Messages

451

VB and the development of wizards / Re: check if G68 is active

« on: May 20, 2010, 05:57:23 PM »

DRO 118 will give the rotation angle of the WC system.

Dave

452

VB and the development of wizards / Re: check if G68 is active

« on: May 18, 2010, 11:19:38 PM »

FYI - when playing with rotated coord systems, Be aware - mach jogs parallel to the machine coord axes - NOT the WC axes.
SO.... if you rotate the WC system, you have to think about what is happening -

example: if you have a rotated vise that you aligned the WC to, and you think you are jogging along the vise face, you can get surprised as you will not be jogging parallel to the vise face!

Dave

453

VB and the development of wizards / Re: Problem in M6 macro, needs help!

« on: May 14, 2010, 06:27:51 PM »

At first glance, the problem does not appear to be the select statement.

1) Format the indenting so you can see what is going on - when you do, you'll notice that there are at least 3 If statements which don't have corresponding "end if"s. Fix that first, then see if the syntax errors clear up.

2) make the first line of the script be "Option explicit" - then declare all the variables you use.
Implicitly declaring variables on the fly will get you in trouble sooner or later - all it takes is one typo.

Dave

454

VB and the development of wizards / Re: Can someone post some use examples of the new 'Include" additions for VB

« on: May 10, 2010, 09:34:57 AM »

Brian made a "coming attraction" post about this on the yahoo list. A version of mach with the feature has not been released yet - - it is still being debugged and tested.

Dave

455

Newfangled Solutions Mach3 Wizards / Re: Line numbers in Gcode

« on: April 28, 2010, 01:56:02 AM »

Several gcode editors will add or remove block numbers  (line numbers) - my personal favorite is NCPlot.
The free version of ncplot will add lien numbers.
http://www.ncplot.com/ncplotfree/ncplotfree.htm

Dave

456

General Mach Discussion / Re: how to set up 2 probe inputs?

« on: April 21, 2010, 12:40:47 PM »

Rich,
Attached is a schematic that may provide a starting point for you.
It's a quick mod of the circuit I use to connect an active high probe and 2 active low touch plates to Mach's probe input.
My BoB uses TTL inputs, I converted this diagram for your +24v input case (so I

This will match up with the TTL interface levels for the probe.
Not knowing what levels you tool setter outputs, you may need to make some more tweaks. The touch plate inputs in the diagram are TTL.

The idea here is to convert all inputs to active low, tie them together and use a single pin in mach that is configured active low.
When any input is active, it pulls the BoB input to Gnd and hence creates the active low input event for Mach.

Dave

457

General Mach Discussion / Re: how to set up 2 probe inputs?

« on: April 21, 2010, 02:27:40 AM »

Rich,
When you say "Because of their construction the probe and toolsetter cannot be connected to the same "physical" pin of the LPT Connector.", could you elaborate a bit as to what the issue is?

Is the concern electrical? E.g. is your situation that the probe has an active high output and the toolsetter is a plate that gets grounded and hence is active low?

If so, a little circuitry can be used to convert all devices to "active low" and then they can be connected via what is called "wire-or" to a single intput pin.

If this is the issue, I could provide a schematic that may help.
Dave

458

Works in progress / Re: Wanted: Graphic Designer assistance for Mach3 V4 screen set

« on: April 09, 2010, 07:52:53 PM »

Hi,
I'm afraid that this response my not be very satisfying as it's not really my place to volunteer very much info; it's up to Brian to decide what he wants to say re his product plans and release schedule.

I can say that if you combed thru all the posts in all corners of the web site and yahoo, you would eventually learn that the revised screen set:
1) has support for user interface changes required by v3->v4 functional changes
2) will support 99.5% of the functionality of the stock v3 screen set (I made up the 99.5% value, it's close, but I'm not quite brave enough to claim 100% <grin>)
3) adds built in functional support for some things that previously required significant user programming (Brian has disclosed in other posts that support for common probing operations has been built in).
4) The the visual appearance has been updated and is generally considered (by the alpha testers) to be a pretty good improvement over 1024.set.

Dave

459

General Mach Discussion / Re: Wanted: Graphic Designer assistance for Mach3 V4 screen set.

« on: March 23, 2010, 12:55:53 AM »

Many thanks to those that responded to my request for assistance. As a result there is now an updated design that is much better that what we had a few weeks ago.

We're making progress on this v4 stuff!

Dave

460

Works in progress / Re: Wanted: Graphic Designer assistance for Mach3 V4 screen set

« on: March 23, 2010, 12:53:49 AM »

Many thanks to those that responded to my request for assistance. As a result there is now an updated design that is much better that what we had a few weeks ago.

We're making progress on this v4 stuff!

Dave