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SmoothStepper USB / Re: How much of Mach3 function do you lose?
« on: March 01, 2009, 11:31:23 PM »
Thanks for the info and replys guy's. I now have my system mounted up doing bench test. Doing research it does look like you don't lose any of the wizards or other functions I was worried about. There seems ot be little documentation on just want you can & cant do but the spendle control and the backlash comp seems to of been the main problems. I havnt tried to get my spendle setup working yet, but I will soon. I am running a Bob Campbell Combo board with the SmoothStepper. The Bob Campbell board has Spindle control with relays so I am not sure what it going to take to get all this working. I may have to use the SS for Spindle control and it would be best if I can. Although the on board relays the BC board has would be nice to use if possible. I will figure all this out later but for now I have other problems.
For now my system started out with the bench testing working perfectly without a hitch. I was kinda pleased with this because this is my first build. I researched all my parts (BOB,SS,Drivers,ect,ect...) a lot and when I put power to the system on the bench it came to life without me having to change anything. Even all my servos started out with lock and being able to jog. I have had it to the piont it ran the Road Running G-code 10 times in a row without missing a step. It was a bit course in its movement ( mainly on very slow moves and direction changes). I have sense changed some settings to give my motors more reselution which did slow down my max IPM (was getting 286ipm, now its 166ipm).
This really smoothed out the way the motors run a lot and I thought it was good enough to move on towards mounting all the hardware to the machine but it started having problems. There is a lot I dont understand yet about Mach3's setting so I am going to go back and start putting some time into reading Mach's manual. What happened is the system started gaining steps (I think) after I changed the motor axis frequency down to 256 (in SS). This might have caused the step problem (Buffer over run in SS maybe) but I havnt gone back to try and fix it. When I gave the motors more res I did it in Mach in the motor tuning section and I changed the steps per inch to 40,000 instead of the 25,000 I had. This would need a 4 to 1 belt gearing to work now but it seems to be more stable at these setting even though I lose some 100ipm on my rapid speed. I was planning to run 2.5 to 1 gearing before but I would rather have a stable system than high speed rapids. For now I am goign to try and change the SS setting to 500 and see if the step problem goes away. If it doesnt I am goign to go ahead and mount all the hardware on the machine anyway because it cant really be tuned right until it is. But I believe this step problem is the Buffer over run in SS and after changing the frequency in SS back to 500 it might be fine. If no tI might be getting noise in my incoders or somehting but it didnt do it at the other settings.
Jess
For now my system started out with the bench testing working perfectly without a hitch. I was kinda pleased with this because this is my first build. I researched all my parts (BOB,SS,Drivers,ect,ect...) a lot and when I put power to the system on the bench it came to life without me having to change anything. Even all my servos started out with lock and being able to jog. I have had it to the piont it ran the Road Running G-code 10 times in a row without missing a step. It was a bit course in its movement ( mainly on very slow moves and direction changes). I have sense changed some settings to give my motors more reselution which did slow down my max IPM (was getting 286ipm, now its 166ipm).
This really smoothed out the way the motors run a lot and I thought it was good enough to move on towards mounting all the hardware to the machine but it started having problems. There is a lot I dont understand yet about Mach3's setting so I am going to go back and start putting some time into reading Mach's manual. What happened is the system started gaining steps (I think) after I changed the motor axis frequency down to 256 (in SS). This might have caused the step problem (Buffer over run in SS maybe) but I havnt gone back to try and fix it. When I gave the motors more res I did it in Mach in the motor tuning section and I changed the steps per inch to 40,000 instead of the 25,000 I had. This would need a 4 to 1 belt gearing to work now but it seems to be more stable at these setting even though I lose some 100ipm on my rapid speed. I was planning to run 2.5 to 1 gearing before but I would rather have a stable system than high speed rapids. For now I am goign to try and change the SS setting to 500 and see if the step problem goes away. If it doesnt I am goign to go ahead and mount all the hardware on the machine anyway because it cant really be tuned right until it is. But I believe this step problem is the Buffer over run in SS and after changing the frequency in SS back to 500 it might be fine. If no tI might be getting noise in my incoders or somehting but it didnt do it at the other settings.
Jess