Messages

811

General Mach Discussion / Re: PC Lockup with Mach3

« on: July 20, 2009, 09:20:23 AM »

Another big culprit is electrical noise.Electric motor are huge generators of (electrical) noise that can feed back into your controls and wreak havoc, stepper motor cables and other thigns can generate noise as well. To combat noise the first step is to not run 'noisy' cables in parallel to signal lines like limit switches. Using shielded cables for the signal lines will also help. For spindle/coolant motors you should have a line filter near the motor to stop the noise at the source, for example here is one (bottom of page) that works well for small spindle motors: http://soigeneris.com/cncparts2.aspx. Also, I always recommend an optically isolated breakout board.

812

SmoothStepper USB / Re: how bad is this ?

« on: July 19, 2009, 09:45:13 PM »

If the PC doe snot recognize the SmoothStepper when it is plugged in then you most likely have done something to damage it. I would suspect that you fed some external high voltage into one of the inputs.

813

SmoothStepper USB / Re: Smoothstepper and Mach problems

« on: July 19, 2009, 09:24:27 AM »

Some (most) have had strange problems when setting up a SS if they copied or altered an existing XML for the SS.

Why? I would have to guess that there was an underlying problem with their profile anyhow which had nothing to do with the SS. About half the folks I have sold SmoothStepper to have cloned their existing profile with Mach Loader and I have not had a single report of a problem.

814

General Mach Discussion / Re: Limit switches on modbus/TCPIP

« on: July 16, 2009, 12:04:31 PM »

You can't use any form of modbus for hi speed I/O like homes/limits. The latency between the switch actuation and Mach seeing it will be too great causing all sorts of variance in the sensed position. Modbus I/O is good for thin.gs like user interface switches and lights, or a program running on a PLC that Mach only needs to know the status of

815

SmoothStepper USB / Re: Can someone else varify a SS bug? while using the modbus?

« on: July 13, 2009, 07:03:00 PM »

That's a known issue with the FTDI driver and not specific to the SS. If you have two different devices with an FTDI chip and they have different driver versions trying to use them both at the same time will cause problems. Most of the USB-Serial adapters will automatically install and not give you the chance select the driver. I think you can find the adapter in device manager and point it to the driver version the SS uses. It is something you have to watch out for...

816

General Mach Discussion / Re: Need help Mach 3 Version R2.63 on MW XP HOME w/SP3

« on: July 10, 2009, 01:34:23 PM »

Look in the plug-ins and SDK section of the forum. There is a good tutorial there on plug-ins. Also the Wiki has a lot of good info.

817

SmoothStepper USB / Re: How do you know if you will benefit from Smooth Stepper?

« on: July 10, 2009, 10:17:03 AM »

Hood did a great job of explaining the performance benefits. You can get an idea of how well your PC will work with the LPT by running the driver test. If you have good results then that is half the battle. Some PCs just won't let you drive the LPT that fast though, even new PCs with an add-on PCI LPT card.

The other major benefit I think is the complete lack of needing to fiddle with getting the LPT working right. I have been pretty lucky as most of the PCs I have tried have done OK driving the parallel port. Some folks really have a tough time getting it going though. With the SS it will work the same on any PC, and you can use an older/slower PC. I use a 1.5 gHz machine in the shop. It runs Mach and CamBam just fine (at the same time even!) and was a $50 investment.

818

General Mach Discussion / Re: Need help Mach 3 Version R2.63 on MW XP HOME w/SP3

« on: July 10, 2009, 10:08:51 AM »

It does not really matter where you install Mach. I think they have stuck with the root directory as there are many occasions where the user might need to poke around the Mach directory and going to C:/program Files/... would be more work. While I don't like stuffing a bunch of stuff in my root directory I do keep Mach there as it makes it much easier to communicate with folks who are not as computer savvy about where certain files are.

As far as language, Mach is written in unmanaged C++. There are some guys who have been successful in writing plug-ins in managed code though.

819

General Mach Discussion / Re: Smoother Radi's

« on: July 09, 2009, 02:55:51 PM »

-No Backlash

Impossible, every thing has some amount of backlash! Have you actually measured it with a good dial indicator??

CamBam produces good Gcode. Your fixture/part/machine has to have some excessive sort of slop or backlash OR you are taking way to aggressive a cut.

820

General Mach Discussion / Re: Need help Mach 3 Version R2.63 on MW XP HOME w/SP3

« on: July 09, 2009, 09:39:57 AM »

I would suggest reinstalling with the NEW LOCKDOWN version of Mach. It is 3.042.020 or something like that. So point in beating yourself up trying to get an old version to work.