Messages

231

Show"N"Tell ( What you have made with your CNC machine.) / Re: I'm in Hog Heaven

« on: October 27, 2014, 09:25:43 AM »

Good catch, the Lamp on top was the first thing i every built 1965 Jr High wood shop.
It is plugged in the the PLC as my controlled night light.
I'm not one to read manuals off a computer real well (bifocals  )  So they are all reference documents. Just not labeled as of yet.
The musical instruments are for a lamp I hope to make some day. Items I picked up cheap at garage sales.

Figured giving a wider view in the photo, that people would be looking around,  
Most of the books that are in the hutch now are all technical reference material. Keeps them handy as my mind goes from one idea to the next.
Always seems like I have 14 projects going on at a time.
Working on an upgrade to a CO2 laser table now. I have Arts new laser control box built but the working area of the laser table I had was just not to my dreamy needs.
Hoping I can make double duty out of the new project and add a 3d filament print head option to it too.
Looking forward to a productive winter.

Note: Moved my 'Mach4" Laser Build to a new thread
http://www.machsupport.com/forum/index.php/topic,28501.msg198592.html#msg198592

232

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Screen Set Ideas

« on: October 25, 2014, 07:57:42 PM »

Art's Darwin is available and runs great, I'd seen at the IMTS show that machmotion had I believe ESS, Galil and Hycon running. Thou at the time only three axis were active. As far as a lathe screen one is provided with mach4 and you do have the option to alter or create your own. I have one in progress along with my Mill screen, and try to keep them somewhat updated as I learn more and apply what i feel I will need for my future projects. Thou have to admit, have not even tried whether they are touch screen compatible. Good question. I have tested Darwin, Galil and the ESS Plugins. So have to say they are closer then you might think. But still a ways to go before all is ready for prime time.

233

Show"N"Tell ( What you have made with your CNC machine.) / Re: I'm in Hog Heaven

« on: October 25, 2014, 10:27:54 AM »

Had to get away from Lua coding for a few days. 

Neighbor was throwing out an old hutch that was in his barn, was missing the lower two glass panels and needed refinishing bad. But "if it's Free it's for Me" Then of course I had to make a stand to put it on and find a design that might give it a focal point. Internet search found an image that might work. Created a vector drawing and cnc program to cut out the panels. Found the local fabric store had speaker grill material to put behind them to remove the distraction.  Seems to work for me. Functional. 

234

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Screen Set Ideas

« on: October 21, 2014, 01:42:50 PM »

I'm now letting the Arduino do all the tracking and just passing the results thru Modbus for the mpg's

In this case using 0.001 per step 18 clicks gives me 0.018 increments Changing the step increment, automatically updates the step value for all mpg's

now to get the other two mpg's hooked in with the switches and LCD on the remote enclosure.

Lot of reading, coding and trial and error in this adventure. 

235

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Screen Set Ideas

« on: October 18, 2014, 07:09:53 PM »

Looks like TCP modbus, Ardrino Ethernet and the MPG's will work  

236

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Screen Set Ideas

« on: October 16, 2014, 11:30:45 AM »

As a heads up to all:
Noticed that the machine units DRO display in the setup units only.

I had set up Mach4 in inch and MDI changed using g21 (metric) to run a test program. Found that I needed to create a new popup Wizzard that displays the Fixture & Machine DRO's in the units I am running in. As a side note also found that using the Jog Step feature increments to the setup units, so I guess I will have to address that by using a scaling function.

Scott suggested I compute to a more accurate value then the standard 25.4 (thou my wood don't seem to care  )

local metricval = 25.4000508001016
if (defaultunits == 200 and currentunits1 == 210) then
    WriteReg("iRegs0/XMachineValue", XMachineVal*metricval); --convert to metric
    WriteReg("iRegs0/YMachineValue", YMachineVal*metricval);
    WriteReg("iRegs0/ZMachineValue", ZMachineVal*metricval);
    WriteReg("iRegs0/Xvalue", Xval*metricval);
    WriteReg("iRegs0/Yvalue", Yval*metricval);
    WriteReg("iRegs0/Zvalue", Zval*metricval);
elseif (defaultunits == 210 and currentunits1 == 200) then
    WriteReg("iRegs0/XMachineValue", XMachineVal/metricval); --convert to inch
    WriteReg("iRegs0/YMachineValue", YMachineVal/metricval);
    WriteReg("iRegs0/ZMachineValue", ZMachineVal/metricval);
    WriteReg("iRegs0/Xvalue", Xval/metricval);
    WriteReg("iRegs0/Yvalue", Yval/metricval);
    WriteReg("iRegs0/Zvalue", Zval/metricval);
else
    WriteReg("iRegs0/XMachineValue", XMachineVal);
    WriteReg("iRegs0/YMachineValue", YMachineVal);
    WriteReg("iRegs0/ZMachineValue", ZMachineVal);
    WriteReg("iRegs0/Xvalue", Xval);
    WriteReg("iRegs0/Yvalue", Yval);
    WriteReg("iRegs0/Zvalue", Zval);
end


This had a fixture offset of x=1" y=1" just to check values

237

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Screen Set Ideas

« on: October 13, 2014, 08:44:18 AM »

See latest update I posted: 

http://www.machsupport.com/forum/index.php/topic,27162.msg194707.html#msg194707

238

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Screen Set Ideas

« on: October 08, 2014, 10:13:18 AM »

Sorry had to move this, Scott did not want me to post this in his thread. Asked me to remove it.   
whatever 

Cool, thanks guys
Added them to a panel script and used the fit too feature (that Freeman & Scott wrote)

now to get them associated to actual movement

Here are the images at 100x100

239

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Screen Set Ideas

« on: October 06, 2014, 02:38:43 PM »

Had to make some upgrades to the mpg buttons, as only having three encoders available I had to come up with a way to map and limit the selections.  It is amazing how much coding and time goes into a compare and limit routine. So the top set of buttons are used, double duty I can map an encoder to any one of the axis's or I can add an encoder and map more than one encoder for each selected axis. Each button basically has one line of code that just passes the data to the functions() and they check status and conditions and sort out the details.

The bottom buttons are mapped for the 1-3 encoders x-z and then a-c same encoders numbers, but choosing a like encoder turns off the other associated mapped axis that might have been selected. Hope that makes sense, cause it was a pita to get straight.  

Using color coding helped for the three encoders I can map an axis to the encoder and visual see whats active and know what encoder to use

Also pressing any one of the buttons puts it in the MPG mode.  Pressing Jogmode turns off all the mapping.

Starting coding for Shuttle Mode, but find its not ready for prime time. Hope one of the next few revisions will address that issue and I can finish this.

Lua is    but it does do some functional things very fast.

240

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Screen Set Ideas

« on: October 05, 2014, 07:14:46 AM »

Thanks

Now if Steve or Brian could map the Steps per, for each axis, We could set them up with something like  X at .001 Y at .0001 and Z at .01
The way I have the buttons programmed now I can do it, as the data gets passed to the functions on selection of an axis. So by changing the steps per between axis selection the next axis is passed that new step value. Little convoluted but is possible.

Makes it nice in so many ways, but would put a lot more responsibility on the operator to Pay Attention. One of the most dangerous features of using hand dials is setting the steps per. Snap a cutter off mighty quick, as a step of 1" would surely make short use of small cutters or could ruin your workpiece.

Now to figure a way to get a remote LCD display. Would like Ethernet for control and display. Anyone have suggestions and/or examples   Maybe something like Peter Homann, ModIO only TSP Ethernet as opposed to serial.