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Messages - Steve Stallings

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371
Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach 4, ESS & G540 Input issues
« on: May 06, 2016, 07:49:21 PM »
The G540 inputs are not looking for a voltage presented on the input terminal.

It has an internal resistor pulled up to 12 VDC, and responds when something
shorts the input to ground on terminal number 12.


372
Mach4 General Discussion / Re: A axis operation in Mach4
« on: May 02, 2016, 10:00:23 PM »
Not trying to be picky, but have you tried it without A axis enabled for rollover? My
understanding was the the rollover function causes the requested destination to
"roll over" into the space mapped by 0 to 360 degrees. I have not actually tried
any of this myself. Unfortunately this option is not documented in the current
manuals.

373
Mach4 General Discussion / Re: A axis operation in Mach4
« on: May 02, 2016, 08:52:44 PM »
Look on the "General" page tab under Configure > Mach4 and you will see a section
in the bottom right quadrant labeled "Rotary Axes". There is a check box for each
rotary axis to enable or disable rollover.

374
I suspect that your video hardware does not support OpenGL and it is being emulated in software.

Hardware OpenGL version 1.5 or greater support is listed as a prerequisite for a machine running Mach4.

375
Mach4 General Discussion / Re: How many use Notepad++
« on: April 02, 2016, 04:41:52 PM »
NotePad++ is a bit nerdy, but really useful.

I use it for editing PHP code.

Having an implementation for Lua and the Mach4 API would be great!


376
Congratulations on the announcement of your upcoming new baby.

We all look forward to it entering the world and appreciate that it
has been a long and tedious journey.

Now wait, you do know that it is April 2nd, not April the first, right?

 ;D

377
Recent builds of Mach4 are supposed to be less sensitive to changes in OS or minor hardware
changes on your computer triggering the need for a new license.

The current policy regarding self-issued Mach4 license files for each license purchased is:

>Maximum of 5 active at one time. Old or unused licenses can be deactivated. Commercial
  users running machines to produce product for sale are expected to purchase a license
  for each machine used in production.

>Maximum of 7 license files issued in a single year.

>Lifetime limit of 12 new self-issued license files.

This policy is documented here:

http://www.machsupport.com/my-account/license-maintenance/license-maintenance-instructions/



378
Setting the tool length in Mach is not going to provide what is needed because
it can only compensate for the offset along the Z axis.

When a machine has 5 axes there is more involved such as tilting the spindle head
or a trunnion holding the workpiece. The length of the tool will also affect the
required motion in these axes.

It is traditional for the CAM software to compute the necessary moves along
the 4th and 5th axis to account for the tool length and also the machine
geometry.

In order for the machine controller to tackle the tool length offset in 5 axis
motion, the controller must support Kinematics, and that may not be all that
is required.

Doing endpoint transformations based on tool length may get close enough
in some situations but not all. This what Inertia was attempting with his G code
rewriting on the fly.

I would suggest that instead of trying to rewrite the G code, try recoding it
such that it uses subroutines for the critical moves and have the subroutine
include the end point transforms and utilize a passed parameter that represents
the tool length.

379
Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach4 Spindle setup
« on: March 17, 2016, 11:48:46 AM »
OK, the data that you collected confirms what I though was going on, i.e. the low
end of the range has an error where it outputs too much voltage and it gets worse
as you go lower.

Unfortunately your graph does not look like it shows this, BUT that is because the
horizontal axis of the graph is plotted with square law spacing NOT linear. If you
re-plot the graph with both axes linear the error will be very apparent.

Regards,
Steve Stallings
www.PMDX.com

380
Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach4 Spindle setup
« on: March 16, 2016, 06:18:29 PM »
Bob is going out on limb just a bit. If the meter is a True RMS reading meter
it should work well. If it is like most ordinary meters, it may not be accurate
when reading a PWM signal on the DC volts scales.

Also, the logic signal from the SmoothStepper may not be a full 5.0 volts
even with 100% PWM, so scale your readings accordingly.

Steve Stallings
www.PMDX.com

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