Topics

21

Forum suggestions and report forum problems. / MOVED: i have problem with motor calibration

« on: April 20, 2011, 06:30:02 AM »

This topic has been moved to General Mach Discussion.

http://www.machsupport.com/forum/index.php?topic=18213.0

22

PoKeys / PoPendant 1

« on: February 24, 2011, 08:01:42 AM »

I'm considering one of these fellas http://www.poscope.com/product.php?pid=21.

Would I be better using it with a PoKeys55T or a second parallel port - can anyone give me a brief run down on the state of play with these and Mach3? i.e. are things stable/reliable (plugins etc.) or are there "issues". Any advice most welcome.

Thanks

Ian

23

General Mach Discussion / any recommendations for pendant / mpg?

« on: February 15, 2011, 11:18:44 AM »

plasma and ugly blokes who aren't paying for it - so harsh environment. i.e. shuttlepro looks cute enough but can't see it lasting to teatime - maybe I'm wrong.

Home, jog, start, stop should do it.

Ta

Ian

24

General Mach Discussion / Mach & windows7

« on: October 24, 2010, 06:28:30 AM »

Don't know if I've missed it somewhere but what's the state of play re: windows 7 and Mach?

Ian

25

VB and the development of wizards / modbus

« on: October 21, 2010, 05:02:58 AM »

Anyone know how to send a byte or a word or indeed anything from Mach VB to a modbus slave (direct access - not autopolling preferably)? I can happily read/write data from/to my slave's holding registers using the Mach modbus test interface - but how to do with VB?

The wiki teases us with this:

Direct access to Modbus registers

There are occasions when a VB Script writer needs direct access to Modbus device registers. This is provided by an interface which allows reading and writing of a block of one or more registers into Mach3 buffers (distinct from the autopoller buffers) and routines for accessing data in the buffers.

But sadly no mention that I can find of WHERE these elusive VB calls are documented.
Any seasoned modbus gurus out there?

Cheers

Ian

26

General Mach Discussion / plasma torch volts control

« on: October 17, 2010, 02:09:48 PM »

under ports n pins/spindle setup down at the bottom right there's a checkbox for "torch volts control"

looks intriguing - anyone know how it's used?

Ian

27

General Mach Discussion / plasma anti dive

« on: October 09, 2010, 06:47:59 AM »

anyone got this to work? According to the manual if actual feedrate drops below whatever anti-dive is set to then torch up/down input signals should be ignored by Mach but this doesn't seem to happen.

28

General Mach Discussion / switching

« on: September 08, 2010, 06:12:33 AM »

I need to switch 18V 10mA via TTL (turn on/off a plasma torch via the parallel port).

A relay seems a bit overkill for this - doesn't it? and I read somewhere (I think) that such low current is not best switched by a SSR - true? or have I made that up?

Thoughts on cheapest/bestest/nicest/properest way to do this?

Cheers

Ian

29

Tangent Corner / cnczone

« on: September 07, 2010, 06:20:54 AM »

anyone got an inside track to any cnczone admins? I've been having problems for a while with the site being sloooooooooooow - taking anywhere from 30 secs to several minutes to bring up each page. Quite often it just times out altogether. It's getting pretty unusable. One particular problem is when it's trying to access ads.cnczone.com whatever that is - that can take forever.

I put a message on Forum Questions and Problems but didn't get any response from admin. I now see my thread has disappeared though I can still get to it from an old email notification of a reply. Seems to me they have a few issues.

Anyone else having similar probs.

30

General Mach Discussion / Smoothstepper and probing, home and THC

« on: September 01, 2010, 12:25:38 PM »

There's been a few threads re: THCs not working with smoothstepper and I think I understand why. But what about probing? doesn't that suffer from exactly the same issues as THC through the smoothstepper? i.e. lack of synchronization between smoothstepper and Mach because of USB. In fact come to that - what about homing? Limits I can understand (kinda) because as long as the thing stops within a few steps of where it should have - who's to know - but probing, THC and homing have to be step perfect.

Just interested if anyone is in the know.

Cheers

Ian