Messages

281

General Mach Discussion / Re: what breakout board?

« on: January 09, 2012, 07:38:03 AM »

Greg is currently working on THC I believe
Hood

Do you know why the SS won't support THC functions?  The THC functions usually come through on a second parallel port, which it seems the SS supports.  From there it should be just a matter of mapping inputs and outputs to available pins on the SS. 

282

General Mach Discussion / Re: what breakout board?

« on: January 08, 2012, 10:38:51 AM »

Does the ethernet smooth stepper support the Mach3 THC functions?

283

General Mach Discussion / Re: Using Oscilloscope with Mach3

« on: January 02, 2012, 09:54:05 AM »

I agree that using a scope for looking for missed steps is probably not the best way to go, but a scope can be invaluable for troubleshooting and building circuits.  Look at it like a 2 axis display.  The vertical axis shows voltage and horizontal axis shows time.  Connect your probe ground to the DB25 ground and the probe tip to the pin yo want to measure.  When Mach is sending pulses, you can very accurately see the pin voltage and timing.  You can set the scale to zoom in and out.  If you have a multi-channel scope, you can connect to the direction and step pins and see the relationship and timing between the two. 

When looking for a scope, don't go cheap.  The better the scope the easier it will be to use.  Get at least 20MHZ and make sure it is a digital storage scope.   Most of the decent scopes will trigger on a falling or rising edge.  This is important for capturing serial input.  Without the ability to edge trigger, you would never be able to see or capture the serial data coming in.  The better scopes will also automatically detect probe attenuation (1X, 10X, etc.).

You can buy a good scope these days for around $500.  It is an instrument that comes with a learning curve, but don't let that discourage you.

284

General Mach Discussion / Re: Newbie cant tune motors - Gecko540 & Mach3

« on: December 28, 2011, 08:41:18 PM »

A couple of things come to mind.  If you're looking for a decent feedrate, at 16000 steps per, you'll have to spin those motors real fast.  (1) 48V is probably not enough to do that unless the motor inductance is very low.  Still may not be enough. (2) Once you start running at high RPM, motor torque falls off quickly.  You can address that by throwing more voltage at it, but your motors still sound a bit small.  Your motors are pretty small to begin with and they are turning a large screw direct. 

285

General Mach Discussion / Re: Newbie cant tune motors - Gecko540 & Mach3

« on: December 28, 2011, 01:00:35 PM »

That's usually caused by the step signal being inverted.  If your drives are set up for 5V commons, "Step Low Active" on the ports and pins page should be checked.  If it's set up for ground commons, "Step Low Active" should be un-checked.  If that signal is inverted, you'll get a lot of strange behavior.  You might get some movement but it will be erratic with a growling sound.

286

VB and the development of wizards / Re: Cypress Enable dialog error - Only on XP

« on: December 23, 2011, 09:05:19 AM »

I see your point...

287

VB and the development of wizards / Re: Cypress Enable dialog error - Only on XP

« on: December 22, 2011, 06:11:32 PM »

That did the trick.  Thanks for the tip.   Weird how this error only happens in XP.  It's usually the other way around.  XP is usually more stable.

288

VB and the development of wizards / Cypress Enable dialog error - Only on XP

« on: December 21, 2011, 09:26:02 PM »

This is an odd problem.  In the code below, I get the error message "Error line 64 - Internal Error - <Dialog>".  Line 64 is.....

button = Dialog( Dlg1 )

See code segment below.  I developed a really cool screenset using a number of these dialog functions.  I developed it on my laptop running Win7 and it all works perfectly.  When I run the same code on XP, I get the above error.

Has anyone seen this before?  Is there something from microsoft that I need to install to make the Dialog function work in XP?

Thanks.

Begin Dialog UserDialog1 20,40,240,110,"Enter Circle Parameters", .enable
  OKButton 190,20,40,14
  CancelButton 190,40,40,14
  text 10,10,40,10, "Width"
  text 10,25,40,10, "Height"
  text 10,40,40,10, "Kerf Width"
  text 10,55,40,10, "Feed Rate"
  text 10,70,40,10, "Num Points"
  text 10,85,40,10, "Inner Offset"
  textBox 50,10,30,10, x1,.width
  textBox 50,25,30,10, x2,.height
  textBox 50,40,30,10, x3,.kerf
  textBox 50,55,30,10, x4,.feed
  textBox 50,70,30,10, x5,.points
  textBox 50,85,30,10, x6,.offset
  GroupBox 95,10,80,45, "Kerf Compensation", .groupBox1
  OptionGroup .grp1
    OptionButton 105,20,54,10,"None"
    OptionButton 105,30,54,10,"Inside"
    OptionButton 105,40,54,10,"Outside"
End Dialog

Dim Dlg1 As UserDialog1

Dlg1.width = settings(2)
Dlg1.height = settings(3)
Dlg1.kerf = settings(0)
Dlg1.feed = settings(1)
Dlg1.grp1 = settings(12)
Dlg1.points = settings(13)
Dlg1.offset = settings(14)

button = Dialog( Dlg1 )

opt1 = Dlg1.grp1
nWidth = Dlg1.width
nHeight = Dlg1.height
kerf = Dlg1.kerf
feedRt = dlg1.feed
numSides = Dlg1.points
offset = Dlg1.offset

If button = -1 Then

289

General Mach Discussion / Re: Missing steps! Upgraded my screw drive to R&P

« on: December 17, 2011, 09:16:28 PM »

How is the pinion engaged?  Spring or air?  On a heavy gantry with rapid changes of direction, a spring engaged pinion can bounce a little, which looks like lost steps.

290

VB and the development of wizards / Re: Home on Mach3 Startup

« on: December 16, 2011, 10:51:18 PM »

Put some homing code and some code to turn on soft limits in a macro (Mxx), then in the init string on the general config page, insert that M code.  One the first reset of the current session, the macro will execute.