Messages

461

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach4 lathe x zeroing on a part?

« on: March 23, 2020, 05:21:08 AM »

For what it's worth, I have fitted an X home switch to my Myford conversion.  This is a contact that is closed as the X feeds inwards close to the maximum infeed before the drive bottoms.  I activate a macro at each startup that homes the X axis and sets the machine coordinate to zero.

I also have a tool setter that detects contact between the tool tip and a reference diameter which can be mounted in the spindle taper.  All my tools are in Dickson type QC holders and the block is bolted down firmly to the cross-slide, with no topslide, so I can mount each tool repeatably.  So to set the tool offsets there's another macro that drives the tool slowly until it touches the setter reference diameter, takes the average of 3 readings of the X machine coordinate, derives the tool offset and stores it.  This using Mach 3 anyway.  The offset setting macro is based on stuff I found on here. 

462

General Mach Discussion / Re: Spindle control

« on: March 19, 2020, 03:26:55 PM »

What are you driving it from?  What do you mean by "it doesn't work"?  Mach assumes that the motor runs at a speed which can be set, for example by smoothing the PWM output to get a voltage for the motor drive.  It does not generate a stream of pulses at a variable frequency to drive a stepper.  IMHO a stepper is a very poor choice for a  spindle drive, why do you want to use one for that purpose?

463

General Mach Discussion / Re: Mach3 turn threading problem with Z feedrate

« on: February 17, 2020, 03:20:59 PM »

Why are you wanting to cut a pitch of 28mm?  Maybe that is well outside the design envelope of the wizard and it generates errors.  Has anyone ever tried to cut a 28mm pitch using Mach3?

What happens if you try a more normal thread pitch, like 1 or 2 mm?  That may help to sort out whether it's a configuration problem or a controller bug.  I can imagine that there could easily be a bug with such large pitches because it may never have been tested.  If there is a bug in M3 it ain't going to get fixed now!

464

General Mach Discussion / Re: G31 command stops since moving to Ethernet SmoothStepper

« on: January 23, 2020, 07:47:35 AM »

OK, but that wasn't really my point.  If mach3 isn't doing the pulsing it must rely on the interface to signal what the position is when the probe is triggered which surely locates the problem in the ESS?  As I understand it, with these separate motion controllers M3 sends G code commands to the interface which executes them: so the ESS gets told "do a G31" and it will have to tell M3 how far it has moved before the probe triggers.

465

General Mach Discussion / Re: G31 command stops since moving to Ethernet SmoothStepper

« on: January 23, 2020, 04:34:21 AM »

As I understand it, the probe input is "wired in" to the stepping engine in M3 via the parallel port, so that stepping stops instantaneously when the probe is triggered.  This is essential to make sure that the probe doesn't overrun and to get an accurate reading.  The functionality of the M3 stepper engine isn't used through the ESS, the ESS does it instead, so this is probably an ESS issue rather than Mach 3.

466

General Mach Discussion / Re: Shutingdown with Mach3 running makes XP hang

« on: January 22, 2020, 05:16:14 PM »

The problem is that Mach 3 elbows Windows out of the way when its running.  Fundamental to the architecture, just live with it.

467

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: touch probe function question

« on: July 06, 2019, 04:16:00 PM »

Actually I haven't a clue!  I use Mach 3, and there are a lot of M3 macros to do probing, including what you describe.  M3 macros are in a different language to M4 so they can't be used directly.  What you want is very standard so I'm sure someone has written a macro for it.  Or it would be a good way to learn Lua programming.

468

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: touch probe function question

« on: July 06, 2019, 03:52:15 PM »

Well it depends on what it's programmed to do!  It sounds like it's programmed to just stop when it touches the plate.  Assuming that the plate is on top of the workpiece and you want the top of the work to be zero, then you need (assuming that M4 behaves like M3) to clock in the Z DRO, type in 4.76 mm, and press return.  The Z DRO should display 4.76 because that's how far above the material you are.

469

General Mach Discussion / Re: Mach 3 rpm readout in mach turn pro not going back to zero with no movement???

« on: June 13, 2019, 09:57:16 AM »

I think it's probably safest to click off then on, but try it and see!

470

General Mach Discussion / Re: Mach 3 rpm readout in mach turn pro not going back to zero with no movement???

« on: June 13, 2019, 03:51:35 AM »

Are you turning it off through M3 or a separate switch?  If the latter, when you turn off M3 doesn't know, you have to click the spindle button on the M3 screen.