Messages

491

General Mach Discussion / Re: Relative motion of cutter to table

« on: November 02, 2011, 12:12:35 AM »

When standing in front of the machine, facing the machine, a positive X will move the tool to the right, or the table to the left.  A positive Y move will move the tool away from you, or the table towards you.  A positive Z move will move the tool up, or the table down.  The home position can be wherever you choose to put it - at any corner, or even in the middle of the travels.  It's completely arbitrary.

Regards,
Ray L.

492

General Mach Discussion / Re: Switch to Smooth Stepper

« on: October 29, 2011, 12:17:55 PM »

It should be a pretty painless transition.  The one place you *may* be in for some changes is spindle control.  Most everything else should just work pretty much as-is.  You should make a copy of your existing XML, so you can easily go back if you need to.

Regards,
Ray L.

493

General Mach Discussion / Re: Chinese Remote Controller

« on: October 28, 2011, 01:51:48 PM »

"this remote contrller off of ebay" doesn't give us anything to work with....

494

Forum suggestions and report forum problems. / Re: Resources Links page

« on: October 25, 2011, 09:29:17 AM »

What happened to the Links page under the resources tab?

Brian

Ummmm.... Nothing?  It's still there - second item on the list...

495

General Mach Discussion / Re: An other "Auto Tool Zero" question.

« on: October 21, 2011, 10:09:29 PM »

Try adding a pull-up resistor (300 ohms or so) to +5V to the probe input.

Regards,
Ray L.

496

General Mach Discussion / Re: Mach BUG in xx.50 skip line after sub is back.

« on: October 21, 2011, 06:22:33 PM »

And one other oddity I just found:  My pendant uses a macropump "driver".  I use the pendant to send CycleStart when running programs.  But, with v50, everywhere I need to do a CycleStart, I must do it TWICE with v50.  The first one seems to execute one line of G-code, then stop again.  The second one starts the program running normally.  Odd thing is, on-screen buttons work fine, it's only the CycleStart function on my pendant that no longer works.

Regards,
Ray L.

497

PoKeys / Re: How in the world do you get Mach3 to talk to this thing?

« on: October 21, 2011, 10:08:52 AM »

Scott,

For the USB PoKeys, is there any functional difference in the new plug-in?  IOW - Should I use the new plug-in, or just keep the one I have?

Regards,
Ray L.

498

PoKeys / Re: How in the world do you get Mach3 to talk to this thing?

« on: October 20, 2011, 05:29:13 PM »

Scott,

Doesn't the brain editor still have that ridiculous limitation that to modify any brain, you have to delete, and re-enter all subsequent ones?  I tried to use brains once, several years ago, and found the editor to be so buggy and limiting that I have up, after wasting hours and hours re-entering things.  A macropump would at least be simple.

What's the deal with the new plug-on on the ArtSoft site?  Is that one better than the one from the PoKeys site?  It seems to be about a year newer.  Can I just drop it into the plugins directory in place of the other?

Regards,
Ray L.

499

PoKeys / Re: How in the world do you get Mach3 to talk to this thing?

« on: October 19, 2011, 07:11:17 PM »

OK, I uninstalled everything, re-installed, and now it's behaving rationally.  Why?  In any case, there is (apparently) a newer plug-in on the Artsoft site.  Should I use that instead of the one from the PoKeys site?

I'm going to be hooking up about 40 switches to the PoKeys.  The only ways I can see to make them do most functions would be to map them to ULEDs, then have either a brain or macro-pump to monitor them all, and take the appropriate actions (and there's no way I'm using brains on that many inputs....).  Is there a better way?  In most cases, I will need each button press to either do an OEMButton command, or execute an M-macro.

Regards,
Ray L.

500

PoKeys / How in the world do you get Mach3 to talk to this thing?

« on: October 19, 2011, 06:10:11 PM »

I have a PoKeys 55U.  I've installed the config software, configured pins 1-10 as inputs, and they work correctly, using the digital I/O monitor in the config utility.  So, the hardware is properly configured, and working fine.  I then installed the Mach3 plug-in, which does install the plug-in, so it shows up in Mach3.  I get the PoKeys I/O monitor and configuration options under Plug-in Control.  But Mach3 seems blissfully unaware of any PoKeys I/O.  The I/O monitor shows, seemingly randomly, either a random assortment of pins active, or ALL pins active, and does not change when the inputs are changed.  I've tried configuring a single input as an OEM trigger input, and as a Jog input, and Mach3 does not respond at all to either.  I've tried setting all 55 pins a ULED inputs, and still get no response on the I/O monitor, nor from Mach3.  What is the trick???  The documentation is about as clear as mud, and I'm about to toss the thing....

Regards,
Ray L.