Messages

61

General Mach Discussion / Re: Setting Acceleration and deacceleration time values in mach3

« on: October 08, 2015, 03:07:15 PM »

It's done in the Motor Tuning section BUT if you have an XY plane (X & Y motors) and let's say X is set to 4 metres/min and Y is set to 8 metres/min. The limiting motor is X. If your linear interpolation required more than 4 from X, it wouldn't happen. Both motors have to have a high enough max speed to allow your desired interpolation speed.

Could that be what's causing your problem.

Keith.

62

General Mach Discussion / Re: ABC's of YOOCNC 6040Z Setup

« on: September 21, 2015, 11:51:39 AM »

B
Ensure your Kernel Speed is set correctly
Before this step, it is best to perform step C first, then a reboot of your machine so your environment can report accurate results to Mach3.
In the C:\Mach3 directory, run DriverTest.exe
Watch the display here, it will display a number that you will want to use.
Under the menu item Config/Ports Kernel Speed, ensure you select a Kernel Speed that is less than or equal to what DriverTest reported.

It's not necessary to set your kernel speed any higher than what you need. If you do you are just putting the PC under more "pressure" than is necessary. Up until recently I made this mistake myself, thinking faster is better. After finding out that I should set my kernel speed for the minimum that will be necessary I calculated my maximum steps per second at my table rapid speed and found it to be well below the slowest kernel speed of 25 Khz.

So now even if my driver test is perfect up to 100 Khz, I only set the kernel speed to 25 Khz, and hopefully have a more stable / reliable Mach3 in the process.

Keith.

63

General Mach Discussion / Re: newby

« on: September 20, 2015, 05:26:10 AM »

Chaoticone,

thanks for the thumbs up.

Dewald,

there are several ways of installing XP during installation. The one always recommended is "STANDARD PC" mode. I don't know if you can convert to this once XP has had a typical install. I've seen people having issues and XP had not been installed in this Standard PC mode.

Mach3 is known to be running fine for a good while then all of a sudden it may do something and break a tool. It may appear to be OK right now then maybe some program or service kicks in at some random time and mucks up Mach3. It could be in an hour or days from now. That's why I go overboard and minimise the risk of this happening.

My plasma table was merrily cutting away once and then it just stopped in the middle of gcode, no errors, no nothing, just stopped. Restarted it and everything went good. I've heard the stories about Mach3 and I've had several experiences myself. Still love it though.

Good luck with everything.

Keith.

64

General Mach Discussion / Re: newby

« on: September 19, 2015, 05:17:35 PM »

I'm guessing you have other stuff running on that old P4 computer.

The general advice is to dedicate the PC to Mach. This is what I do when I set up a PC for Mach3.

Format the hard drive.
Install XP in "Standard PC" mode.
I don't bother with any XP updates, my ethernet is not even enabled.
Install motherboard drivers
Use an independent graphics card
Install graphics card drivers
Go through XP optimisation for Mach3
Then I go a bit "nerdy" and un-install any Windows programs not needed.
Then I go into "services.msc" and completely disable any Windows services that are not needed.
I even go into the bios and disable anything I think is not needed.
Install Mach3

In a nutshell, I go silly to try and ensure the PC is doing nothing but running Mach3. Windows is a multi-tasking system and there are plenty of reports of Mach3 not running right when users have other stuff running on the PC.

I do admit I go a lot further than most other users in this regard.

See also this post:
http://www.machsupport.com/forum/index.php/topic,30566.msg212264.html#msg212264

Keith.

65

General Mach Discussion / Re: Recommendations on BEST Breakout Board by General Mach3 Users !

« on: September 04, 2015, 04:29:15 AM »

The UC300 is another motion controller board that has a plugin written for Mach3 and connects via USB. The manufacturer says that the board itself has no protection on the outputs (optical isolation) and so a breakout board should be added into the mix. So then you have a breakout board for the motion controller board.

The rabbit hole gets deeper.

Keith.

66

General Mach Discussion / Re: Recommendations on BEST Breakout Board by General Mach3 Users !

« on: September 03, 2015, 02:23:35 PM »

In it's native state Mach3 is designed to control the I/O pins of the parallel port. A breakout board normally plugs into the parallel port and acts as both a buffer and a safety barrier via optical isolation (often but not always).

A motion controller card on the other hand, generally seems to need a software plugin written specifically for Mach3, so Mach3 knows how to talk to it. Think of it like all the different pieces of hardware on a PC also need a driver so the operating system knows how to talk to them. It's also possible that you MAY lose some standard Mach functionality that is native with Mach3. Example Torch Height Control or M10/11 laser commands. They are just two off the top of my head.

Keith.

67

General Mach Discussion / Re: Reading a pwm signal into Mach 3

« on: September 01, 2015, 05:50:03 PM »

I would guess it can be done in a brain or macropump. A brain for instance runs 10 times a second. Will that rate of speed update be fast enough ?

Only problem is I don't know if Mach can read a PWM, though I think it can read a spindle index pulse input. Check the Mach manual for that one.

Keith.

68

General Mach Discussion / Re: Sqauring the Axis

« on: September 01, 2015, 03:58:50 AM »

Yes the table was built out of sqaure. I used materials i had laying around, i apologise for being poor.

You ain't the only one who's poor. I built a large part of my plasma table from hot dip galvanised steel I was lucky enough to scrounge from a retaining wall job. I had to weld sections together to give me lengths. A lot of the rest of the table is made from old pieces of steel I'd collected in the past. My two long X axis rails are made of nothing more than 1" angle iron, and the V-rollers that go on them are home made. Despite that I have a table that cuts accurately and squarely. You have to take lengths to build your table accurate and square in the construction stage. What is ridiculous is that you blatantly expect software to fix a messed up build, as thought that is normal. I was thinking about parallelism, perpendicularity, etc from moment one, whereas you obviously just slapped something together, messed it up, and then come out fists flying showing your strong expectation of live support, etc for a low cost piece of software. People normally pay a LOT more money for that type of support.

I'm very happy that you expressed thanks to those that helped you, I wasn't expecting it based on your show of attitude.

Come across a bit less demanding and a bit more chilled out and you may end up with more of the FREE help you get here from people that don't get paid to give it.

69

General Mach Discussion / Re: Control input methods...

« on: August 17, 2015, 11:29:50 AM »

Just curious... what's with all the capital words? You do that all the time, just wondering why??

I ALSO do it LOL.

No doubt Terry does it for the same reason as me, emphasis, but I thought that would have been obvious. Hope it doesn't irritate you.

70

General Mach Discussion / Re: about : allow thc up/down control

« on: August 11, 2015, 10:09:02 PM »

THC UP & THC DOWN are not outputs, they are inputs.

Normally, an external torch height controller sends UP and DOWN signals to Mach, and then Mach will move the Z axis up/down accordingly.

To identify the THC UP/DOWN inputs, go to Config / Ports & Pins / Input Signals. There you will see which port and which pin is used for each one.

The tick box "Allow THC UP/DOWN Control Even When Not In THC Mode" is for when you have manual switches wired to the THC UP/DOWN inputs and you want to manually control the Z, even if THC is not switched on. This is typically done with oxy acetylene cutting where you may not have a THC control and you just adjust the Z height manually.

Google for the Mach2 Mill manual. It has a good explanation of how Mach THC works.