Messages

1081

General Mach Discussion / Re: Direction pulse

« on: January 14, 2012, 06:11:52 AM »

Hey simon67 - is the attached pic your drive? If so connect 5Vdc to PUL+, DIR+ and ENBL+, then connect PUL- to your step pin and set Mach to active low. Connect DIR- to your dir pin - doesn't matter whether Mach's set to active high or low for this - you can swap it later if your motors sping the "wrong" way. Connect ENBL+ to ground for now.

Make sure you have SW4 ON - (though these have been known to be wrong way round on the screen print)

Set SW1,2,3 to your desired motor current and 5,6,7,8 to your required microsteps - I'd suggest 1600 pulse/rev.

You should be good to go.

Ian

EDIT 14/1/12: If your BOB has optocouplers you'd be best to bypass them if you can as these drivers have optocouplers already.
EDIT 1/6/12: The last line of para1 should of course read: Connect ENBL- to ground for now. Thanks to those who took the time to point this out.

1082

VB and the development of wizards / Re: execute a function with "input 1"

« on: January 14, 2012, 05:32:48 AM »

does your system support G28.1?

1083

General Mach Discussion / Re: rounded off corners

« on: January 14, 2012, 05:06:00 AM »

Cheers Brett

Ian

1084

VB and the development of wizards / Re: execute a function with "input 1"

« on: January 13, 2012, 08:21:18 AM »

Tony, I think the issue here is that the OP's usb motion card doesn't support G31 which is sadly not a unique situation. Why hardware is released that doesn't fully function is a mystery to me but that's another topic I guess.

Anyway, I think the name of the game here is to try to "reproduce" G31's functionality via some other means - macro - gcode whatever. However, it's not something I think is really achievable. A lot depends on the accuracy of the "trip point" that the OP requires. You can get a "close-ish" approximation quite easilly with either a macro or gcode but it's not elegant and I very much doubt it's possible to get the "step perfect" trip point like a "proper" G31 does.

We've had many similar posts to this - I remember one quite recently involving Ajax cards inability to do G31 where the poster was trying to do exactly the same thing. He was advised to approach the hardware vendor and get it fixed - just like I've advised here.

Ian

1085

General Mach Discussion / Re: X-Y moving before Z finishing it's plunge

« on: January 12, 2012, 12:29:47 PM »

This is perfectly normal and is down to your Z accel. We're all used to X and Y blending under CV but sometimes forget that Z is also included in a CV blend.

This is why simpson36's fix works because it effectively breaks the Z out of the blend. In fact you don't need an actual delay at all. Anything that separates the Z move from the XY move in the interpreter will do but G4 P0 is as good as anything.

1086

VB and the development of wizards / Re: execute a function with "input 1"

« on: January 12, 2012, 12:14:10 PM »

You probably want to get onto your hardware supplier and ask them why they haven't implemented G31.

Unfortunately I don't think you can do what you want very elegantly. It's pretty easy to write a macro that will record your Z value when an input goes active but your problem is going to be in stopping Z during a programed move. The only way I can think of you doing this is to decrement Z by a small amount in a loop and break out of the loop when the input activates. It's not a good solution and that's why I think you should complain to your hardware vendor about their lack of G31 support.

1087

General Mach Discussion / Re: What's your fastest feed rate for your mill/parallel port.

« on: January 12, 2012, 11:38:46 AM »

As I think has been more or less said, your kernel frequency only needs to be fast enough for your machine. You can't make a machine that doesn't need a faster kernel go any faster by upping the kernel speed.

200ipm on 25khz is great. I have zero experience with steppers. Mine is a servo.

How does a 15m/min @ 2500mm/sec/sec grab you? (that's 590 ipm @ 98 in/s/s) and that's steppers on a 25KHz kernel. It'll actually do quite a lot more both in vel and accel but it gets a bit scary. It's a router but it'll snap cast iron G clamps if they get in its way.

Ian

1088

VB and the development of wizards / Re: execute a function with "input 1"

« on: January 12, 2012, 10:35:59 AM »

LOL - there's nothing like a little poke yes?

It's probably because your post isn't too clear about your problem. I think maybe you need to explain why your "CNC tool does not support G31"

1089

General Mach Discussion / Re: Getting Disillusioned with Mach3.

« on: January 12, 2012, 09:58:08 AM »

pm waiting for you

1090

General Mach Discussion / Re: Getting Disillusioned with Mach3.

« on: January 12, 2012, 09:29:26 AM »

Tweakie - I have to declare an interest and confess to having shouted loud ONCE. I've been working very hard recently to release a new DTHC for Mach but there are issues with "reverse run" that I dearly wanted fixing. I tried to get help here but in the end took advice and took it direct to Brian on Yahoo. I have to say he was very good and sent me a fixed version to test which proved to have solved the issue. In fact I just finished testing it today. How that eventually gets merged into a release I don't know. The bottom line is if you get in touch with Brian I'm sure he'll do his best to get YOU a working version to test. Like I say - how this gets blended into a stable release I don't know. I'm afraid the software development cycle of Mach is a bit of a mystery to me. In the meantime I understand the problem you're having - we discussed it many moons ago - I'd be happy to stick it on the yahoo group for you right now if you like - let me know.

Ian