Messages

41

Mach SDK plugin questions and answers. / Re: Mach3 Plugin Tutorial Document and Prototype File Set

« on: September 20, 2011, 03:53:14 AM »

I use VC2010 Express with no problem with my motion plugin. But rather with .NET then MFC. Just installed DDK to get ATL support ( needed when callling some Mach functions).

Jarek

42

Mach SDK plugin questions and answers. / Re: Mach3 Plugin Licensing System

« on: September 12, 2011, 04:38:01 AM »

I am also interested - could you send me PM with your mail as well ?

43

Mach SDK plugin questions and answers. / Re: Developer a USB plugin without an harware.

« on: September 10, 2011, 04:01:53 PM »

Well, you will not find much about USB as such here - we are basically interested yoin using it as data pipe.
For source code - see examples in the Mach SDK

44

Mach SDK plugin questions and answers. / Re: How to tell if the movement is occuring

« on: September 10, 2011, 09:40:25 AM »

Well, maybe it works only in case of motion plugins, not with embedded LPT support :-(

45

Mach SDK plugin questions and answers. / Re: How to tell if the movement is occuring

« on: September 07, 2011, 04:07:16 PM »

You can try to use this one: MainPlanner->ExternalStill

It is better ( compared to trajectroy variables) because in case of e.g. external motion plugin it should accomodate also jogging and homing ( which is not a part of trajectory planning)

46

Mach SDK plugin questions and answers. / Re: Giffin Powermate resurection.

« on: August 16, 2011, 02:51:41 AM »

Well I use 2010 Express and no problems at all. Even after adding ATL support from DDK.

47

Mach SDK plugin questions and answers. / Re: Motion plugin for virtual hardware(for tests) - lets share our knowledge

« on: June 29, 2011, 03:38:02 AM »

I can show you something:



I am actually building hardware for my virtual plugin.
I intend to make it as DIY project - as I have choosen mostly through hole components  and easy to assembly SMD components. It also uses FTDI, either as SMD or DigiKey module - so everybody will be able to prepare it himself ( PCB is single layer board, you will be able even to make it on universla board).

Right now it works as standalone device ( not yet from Mach, only from my test app - Mach will be next). I plan publish Eagle design and to sell plugin licenses for the software.


With XMega you should be able to make something similiar ( although it is slightly less powerfull then the dsPIC - I have choosen one of most powerfull CPUs found in DIP package). The critical parameters are the CPU speed  and RAM size. 16kB is minimum I would say.

In mach SDK you have examples of sending USB data. Just that you need target device which processes it properly.

Timers are not that easy to be used as pulse engine - you would need at least four independent 32 bit timers with configurable pin control, otherwise you may have resolution problems to operate with e.g. 100kHz pulse frequency. Most designs (like SmoothStepper)  use specialized cascaded high frequency timers in FPGA

48

Mach SDK plugin questions and answers. / Re: Motion plugin for virtual hardware(for tests) - lets share our knowledge

« on: March 28, 2011, 02:31:49 PM »

Actually all I need is something to make my USB become a parallel port,

So basically you want to do something like my proto - USB to LPT converter for Mach.
But life is not that simple  - USB has it bottlenecks, so you need to buffer data ahead. Mach can give you the trajectory ahead, so no problem.
But it does not give you directly anything like DB25 output pins state - you are getting either point coordinates ( the hard way, you need motion processing) or amount of LPT pin "ticks" within your time slice ( you can configure it - I use 4ms). So basically you have to send to your device packages containing "tick" counters for each slices. 4ms x 4 axes gives you at least  4000 variables of raw data  per second. And this is the challenge - as you need to continuously buffer data and generate step/dir signals. Not mentioning poor Mach documentation about how to get the data and interact with Mach internals...

49

Mach SDK plugin questions and answers. / Re: Motion plugin for virtual hardware(for tests) - lets share our knowledge

« on: March 28, 2011, 01:53:03 PM »

Something you may find interesting.

http://www.machsupport.com/forum/index.php/topic,17992.0.html

Tweakie.

This looks strange. Even if it uses HID USB classes it still needs Mach plugin.  Will be interesting to see review. I have seen it being sold as option with some Chinese CNC machines.

50

Mach SDK plugin questions and answers. / Re: Motion plugin for virtual hardware(for tests) - lets share our knowledge

« on: March 28, 2011, 01:41:21 PM »

really interesting, actually thats EXACTLY what I'm trying to do, but instead of atmel MCU I'll be using a Microchip PICmcu and instead of an Altera FPGA I'll be using 3 pics mcu specialized on driving step-motors (to decrease the learning/development time).

I did something like that. Using LPC2378 and 4x LPC2104 as step motors accelerators.
I would say that this is not the right way to go.  The communications channels between processors are the bottlenecks. It is not efficient to split work like that. Most efficient way is floating point CPU and FPGA as FIFO step/dir generator.

I am not sure which PIC you have choosen, but unless it is PIC32 you will have problems with computing power - I do know what I am saying as I have my own motion planner ( for different commercial software - not Mach).
I can show you prototype of my small toy - see attachement. Largest available through hole dsPIC. If I get it running nicely - I will sell just DIY schematics + plugin license , so everybody could make it himself ( no SMD technology, single layer board which can be etched).
Preliminary tests show that it can go up to 100..150kHz with 2 seconds buffer and 4ms time slices using LPT style data generated by Mach ( kind of "LPT player" mode).