to be running well.  Until about 45min to 1 hr in on a carving file  the machining will shift over anywhere from .25 to .5 but not miss a lick, the finished part just looks as if it was just shifted over part way through the cutting. Z depth seems OK, just in the x and or y. I have run the same file 7 to 8 times and at different feeds and velocity settings. It does not happen in the same place it is different everytime so I'm sure that it is not the code.  I am thinking that somehow Mach just hickups part way through. I am using CV mode and the part is coming out very good except for the shifting.  I am thinking of buying a smooth stepper hoping that it will fix this glitch.
  Does anyone have any ideas on what could be going on, and what I might try to fix this? I am running mach from my laptop but have also tried a desktop PC and the same thing happens.

Thanks,
Tom

26

General Mach Discussion / More motor trouble

« on: August 02, 2008, 06:46:16 PM »

I thought that I had things set up fairly well, but when I am running a part after about 45 min in the motors will begin binding and missing steps. I have the probotix bob, drivers and motors. I am running Mach on my laptop and have optimized it and set it to standard pc mode. The driver test gives me excellent report.  I do notice that the problem seems to get worse as the motors heat up.  I am running the motors in 1/4 step mode unipolar, my feed rate is 70 ipm.  I even tried slowing down the axis's and the motors will start binding even at the slower rate 30ipm.  I can even get the motors to bind by putting squeeze pressure on the motor coupling while the machine is homing at 10 ipm.  I have checked my wiring and voltages all seem fine.  I am at a loss to figure out what is wrong.  I have read alot of the posts here and tried all of the suggestions, I don't think that this is a problem with Mach. I am thinking of getting new motor drivers and bob from another source if someone thinks that it will work.  Any suggestions that anyone has will be greatly appreciated.  By the way my setting on the motor tuning and X & Y= 80 velocity, 8 on acceleration Z=  30 vel 3 acc, debounce set to 1500, cv .20, look ahead 150.

Thanks, Tom

27

General Mach Discussion / Motor tuning while rapiding

« on: July 25, 2008, 05:28:39 PM »

I need help with my motor tuning while.  I have a fireball v90 with the probostep breakout board and drivers from probotix.com.  When the motors are running at normal speed 70ipm they run fine I can try to hold on the the axis and the motors will not miss a beat, but when I am rapiding and 150ipm I just barely touch the axis the motors will bind(make the loud whining sound). I have tried tuning different settings but I think that I am beginning to chase my tail.  I have checked the axis's after removing the motors and the move fine. What am I missing here will the motors always have that much less torque and rapid speeds?  I have tried all of the different step modes on the motors from 16th to full, but the problem always seems to be there. 
   Does anyone feel that if i add a smooth stepper to the setup that it will help?  If anyone has any other things that I can change in the setup please let me know.

I have read the Manuel still not 100% sure on what changing the step and direction pluse does, or if that will even help

Thanks in advance for any advice,
Tom

28

General Mach Discussion / Z axis home/limit problem

« on: July 22, 2008, 08:45:34 PM »

Hi, I am setting up my Fireball v90 using Mach3 I have 5 limit switches. 1- X home- / limit x--, 2-Y home- / limit y-- 3- Z home+ /Limit Z++, The final 2 I am using the Y-,and the x- in seires as the limit switches. None on the z- Axis Yet.  The problem that I am having is with the z axis switch when I have it set as the home switch alone it all works great, but if I activate the z-limit++ then when I home all ref the z axis moves up hits the switch and activates the limit.  I check the diagnostic and the light is on for the home and the limit, when I try to restart it wont come out of e-stop unless I turn off the z limit.  I have the z axis on its own pin input as well as the X & Y home/limit. Does anyone have an idea as to what I am doing wrong?

Thanks, Tom

29

General Mach Discussion / Inverting display toolpath screen

« on: July 19, 2008, 08:29:05 PM »

Hi, I am new to Mach3 but I am not new to CNC.  My question is there a way to have mach3 display the toolpath screen having the 0,0,0 Home position in the upper right hand corner instead of the lower left corner? I basically want to have it display rotated 180 degrees from its default position.

Thanks,Tom