Messages

761

General Mach Discussion / Inserting comment in G-code

« on: February 11, 2012, 03:48:34 PM »

Well I tried writing my own G code to mill the moving jaw of a little machine vice that I'm bringing up to scratch for the Novamill.  I was being a good little programmer and commenting my code as I went but when I came to run it in Mach it stopped and gave an error message in the first line which started with a comment.

Now here is the question.  One can insert a comment at the end of a line like this: //<comment text>
which is a natural format to use.  But at the start of a line a / character is a block delete.

So, is it permissible to have a line which is just a comment that starts //...   or should one use an alternate form like ("this comment is the title of this program"), please?

Anyway, once I deleted all the comments the program worked fine but it would be a pain to have to maintain two versions one of which was commented and the other not.

John.

762

General Mach Discussion / Re: Problem homing X axis

« on: February 11, 2012, 03:39:54 PM »

Sorry Hood, only just seen your reply.  The answer is I don't know as I haven't dismantled the box where the wiring to the X drive motor is terminated - the X home switch is mounted on a bracket next to the motor on this machine.  All the commons on the home switches are brought back to my control box which is the only place that I have earthed them.  I must say that I've stuck with the debounce solution to this problem as everything seems to be working and I'm concentrating on learning to mill now.

Thanks, John.

763

General Mach Discussion / Re: Lathe and Mill on one computer

« on: January 29, 2012, 03:32:13 PM »

Excellent, thanks once again for your help!

John.

764

General Mach Discussion / Re: Lathe and Mill on one computer

« on: January 29, 2012, 03:25:21 PM »

Thanks Hood.  Practically, if the licence file is placed in the Mach3 folder will both Turn and Mill pick it up please?

765

General Mach Discussion / Lathe and Mill on one computer

« on: January 29, 2012, 01:07:59 PM »

Hi, I have a licensed copy of Mach3 which I set up a while ago to run my lathe.  Now I'm bringing up a mill using the same computer, can I use the same license?  Obviously I don't run the two at the same time! 

Thanks,

John.

766

General Mach Discussion / Re: Problem homing X axis

« on: January 05, 2012, 06:40:26 AM »

Oh, and another point is that for the X axis the home switch wiring runs with the drive wiring in a flexible conduit to the motor on the end of the slide, whilst for the other axes the switch and motors are well separated, so probably the X axis is more susceptible anyway.

767

General Mach Discussion / Re: Problem homing X axis

« on: January 05, 2012, 06:38:23 AM »

Thanks Hood!  Having thought about this a bit I realised that it was quite likely that my wiring to the X limit switch could easily have reversed "live" and ground as one can't tell from outside the machine which pin on its multi-way connector is connected to the screen of the home switch wiring.  So I reveresed the connections on all the limit swutches (having followed the same convention on each one even if wrong) and this made a significant improvement though obviously still a problem.  Then I set the bounce parameter to 2000 as you suggested and it sprang into life.  I was able to reduce it to 1000 and still get reliable operation.  There is obviously still an issue that needs attention but I can now make progress.

Yet again I am very grateful for people sharing their experience and expertise on this forum!

John.

768

General Mach Discussion / Problem homing X axis

« on: January 02, 2012, 03:12:08 PM »

Hi, I am in the process of bringing up a Denford Novamill that I bought without electronics.  I have built a driver system using drivers / PSU / BoB from fleabay and all seems to work pretty well but I seem to have hit a brick wall with homing.

All the home switches (installed at manufacture on the mill) work in the same way - a n/c switch that opens when activated by the axis reaching the end of its travel.  I have used the autosense feature on the config/ports&pins/inputs menu to set these up so I guess they should work OK.  On the Motor Home/Softlimits menu Autozero is unchecked for each axis; the X axis is checked for Home Neg but the other two axes are unchecked (all to correspond with which way they move).

Now I find that on a "reference" request the Y and Z axes function perfectly, running to their limit until the switch opens then reversing and running slowly until the switch closes.  However the X axis just moves a very short diatance, wherever it is, then stops and the green homed LED for it lights up.

I am wondering if there could be a noise problem on the X home switch wires.  Does this sound likely to the experts please?  At the moment the input debounce interval is set to zero, and I notice that in response to a home-related question Hood recommended that this should be set to around 1000, which would correspond to 40 ms - is this likely to be a possible fix please?

John.

769

Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) / Re: Novamill

« on: November 28, 2011, 09:01:48 AM »

OK, thanks Ian.

John.

770

Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) / Re: Novamill

« on: November 27, 2011, 11:39:41 AM »

Hi Ian,

Could I ask a question?  I see you're using 2.5A stepper drivers (Routout), I've just got a Novamill minus its electronics so I'm adapting it to Mach3 with new drivers.  I see that the Z axis drive seems to use a NEMA 38 motor, is 2.5A enough to drive this please?

Cheers,

John.