Messages

761

General Mach Discussion / Re: Subroutine reps DRO?

« on: January 12, 2010, 12:21:03 AM »

hmmmm - don't think this is the reason for this though ray. I tried this with a sub that took several seconds per iteration and the dro registered nothing. Yet with a dwell of just 1 ms all worked fine.

Cheers

Ian

That suggests it has something to do with the threading, and inserting a Sleep 1 would probably also work just as well.  All you need is something that forces a context switch, however briefly, back to the Mach foreground task to get the DROs updated.

Regards,
Ray L.

762

General Mach Discussion / Re: Question about the iMach pendant

« on: January 11, 2010, 10:32:21 PM »

Do you have my macropump driver for it?

Regards,
Ray L.

763

General Mach Discussion / Re: Question about the iMach pendant

« on: January 11, 2010, 10:08:36 PM »

Thinking about getting one. I have the dspmc motion so I don't use the printer port. Will the imach work with the PC's printer port or do you have to buy the one they offer? The PC is a mini atx and the only pci port available has a video card already. Are these easy to set up and get working?
Thanks, RonO

The iMach can be made to work with any parallel port, the only functionality you'll lose is the E-stop, which you can wire up separately.  I'm running mine through a Modbus board, and just provided a separate connector for the E-stop.  I'm VERY happy with mine!  It's a great pendant for the money.

Regards,
Ray L.

764

General Mach Discussion / Re: Subroutine reps DRO?

« on: January 11, 2010, 02:57:30 PM »

Hi

try dro 222 (as you have done). Then try it in single block mode. It'll count DOWN from L? to zero. How to run it out of single block mode? - stick a G4 P1 in the loop somewhere. Why? - I haven't the faintest idea - but it seems to work.

Cheers

Ian

DROs only get updated about 10X/second.  So, if you want to make sure you have the latest value, you have to wait long enough to ensure the most recent update has occurrect before reading the DRO.  I'm hoping this will be fixed in v4....

Regards,
Ray L.

765

General Mach Discussion / Re: A Very, Very Cheap and Simple Tool Length Setter

« on: January 11, 2010, 11:56:24 AM »

I haven't found the tarnish to be a problem - it's very thin, and the tool tips have no trouble pushign through it.  Gold would certainly be better, but I don't think it's really necessary.

Regards,
Ray L.

766

General Mach Discussion / A Very, Very Cheap and Simple Tool Length Setter

« on: January 10, 2010, 08:13:14 PM »

Now that I have my knee setup to do tool length compensation, and macros for loading the tool table by probing, I wanted to have a proper means of measuring tool length.  I've always done this in the past using just a small piece of PCB material.  But, unless you probe very slowly, there's always a chance of chipping the tool, especially with carbide.  So, I wanted something with a little "give" to deal with any over-shoot when probing.  After thinking about it a bit, I realized I could make something incredibly cheap and easy.  I took a piece of scrap metal (part of an old Jaguar wire wheel hub), that was 2.5" OD, and about 2.25" ID, and about 3/4" long.  I faced the two ends parallel, and cut a small recess in one end.  I then cut a circular piece of PCB material that just fit into the recess, and glued it in place with some CA glue.  So, the 2.5" round piece of PCB material is supported only around the edges, leaving the center to flex a bit to absorb any overshoot with no risk of harm to the tools.  The CA is still setting up, but tomorrow I'll try it out, and take a picture or two.

Regards,
Ray L.

767

General Mach Discussion / Re: screen4 problem

« on: January 10, 2010, 01:10:10 PM »

Screen4 is *very* squirrelly, and has a bad habit of randomly mangling screenset files in a number of ways, many of which are unrecoverable.  I'd strongly suggest you instead use MachScreen, which is FAR more stable.  At a minimum, if you're going to use Screen4, get used to makeing *frequent* backups.

Regards,
Ray L.

768

General Mach Discussion / Re: Spindle no longer crashes Mach3, but doens't stay on...

« on: January 09, 2010, 10:30:33 PM »

There is nothing in the spindle logic that is capable of causing an E-Stop, which suggests you're still having electrical noise problems.   You should use shielded cable where possible, and make sure you have stiff pullups on any E-Stop or limit switch inputs, to increase noise immunity.

Regards,
Ray L.

769

General Mach Discussion / Re: probe problems, mach 3 is acting wierd

« on: January 07, 2010, 09:19:18 PM »

Yeah; if you had asked me "where are you grounding this"homemade" probe?" and i would have said "to the router", and you most likely would have replied, " Are you nuts! You can't make a break contact probe work like that".

Yeah, I always have to learn the hard way.  Your comment confirmed what i was thinking.  Thank you for the quick response too.

BTW as you no doubt have surmised by now i ain't the sharpest knife in the drawer.  If i were going to add a resistor to a now properly grounded probe, Where should i connect it??

Thanks again.

Put the pullup on the BOB, between the PROBE input pin and +5V.

Regards,
Ray L.

770

General Mach Discussion / Re: probe problems, mach 3 is acting wierd

« on: January 07, 2010, 06:06:10 PM »

Correction i got my highs and lows backwards, the original touch probe was set to active low, the new break contact is set to active high.

Sounds like noise.  You probably need a stiff pullup (100-200 ohms) on the probe input.

Regards,
Ray L.