Messages

221

General Mach Discussion / Re: VB Code On A Button Help Required

« on: August 27, 2010, 04:20:01 PM »

Hi,
Yes, there's more than one way to skin the cat -

I use '&' for concatenation in basic and never use '+'. 
It's enough of a habit that I had forgotten that '+' also works (usually) as given in the Cypress manual page 39:
'+' or '&' can be used for string concatenation

I scratched my head and eventualy remembered why I got into that habit; '+' as it is also an arithmetic operator.
By using '&' instead of '+',  I don't have to worry about cypress attempting to add two numbers together...  The '+', '-' and '&' operators all are shown with the same operator precedence (page 40).
Rather than test and determine cypress's  actions for odd corner cases, I found it simpler to avoid the issue -

From page 8:
"If a string and a number are concatenated the result is a string. To be sure your concatenation works regardless of the data type involved use the & operator. The & will not perform arithmetic on your numeric values it will simply concatenate them as if they were strings."

Dave

222

General Mach Discussion / Re: VB Code On A Button Help Required

« on: August 27, 2010, 02:03:26 PM »

HI,
the string concatenation operator in basic is the "&"

instead of
Code "G01 X_Distance F.10"

you want
Code "G01 X" &  X_Distance & " F.10"

But that is not yet quite good enough as X_Distance can turn into a string that has exponents etc. within it...

To solve that, I have a little helper routine that I use for this:

Code: [Select]

Function GCN(ByVal VBNum) As String
' GCodeNumber: a small util to take a double, format it and return it as a string
' this is needed so that all numbers put into strings that will be sent to Code will not
' have things of the form: X0.123456e-9   - which is not legal gcode format
GCN = Format(VBNum, "#########0.000000") ' 6 sig digits to right of decimal point should be enough
End Function ' GCN
so I would have written the initial line as
Code "G01 X" &  GCN(X_Distance) & " F.10"

Dave

223

CVI MachStdMill (MSM) / Re: Returning to start of code after tool change!

« on: August 27, 2010, 01:51:26 PM »

Calum,

I recently realized that a bug was causing the TP/GBLk height to not be included in the Z zero set calculation when probing to a mobile TP.
That may well have added to your confusion - the bug is fixed in MSM beta 9.

Dave

Hi Calum,

2) Would it be possible to have the Set Z zero arrow on the WC Offset Touch Off tab made into an action button that would move Z down to the mobile TP on the work?  I can achieve this by using the TP as a home switch and setting the offset as the TP thickness but this make the MC Z = WC Z, this is the way I have been using Mach until I found MSM with MTM.

If you click the "Probe Z-" arrow on the probing page it will do just what you want.   
The probing page handles "probing events" - i.e. moving until a probe event is seen by mach and the G31 movement is stopped.
Neither mach nor MSM know if the signal came from a probe or a touch plate..... or the push button I have wired to the BoB in my test setup in the office... A trigger is a trigger.
If you have Settings-common "TLO G-BLk is TP" on, you can "probe down to the mobile TP"....

224

CVI MachStdMill (MSM) / MachStdMill Beta 9 released

« on: August 27, 2010, 01:40:17 PM »

Hi,
I've released MSM Beta 9 (MSM v0.3..

This fixes the bug where the G-Blk/TP height was not being used in calculating Z-Zero when using "Probe Z-" to probe to a mobile TP to set Z zero.

Section 7.4.1.2 was updated in the user manual.

Dave

225

CVI MachStdMill (MSM) / Re: Probing and touch plates - your MSM experience?

« on: August 27, 2010, 01:35:58 PM »

I've sent MSM beta 9 to Scott for posting.
When it is up, please DL it - it should fix the problem of the G-Blk/TP height not being used probing to a Touch Plate.
Also see section 7.4.1.2 in the update manual for the new text.

Dave

226

CVI MachStdMill (MSM) / Probing to TP and G-BLk height

« on: August 27, 2010, 12:00:50 PM »

Hi Denzil,
MSM should be doing what you want - alas, when I checked, I found that this case had gotten broken in the probing lib & I'm fixing it.

I'm also goiing to add a table to the manual to give what action should be expected for combinatons of
1) G-BLk is TP On/Off, and
2) Probe tool mounted or not.

Dave

Hey Dave,

I haven been playing with TLO and probing, and had a basic question.  Could be an idiotic question, but I will ask anyway. (I did read the manual.. )

OK, let's see if I can make any sense. I have a gage block that is also a TP.  I am trying to set Z0 for the top of the part.  I can probe for Z on the probing screen, however it does not take into account the thickness of my gage block (1".)  It will just set the top of the gage block as Z0.  Is there a way to probe to the top of a gage block like that and take into account the thickness of it?

Thanks,

Denzil

227

CVI MachStdMill (MSM) / Re: Numbers in DRO's too big

« on: August 26, 2010, 10:28:20 PM »

Just install on top of beta 7.
The MSM installer will let you know if it wants you to do uninstall first.
The general rule is just install over the prior version unless the installer gets insistent and forces you to do otherwise.

Hi Dave,
Can I install beta 8 over the top of beta 7, or do I need to uninstall it first?

BTW, I'm running Windows 7, if that makes any difference.

Mark

228

CVI MachStdMill (MSM) / Re: Numbers in DRO's too big

« on: August 26, 2010, 10:26:07 PM »

When the Windows DPI setting is set to "a non-normal value", windows is forcing fonts to be scaled (at a low level in the display rendering chain) compared to the font height called for by an application.   Mach is not aware that windows is doing this. AS a layer on top of Mach, I can't do anything about this in MSM. This is true for all mach bitmap screen sets (not just MSM).

You can customize a lot of aspects of how windows appear. See the desktop, properties, appearance tab, advanced - there you can tweak lots of things - but I have no magic solution to offer.

On my development machines, I personally run the font scaling at 120% - I loose a bit off the bottom of DRO chars, but not enough to effect the readability of the chars (at least IMHO). On my mill control I run normal fonts (96dpi) with a physical resolution of 1280x1024 on a 19" screen. I could run 12x10 on a 17" screen, but the 19" makes the physical size of things large enough for me to easily read them.
 
Dave

The DPI setting on my computer was set to 150%.  When I changed it back to 100% then the numbers in the DRO's are the right size.  All the text in the screen is comfortable to read.  Unfortunately, everything outside of Mach3 is now much too small for comfort.  Is there a way to solve this problem without changing the DPI down to 100%?

229

CVI MachStdMill (MSM) / Re: Numbers in DRO's too big

« on: August 26, 2010, 10:07:45 PM »

the download page has MSM v0.3.7 (beta 8 )
Dave

Where do I find beta 8?  The latest version on the download screen is beta 7.

230

CVI MachStdMill (MSM) / Re: Wrong feed rate

« on: August 26, 2010, 08:10:41 PM »

Calum
he, he, old habits die hard  - when Brian says "diagnostics page" (1024 speak) he means (in MSM speak) Hardware  page, PP driver tab, "pulse Freq"" near the bottom of the "Mach Driver Metrics" panel.

Dave

I have tested here and I am getting good speeds.. If you could please post your XML and I will test it here.
Also if you could please tell me what your systems pules frequency is on the diagnostics page.

Thanks
Brian