Messages

61

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach4 can do Arc voltage sampling for a CNC plasma table?

« on: June 27, 2020, 07:03:45 AM »

Hi Johnny
I would like to apologise - I didn't mean to be rude and rereading what I wrote I could see that it could be taken other than the way I meant it as being inexperienced. I take it you are experienced.
I have not seen Mach 4 do this but you probably could if you were into lua. 
I am sorry but just don't see why you would want to bother with this. You have to use a cam program to cut all but the simplest item, just tell it what the material thickness is and it will set the cut voltage you need.
I would be very interested to learn the advantage this system would have over what we do now. I love to learn new things.
Steve

62

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach4 can do Arc voltage sampling for a CNC plasma table?

« on: June 19, 2020, 10:46:21 PM »

Hi Johnny
I don’t think you fully understand the plasma cutting process yet. The automatic arc voltage sampling you are looking at is the last thing you would want it to do because you would get poor quality cuts because more factors need to change other than auto adjusting voltage for different material thickness.
You need to be able to set your material thickness in your cam software (I recommend SheetCam) because a lot of different aspects of machine setup effect cut quality other than just cut voltage.
As material thickness changes also so does things such as your kerf width, cutting speed, cutting voltage to get a clean cut and on and on. None of this can be set just by measuring the cutting voltage. I can cut a lot of different material at the same voltage but it won’t look as good as it could as well as the same material thickness at different voltages and again not all will look good. You need to have some manual input to get the best you can.
The arc voltage sampling has been done for you by the plasma cutters manufacturer and is in the machine manual (it is in my Hypertherm one) - you set your required voltage from the manual into your cam software for each material set up.
In SheetCam you setup tools for each material type, thickness, consumables used and quality required and you can get very good results with some effort.
I can tell you from my experience that getting height control to work is not that hard - getting it not to work when you don’t want it to is the key to success. You don’t want height control to work at the start of a cut, while your machine is accelerating or decelerating, while cutting small holes, going over pre-cut lines, going around sharp bends and at the end of cuts - all these things will make your torch height control crash your torch.
Your success with this will be in your cam software and it having the ability to turn on and off height control depending on the features you are cutting and also having a height control that can be disabled in Gcode by an output activated during the run.
I hope this makes sense as it is at the end of the day for me and I’m a bit tired.
Steve

63

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach4 can do Arc voltage sampling for a CNC plasma table?

« on: June 18, 2020, 10:21:06 PM »

I'm sure that is how most torch height controllers work - it is on the two external ones I own (TMC3in1 and a price cnc THC). They sample the cutting voltage either directly from the plasma cutter (if the plasma cutter can supply the required reduced voltage) or through a module that reduces the voltage to a level that the height controller can read.
Steve

64

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: External Control Panel Jog Buttons

« on: November 05, 2019, 06:12:52 PM »

Thanks Bill
I will give it a go.
Steve

65

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: External Control Panel Jog Buttons

« on: November 05, 2019, 05:03:05 PM »

Thanks Bill

Would you be able to tell me the way to call the button scripts please?

Thanks
Steve

66

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: External Control Panel Jog Buttons

« on: November 05, 2019, 02:56:20 PM »

Hi Bill

Thanks for that - it will give me some clues what to do.

So can I take it you cannot access the scripts built into the screen buttons already, is this a bad idea and I should go down programming my screen script path directly?

Steve

67

Mach4 General Discussion / External Control Panel Jog Buttons

« on: November 05, 2019, 04:34:59 AM »

Hi All

I am not a Lua programer - I'm a good copier of what people have done before. And so on my external control panel I have most of the buttons working great such as "cycle start, "feed hold" and "stop as I have been able to copy them from other peoples previous work.

So my last stage is to get my jog buttons to work - I have X plus, X minus, Y plus buttons and so on. I would like them to work as they do on the "jog tab"on the screen - pick up the increment setting, continuous or incremental jog type - basically mirror what happens when you press the button on the screen.

Is there a way to access the script that these screen buttons do when pressed? If not could someone who understands Lua write me one example of how to do this please so I can put it into my screen load script?

My thought so far are -
- read if the button is pressed (mc.ISIG_Input4 - or to suit the input set up for the button) function = (state)
  if (state == 1) then
 Button Down (help here please)
- read the increment setting (help here please)
- read incremental or continuous jog setting (help here please)
- start the jog for the correct axis and settings above - stop after 1 increment if set for incremental jog (help here please)
Button Up (help here please)
- stop the jog if set for continuous jog (help here please)
end
end,

Any help would be appreciated - I am lost without you guys.

Thank you for your time.

Regards
Steve

68

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Newbie with Mach 4 Lathe - so many questions

« on: October 02, 2019, 10:07:17 PM »

Hi Dale
This might be along reply!

I thought this would all be quite logical and well documented. WELL-----

I did homing, tool setup, and offset watching Ron Ginger's youtube. After shutting everything down and starting back up, it seems my starting point; the end of the round stock I have not moved; is different.

You need to "home" your machine before you do all the offset setting and again when turn it on again - so the machine knows where it is each time. If it is moving after that have a look at the accuracy of your homing switch.

Well, I moved on and tried a machmotion canned turning cycle after watching Mach's overview video. But this did not address the various parameters in the turn cycle. Some are readily apparent. But when one states Xi, Zi; this is referenced to what? I wish I could just set 0 as the centerline of the lathe (with tool 1, 2, etc.) and use absolute numbers from there. How? What is clearances, Xc and Zc? What is pocket? Tool number? Offset is tool offset?

The canned cycles, you need to look carefully at the diagrams on each one to determine what the X1, Z1 etc. refer to. The numbers they refer to are diameters or lengths at the start and or finish of the cycle you have chosen.

Have you set you lathe for diameter or radius mode? If you are an old time manual lathe user then you might like radius mode - I am an old time manual lathe user though and diameter mode make life easy for me - no mental calculations needed.

Setting the offsets as you did in stage 1 of your setup from Ron's videos will take care of how far the tool is from the centre line and when you home your machine it knows where the centre line is.
Clearances are how far the tool will move away from the job when moving and not cutting.
Tool number lets the canned cycle know what tool you are using and calculate tool position from the offset you set for the tool. To keep things easy in your head keep the offset number the same as your tool number. When you you do a tool change eg: M6t0202 the first 02 is tool 02 and the second 02 is the offset, so offset is the offset you set for the tool you want to use.

In finishing pass, what is finish depth?

Finishing pass is how much the final pass will take off - depends on your tool - are you using carbide insert tooling? - if so they have a minimum depth they like to be used at. Look at the packet of tips for an info sticker - they wont cut small amounts - most of mine need a minimum cut of about 40 thou, some even more than that. Set your finishing pass to more than the minimum your tool can cut. They will rub and give a poor finish if you try to take a small cut. Use high speed steel tools if you need to cut small cuts.

I wish there was a manual that defined each button. For instance, on the main screen, what is "Machine Pos Toggle" and "Go To Work Zero" does not do what I thought it would. It moves the carriage. But to where? Somewhere to nowhere.

Machine position toggle button - when you home your machine it sets a coordinate system that the machine understands based on your home switches - how far the machine is from the home switches. Then when you put your work in the chuck and set z work zero at the end of your job with what tool you use as your master tool the machine sees the position of that as how far it is from the z home machine position or "z work position". When you toggle that button it's one or the other position. So two positions - where the machine zero is or how far you are from it and the zero work position which is machine position and tool offset. The master tool sets the z offset for the other tools you will use. X position is much the same but I bet your head is already spinning.
Go to work zero moves the machine to the zero position you set when you put the job in the lathe and told mach where the end of the bar is.


Anyone in the Atlanta GA area that want a free beer or three - or Lemonade - or a small donation to help me with my learning curve?

A lot of this is hard to describe in words but a few hours hands on  with someone would make you an expert - I live in a little town in the middle of nowhere Australia so it can't be me - sorry.

My head hurts,
Dale

69

Promote and discuss your product / Re: Dual Motor Syncing and Z-Pulse qualification of limit

« on: August 15, 2019, 06:50:47 PM »

I have a HiCon Integra from Vital Systems and I home to my servo index pulse - it works great.
Steve

70

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Windows 10?

« on: March 24, 2019, 04:28:18 PM »

Thanks - That's the way I will go then.
Steve