Messages

51

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach 4 Bug Reports

« on: November 21, 2014, 11:48:58 AM »

daniellyall,

After seeing your post, I went back to my machine system (Darwin) where I had first seen the problems.  It seems that restarting Mach 4 solves some of the problems.  True, I was checking things out on my development system (Sim plug-in) so things are worse there.

I got use to changes taking effect immediately with Mach 4.  Having to do a restart will create some difficulties.  In Mach 3, your don't have to.  This has been convenient for some setup operations.

Thanks for your input.

Peter

52

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach 4 Bug Reports

« on: November 20, 2014, 10:09:36 PM »

I actually found a few other problems such as strange results when you change the jog increment down to .01 or smaller (try going up a few steps then down) and homing speeds run at around 62% instead of 20% but I figure these might be symptomatic of the same problem and I don't want to flood the issue with too much 'stuff'.

Peter

53

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach 4 Bug Reports

« on: November 20, 2014, 08:33:29 PM »

Fair enough but I configured the machine setup in metric and have selected metric for the units mode so I think I should be in metric mode at all times.

I agree with having a units indicator to help keep things straight.  In actual use (with Mach 3), I use both imperial and metric at times.

Peter

54

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach 4 Bug Reports

« on: November 20, 2014, 08:06:53 PM »

Installed Mach 4, V1.2114 and did some playing around with jogging.  I don't know if what I found is unique to this version or has been the case in previous versions.

Configured Mach 4 with metric machine setup units and metric units mode.  Set up x and y axes motors with 400 steps per unit.  Exit configuration and select program run and jogging.  Enable. Ref all.  Zero X and Y DROs.  Select step mode for jogging, leave jog increment at default 1.0000.  Click X+.  X axis DRO goes to 25.4000.  Click machine coordinates, X axis DRO now reads 1.0000.  Clear machine coordinate, DRO goes back to 25.4000.  Y axis behaves the same.

Also, when configuring the axes motors, if I put in 300 for an acceleration, the calculated G force shows 0.77705712.  That would be true if the 300 were inches per second per second but I've specified metric.  The actual value should be around .0306

I seems to me that metric and imperial units are getting crossed.

Am I missing something here?

Peter

55

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach4 Printer Port Discussions

« on: November 18, 2014, 12:42:44 PM »

Did you set the home signals on the Darwin motor setup pages?

Peter

56

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach4 Printer Port Discussions

« on: November 17, 2014, 04:28:25 PM »

Art,

Darwin calculates the frequency for a toggling input.  This would seem like a great candidate for powering a spindle tach using an index pulse.  Is the frequency value available to Mach 4?

Peter

57

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach 4 Feature Request

« on: November 16, 2014, 10:15:26 PM »

I'm not sure where this request should go.  I have a USB pendant that works fine with Mach 3.  What do I need to get it to work with Mach 4?  I suspect I will need to write a script but I don't know where to start looking for functions.

Peter

58

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach4 Printer Port Discussions

« on: November 16, 2014, 09:23:53 PM »

Art,

You did it!  All looks good here now.  And yes, I did just realize MPG0, 1, and 2 in setup are really MPG1, 2, and 3 in the history file.

Thank you again for your fine work!

You wouldn't by any chance have a programmer's guide to Mach 4 functions, would you?  

Peter

59

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach4 Printer Port Discussions

« on: November 16, 2014, 08:51:47 PM »

A bit more.  Everything looks okay in Darwin, any combination.

In M4, 0 and 1 enabled = okay.  0 and 2 enabled, 2 works, 0 doesn't. 1 and 2 enabled, neither work.  All enabled, stream of erroneous messages saying 1 and 3 have moved.  Yes, 3.  I don't have an encoder 3.  Sorry I missed this 'detail' before.

When I say doesn't work, I mean no message in the history log for that axis.

Peter

60

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach4 Printer Port Discussions

« on: November 16, 2014, 08:32:36 PM »

Art,

Yes, I can enable all three at once and they look okay in Darwin.  This would lead me to suspect it's an M4 problem except for the erroneous entries in the history log.

If I knew the encoder functions in M4, I might be able to do some more sleuthing.

Thanks for your patience

Peter