Messages

1391

General Mach Discussion / Re: ShuttlePro No Worky...

« on: January 16, 2009, 05:33:26 PM »

Budman,

    I installed the ShuttlePro software to make sure it was working properly, which it was.  I then uninstalled it, and loaded the Mach3 plug-in.  My plug-in config looks just like yours, in terms of the enabled devices.  I also tried removing the SmoothStepper plug-in, and going back to PP, which made no difference.
    Very odd....

Regards,
Ray L.

1392

General Mach Discussion / ShuttlePro No Worky...

« on: January 16, 2009, 04:54:04 PM »

I just installed the ShuttlePro plug in, and a brand-new ShuttlePro.  When Mach starts up, the status line indicates the plug-in was loaded, but it does not show up in the plug-in config menu. It is sorta, kinda working - the jog and shuttle wheels both work, but none of the buttons do anything. Pressing any button just gets a "beep" from the PC.

Any ideas what I can do to sort this out?

Regards,
Ray L.

1393

General Mach Discussion / Re: Mach3 And SmoothStepper Getting Out Of Sync On Jogging....

« on: January 15, 2009, 09:58:02 PM »

Hood,

Apparently Greg has just identified the root cause of my problem, and will have a fix shortly.

Regards,
Ray L.

1394

General Mach Discussion / Re: Mach3 And SmoothStepper Getting Out Of Sync On Jogging....

« on: January 15, 2009, 08:44:04 PM »

Hood,
Well, I'm not the only one seeing this.  One of the guys on the Yahoo group is working with Greg and Brian to sort it out.  It's really wierd.  Today I had it sitting at x0, y0.  I  jogged to x3, then MDI's "g0 x0 y0", which did NOTHING.  The x DRO still said 3.0000.  I did it a second time, and still nothing.  I jogged, to make sure the axis was still alive, then MDI'd "g0 x0" and it went to x0.

Regards,
Ray L.

1395

General Mach Discussion / Mach3 And SmoothStepper Getting Out Of Sync On Jogging....

« on: January 15, 2009, 03:52:35 PM »

I'm using the lockdown version of Mach3, and the v015me SS plug-in.  When I do a (manual) tool change, I often have to jog to position the tool over the work so I can set the Z position.  Occasionally, after doing this, Mach and the SS seem to be out of sync, as the DROs will show the correct position, but if I start the program, the machine moves to the wrong position.  For example, suppose it is at X=0 when the tool change occurs, and I jog to X=2, set the Z height, then hit Run.  If the next move is to X=4, it will instead move to X=6, though the DRO will indicate X=4.  Oddly, if I then do a G0 X0, it does correctly go to Z=0 and it's fine after that.  I have experienced this problem intermittently for months.

Is this fixed in the current SS plugin?

Regards,
Ray L.

1396

General Mach Discussion / Re: Limit switch location on axis?

« on: January 14, 2009, 06:49:44 PM »

Cheers for the input guys, much appreciated!  I'm going to redesign my breakout board to feed a disable signal (5v) into the stepper drives on either an E stop or a Limit switch event, and this should stop the drives/motors in the quickest fashion.  I just need to do some more testing to determine the best position for the switches to ensure I don't get any crashes.  Hopefully it won't eat into my available travel though (Only got 9"x9"x4"!).

I've just spent a couple of hours wondering why my sums for the "Steps per" in Mach 3 were miles out, only to find I had got a dip switchin the wrong position, resulting in 64 Microsteps, instead of only 10!  Doh!

I like the sound of these Soft limits too.  I hope they work with the Smoothstepper driver I am using

Cheers
Andy

64 microsteps?  What kind of stepper drivers are you using?  64 is kinda ridiculous.  Anything over 10 is kinda pointless....

Regards,
Ray L.

1397

General Mach Discussion / Re: Limit switch location on axis?

« on: January 13, 2009, 11:44:20 AM »

Mach has a feature called "soft limits" which slows and then stops the travel (based on your settings) before the limit is reached. That should serve to protect your machine, provided it is turned on of course.

A really nice aspect of this feature is that Mach will warn you if you are about to run a program that will exceed the limits . . . handy for a newbee like myself!

This raises an interesting question. If I have this right, Mach uses only one value for both accel and decel. If soft limits are turned off and the limit switch is tripped, does Mach still honor that value, or does it do an 'emergency' maximum decel?



As to cutting the power to the motors independent of Mach, wouldn't you then loose the ability to brake the motors? Certainly I would at least put a braking resistor on any normal PM DC motor, and cut that in when the power was disconnected by a relay. I don't know if steppers can be dynamically slowed. Anyone?

Yes, for DC servos a braking resistor would be a good idea as well.  For steppers, the best thing to do is just interrupt the step signal, and leave the motor powered, which should stop it pretty much as quickly as possible.

Regards,
Ray L.

1398

General Mach Discussion / Re: Speed controller won't hold steady speed - where is the problem?

« on: January 12, 2009, 05:39:06 PM »

Ray,

I lost more than time. I also lost two $200 Minarik MM drives that immediately fried as soon as the C6 was connected and everything powered on. This is how I learned what an 'isolated' signal was. The CNC4PC document noted by sparkness is, and continues to be completely inadequate at explaining the issue. I informed both CNC4PC and the Minarik sales rep of my rather dramatic results the first time thru and neither mentioned the 'isolation' requirement. I got a new controller from CNC4PC and the Minarik sales rep sold me the identical drive again. Not surprisingly, I had the exact result the second time around. When I finally spoke to a support engineer at Minarik, his FIRST question was 'are you using an isolated control voltage'. I now have Minarik drives with control voltage isolation built into the drives.

Homann, on the other hand has big red warnings all over the place about mains potential voltages present in many drive's control circuits, and how NOT to hook things up. Had I gone with Homann to begin with, I probably would not have fried the drives . . which took out other components as well.  It remains the most expensive part of my learning curve thus far.

I did buy a Digispeed DC06 a couple months ago to replace the C6. I finally tried last weekend to hook it up. It worked for only a few minutes and then got locked on full speed. I may have done something wrong to kill it, but at this point I don't know. It is going back for repair. It did seem to have a steady output voltage while it was working, but while I was trying to configure MACH for it, the DC06 stopped responding so I never got to see if the motor would run steady. The output did seem steady while the thing was working briefly.

Peter responded immediately when I emailed him that the DC06 was kaput. I'll get it fixed and give the Digispeed another go before looking at the much more expensive PMDX product. I'm not going to mess with the C6 any further.

OUCH!!

1399

General Mach Discussion / Re: Speed controller won't hold steady speed - where is the problem?

« on: January 12, 2009, 01:44:42 PM »

After a lengthy struggle with a C-11 with no resolution, I went with a PMDX-106 which worked flawlessly from the get-go.
Great support too.....so they say. Didn't NEED any.
RC

RC,

I'm in the same boat.  I've had three C11s now, all different revs, and every one has had serious problems I've had to work around by modifying the circuitry.  I'm currently running on one that I had to re-bias the optos to get them to work above a 40kHz step rate with SmoothStepper (At 96K steps/inch, 40kHz doesn't buy you much....).  The speed control has been an on-going problem I just haven't had time to deal with.  Were I to design my own (and I've seriously considered it....) I'd do the speed control in exactly the way Peter Homann did on his DigiSpeed, using a microcontroller, and eliminating the analog circuitry altogether.  I've lost more than a few whole days of work to all the problems.

A friend of mine has a PMDX board, and his has also been flawless.

Regards,
Ray L.

1400

General Mach Discussion / Re: Speed controller won't hold steady speed - where is the problem?

« on: January 12, 2009, 12:06:39 PM »

You might want to try the DigiSpeed from Homann Designs.  That's what I plan to do someday when I rebuild my electronics enclosure.

http://homanndesigns.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=39&zenid=7eacd8d7ccf63c46c89881b4949c2234

Peter Homann is a regular here, so if you do have any problems, you'll have no trouble getting it resolved.

Regards,
Ray L.