Topics

91

Brains Development / Suffering From Brain Damage....

« on: August 18, 2008, 08:54:45 PM »

Today I built myself the worlds cheapest pendant, using an old video game controller.  I had no trouble getting most of the buttons to do what I wanted, but a few are giving me fits. 

I have been able to set two buttons to increase/decrease jog %, using the "Inc Jog %" and "Dec Jog %" "button presses", but this doesn't really do quite what I want.  I'd really like to have a single button that acts as a toggle between step and continuous jog modes, and two other buttons that move up or down a lpre-defined ist of jog rates or step sizes, depending on the mode the first button has set the jog mode to.  I tried doing a simple toggle of jog rate between 10% and 100%, but the problem is it continuously toggles back and forth between 10% and 100% for as long as the button is pressed.  How do I get it to generate only a single "button press" event to Mach for each press of the pendant button?

Regards,
Ray L.

92

General Mach Discussion / Soft Limits Confusion

« on: August 14, 2008, 11:55:10 PM »

A few days ago, I installed and hooked up my home/limit switches.  I have one set of switchs, wired in series, serving both functions.  So, it would be nice to turn on soft limits, but I am totally confused by the settings.  The top of the dialog indicates the settings are in "setup units".  WRF does that mean?  If I want to set the soft limits one inch from the hard limits set by the switches, what do I input for each setting?

Regards,
Ray L.

93

General Mach Discussion / When Is A Circle Not A Circle?

« on: August 14, 2008, 02:25:59 PM »

Answer - When it's a polygon!  Today I made a couple of donut-shaped pieces of aluminum.  The center holes came out perfectly smooth and round.  The outsides, however, came out as ~32-sided polygons, the segments all appearing to be a very consistent size!  These circular paths were programmed as a single G02 command to make the entire 360 degree cut.  This has never happened to me before, and I haven't changed *anything*.  Is there some way to tell Mach3 what precision to use in calculating the segments of an arc?  Resetting and re-booting the PC appears to have perhaps made it better, but still not good.

Regards,
Ray L.

94

SmoothStepper USB / Is SmoothStepper Ready For The Masses?

« on: August 10, 2008, 09:08:51 PM »

I just LOVE the idea of SmoothStepper, but am always leery of something that's "brand new".  So, howzabout those of you who have one letting the rest of us know if you're happy with it, and if you'd buy one now, or better to wait a few months to get a few more kinks out.  Any bugs/quirks/limitations I should be aware of?
This will be going on a BP-clone knee mill.
Thanks!

Regards,
Ray L.

95

General Mach Discussion / Mach3 Doesn't See Parallel Port Inputs

« on: August 10, 2008, 12:15:45 AM »

I now have three parallel ports in my PC.  All output signals work just fine, but Mach3 does not seem to "see" input signals on *any* of the cards!  I have enabled E-Stop on several different pins, and verified that a good signal is getting to the proper pin on the connector on the PC, but Mach3 does not acknowledge that the signal is present, regardless of whether it's configured active high or low, or which port or pin it is configured for.  The diagnostic screen also shows no activity on any inputs.
Is there some configuration step I've missed?  How can three separate parallel ports behave so strangely?

Regards,
Ray L.