Messages

1251

General Mach Discussion / Re: Scan 3D in mach3

« on: July 21, 2011, 03:16:53 AM »

I would say that Stirlings Crawler method for probing would stand a chance or could be modified to do the job.

For 275 euros a shot I'd modify it to make the tea as well. Actually on second thoughts - make that GBPounds - euros arn't looking such a good bet...

Ian

1252

Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) / Re: How to- USB powered LCD display of DRO`s

« on: July 19, 2011, 12:06:00 PM »

Nice find Terry - had a quick play and it seems to work just fine as (not) advertised. It would be interesting to see if it is lean enough to get around Dave's problem. That said I'm still having a side bet on it being the pre-threaded CB version that's the main prob with 3.039.

Ian

1253

General Mach Discussion / Re: Any MACH3 guru in the Barrie, Ontario area?

« on: July 18, 2011, 03:04:13 PM »

Fcuk - how do you do that? - how do you always get there while I'm still typing? 
 

1254

Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) / Re: How to- USB powered LCD display of DRO`s

« on: July 18, 2011, 01:01:48 PM »

OK i see you are on one of those in between versions(;-) I know it worked on the earlier versions and the lockdown and the lastest developement version. I never tried the V.039.

Can we just confirm - are we talking 3.042.039 (April 8 2010) OR are we talking 3.039 (March 22 2008)?

If it's the latter then the change log might give us some clues. 3.039 was released on March 22 2008 but a few months later ...

Nov 12/2008
Release 3.042.018 This is the first release of the 3.042.********* series
-- Many small bug fxes
-- Pause LED fixed
-- VB was changed to be Multi threading
-- Threading fixed for lathe
-- Tangential lookahead for preping the head for the next cut improved

IAN Have you evr played with the EVENT driven serial funtion??

In other languages - yes a lot - can you point out which particular implementation you mean Terry please?

I think it may allow one to hold the serial port open ?? Not much info on the subject.

You may be right Terry but I'd be surprised if you can do what you suggest because one way or another you have to pass some sort of handle to the open port and have that handle remain alive over invocations and that's something you just can't do with Mach's CB (AFAIK). Hence us using the kludge of passing real numbers via gcode vars, - but sadly handles are not reals etc. etc.

Ian

1255

Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) / Re: How to- USB powered LCD display of DRO`s

« on: July 17, 2011, 04:42:50 AM »

Thanks for the link Terry. Don't think it's going to help us in this particular case though.

Ian

1256

General Mach Discussion / Re: Cuts not in right position on material....

« on: July 16, 2011, 06:40:03 AM »

That deals with X and Y but note that according to your code the top of material (TOM) is at 9.5 and you're cutting with +ve values in Z. Therefore you need to set TOM to 9.5. Normally you'd set TOM to zero and cut negetive.

Ian

1257

VB and the development of wizards / Re: Sus WhileDO()

« on: July 14, 2011, 11:34:09 AM »

OK that is a common hold state(;-)

a what?

will it allow one to do other things such as JOG while it is active?

That it will sir...

Trying to only use 1 button(;-). There are ONLY so many buttons on the hand pendant and 20 buttons on a useable pendant does not work(;-) Might as well have the keyboard in my hand. LOLOLOL

It only uses one button...

You just can't please all of the people all of the time...

1258

VB and the development of wizards / Re: Sus WhileDO()

« on: July 14, 2011, 07:48:53 AM »

I won't ask why....

how about...

setVar(1000,0)
while getVar(1000)=0
  sleep (100)
wend

and then in a button

setVar(1000,1)

Ian

1259

Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) / Re: How to- USB powered LCD display of DRO`s

« on: July 14, 2011, 07:44:47 AM »

IAN, What about IF we try to send the data stream out throught the Serial port using the serial modbus ?

I know Mach does not have a problem with that.

You'd need a modbus slave in there between Mach's "master" and the LCD hardware. I suppose we could write a "thin" modbus slave to run on the Mach machine and connect Mach to it via a virtual null modem and then connect the slaves output to the real serial port. Seems a bit overkill though.

Also Henrik has developed a proper serial port useage with mach through an outside DLL. It allows you OPEN the port and then send recieve, then close the port when done.

This sounds more like it - where is it?

I don't have the LCD display here so I can't help develope any solutions in real time. (;-(

If you have a spare PC and a null modem cable then you could send your data to hyperterm. Or again you could use hyperterm with a virtual null modem. A good (free) one that I use is http://com0com.sourceforge.net/

Ian

1260

General Mach Discussion / Re: Mach Screen Question.

« on: July 13, 2011, 11:25:53 AM »

When running it seems to go off whilst it's in a macro.

Ian