Messages

171

CVI MachStdMill (MSM) / Re: How to Enable RPM in MachStd Mill

« on: September 24, 2010, 11:05:26 AM »

Osker,
I seem to be running low on ideas at the moment -

When you say "the same system" shows RPM when running turn, I tend to read that as "the same hardware setup".

Is the turn setup using the same profile as the mill setup?

If the same profile is being used, thus tends to point us toward the difference being in the screen set that is loaded (mill vs trun).

However, if the profiles are different, then I tend to want to look for the difference between the profiles for clues.

Dave

172

CVI MachStdMill (MSM) / Re: How to Enable RPM in MachStd Mill

« on: September 23, 2010, 10:37:58 PM »

Rich,

No, not the version info that a programmer is supposed to put in that windows shows as a property of a driver.

The only way i know to get the version of the PP driver is to run the drivertest program.
Drivertest shows the mach driver version near the top of the info that driver test program displays.

Dave

173

General Mach Discussion / Re: Wanted: Position X & Y at the Center of a Hole Macro

« on: September 23, 2010, 04:59:11 PM »

Hi,
If you don't like reinventing the wheel, you might be interested to know that circular hole center finding is a built in feature of MachStdMill's probing support.

Drop over to the MSM forum for more info.
http://www.machsupport.com/forum/index.php/topic,15291.0.html

Dave


 

174

Mach Screens / Re: FRO Slider

« on: September 23, 2010, 04:29:23 PM »

Scott,
All I can offer is my "guesstimate"...

In V3, I'd say no. Brian is trying hard to concentrate on V4 and adding new things things to V3 is really hard to sell to him. I had some space on the 10x7 run page reserved for horiz sliders in an earlier iteration. I opted to reuse it for other things since I didn't see horiz sliders showing up in time to be of use to MSM.

One tech hassle is that if/when they are added, it will cause a content change to the set file format, which will require the addition of a set file version and corresponding support to screen editors and mach to recognize different set file versions.... I don't see that happening at this stage for v3.

Re V4, many moons ago, he and I had an informal conversation that "back burner-ed" this control to V4. I don't have any expectation as to "when" horiz sliders might show up. There are lots of things I suspect are more important to him for V4. Therefore my guess is that this would be way down his list.

Dave

Dave,

  Just got to ask, is Brian adding the ability for Mach screens to use and display Horizontal sliders as well??

scott

175

CVI MachStdMill (MSM) / Re: How to Enable RPM in MachStd Mill

« on: September 22, 2010, 11:20:51 AM »

Hi Osker,

I'm scratching my head here for ideas -
in general config, do you have an index debounce value set (i.e. a non-zero value)?
if so what is that value?

[I edited my post to add more info:]
1) After the index signal comes into mach, mach applies debounce in software.
One thought is that the index debouce may be set to a high value. If the debounce filtering is set high enough (i.e. debounce value * 40us > index pulse width), mach would be filtering out all the index pulses (thinking they are "too short" and thus are noise) - this would leave no index pulses to count and thus the RPM DRO would read zero.

2) with mach shutdown, please run drivertest.exe (found in the Mach dir), and tell me what version of the PP driver is installed.
The current version of the PP driver that is installed by 3.43.22 is 570.


Dave

176

CVI MachStdMill (MSM) / Re: An informal MSM satisfaction survey

« on: September 21, 2010, 05:41:12 PM »

Hi all,
Just wanted to say thanks for the feedback received (both online and offline) wrt to the polls I posted last week about MSM satisfaction.

The pools closed earlier today and the results should be visible in the poll threads.

Dave

177

CVI MachStdMill (MSM) / Re: How to Enable RPM in MachStd Mill

« on: September 21, 2010, 12:50:46 PM »

There are other less likely things that could have happened - for example a screen set could place a DRO that is visually labeled as the RPM DRO but which might accidentally be some other DRO value. This would be a screen set bug. While at this point in time, that is not likely for the RPM DRO in MSM, I will go double check it when I get a chance to get into the shop.

Dave

Hi Osker,
I had a chance to double check: I started up MSM (Parallel port), set the S word and started the spindle via the CW button - it shows the actual RPM reading form the index pulse in the RPM DRO on the Run page.  My check was done with Mach 3.43.22 and MSM 0.3.15 (Beta 11).

Ok, I know you said you had scoped the input index signal and it looked good.

Let's follow the signal chain....

!) Index electrical signal is good (at where ever you tested it).
2) Are you Parallel port or smooth stepper?
I'm going to assume PP (there are way more PP machines than SS based machine).
3) On the MSM hardware - PP driver page: look at the pin you have the index pulse physically connected to. does it blink when the spindle is running? (It won't blink at the spindle RPM rate as a back ground process samples the pins to drive the screen LEDs. but it should blink when spindle is running and not blink (may be either on or off - depends on your hdw) when spindle is not running).
If this is good then we know the index pulse is being seen by mach at the port/pin physical level.

Now we go up a layer to the logical signal level:
4) go to the hardware-signals page. Is the index LED blinking?
If so, mach is also correctly mapping the hdw input pin to the logical index signal.
If is is not blinking, the port&Pins mapping is probably the issue.
IF some other logical signal led is blinking instead of the Index LED, that is a clue as to what is wrong with the P&P configuration.

If both the hdw pin LED and the logical index signal led are blinking when the spindle runs, but you are not seeing the RPM readout, then I'm stumped for right now.

Dave

178

CVI MachStdMill (MSM) / Re: How to Enable RPM in MachStd Mill

« on: September 21, 2010, 11:19:46 AM »

What is the process for setting up and enabling the RPM function in MachStd Mill?

Regards,

Osker

Hi Osker,
I'm not trying to be flippant, but the way the index pulse and RPM DROs work in MSM is the same as in any other screen set.
The index pulse goes into mach, assuming that Port&Pins is configured correctly, mach counts the index pulses when the spindle is running). Mach makes the counted value available in the RPM DRO. A screen just places the RPM dro on a page and mach updates the value as mach does other DROs.

If you are not seeing the RPM value when the spindle is running, the most probable cause is that the index pulse ports & pins setting has a configuration problem.

There are other less likely things that could have happened - for example a screen set could place a DRO that is visually labeled as the RPM DRO but which might accidentally be some other DRO value. This would be a screen set bug. While at this point in time, that is not likely for the RPM DRO in MSM, I will go double check it when I get a chance to get into the shop.

Dave

179

CVI MachStdMill (MSM) / Re: How to Enable RPM in MachStd Mill

« on: September 21, 2010, 11:10:17 AM »

Dave,

Thanks for clarifying that "RPM" is a DRO - not a button.  I thought that it was a button because it changed color when clicked (Run Screen).  

Osker

Osker,

DROs and Buttons are very distinct visually and follow a consistent pattern. Please refer to section 2 of the MSM manual for more information.

Re all DROs turning green if clicked - this is a "feature" of mach that I personally really, really dislike - allow me to explain...
Mach has a concept of something we call "DROs". They are the controls on a screen used to display numeric values.
They can also be used to input values from the operator into Mach.

Alas, there are multiple DROs that are defined by Mach that ONLY output values for the operator to see. It is impossible to enter a value into them and thereby change the internal value that mach uses.

The actual RPM DRO is one example of this. It is "display value to user only". We'll call this type of DRO "Read only" - i.e. the user/operator can read the value, but not set it.

Some confusion comes about because Mach uses a single screen control for ALL DROs. This makes all DROs act as **IF** you can input a value to them - which is very confusing from a user interface design viewpoint.
If you click any DRO in MSM it will highlight green (in fact any DRO in any screen set will highlight if clocked) - but this does not mean that you can input a value into all DROs. Yes I know that is not intuitive - but is what mach does and MSM has no control over it.

As explained in section 2 of the MSM manual: To make this a bit better, Read/Write (RW) DROs in MSM have a inner green border - this indicates visually the DROs which will actually accept a value. Read only (RO) DROs do not have the border.

A true RO DRO screen control is part of the V4 wish list...

Dave

180

CVI MachStdMill (MSM) / Re: Probe question

« on: September 20, 2010, 01:35:57 PM »

Callum,

It should be returning the coordinate of the point on the surface the probe touched (as opposed to the center of the probe tip).
I did a quick bench test - looked ok at first pass. I set a probe up to have a diamater of 1 inch (big tip) - just to make any error from a radius comp bug obvious. I get the expected result from that simple test - but I was hand triggering the probe input on a bench set up so can't do a repeatable test to a fixed surface that way.

I really should do the real test on the machine to check this out.  I'll try to schedule time to do that- but it may be a few days as I have a project that's sort of taken over the shop that I near to clear up first.

In the mean time, if the issue is repeatable, please make it occur, then grab the probing log and email it to be directly.
Log file is: C:\Mach3\MachStdMill\Logs\MSMProbingDebugLog.txt

Dave