Messages

91

General Mach Discussion / Re: Gecko 540

« on: June 17, 2014, 06:55:47 PM »

I suspect you may not have your port&pins set up correctly for the G540. You can download one that is pre configured from Gecko, you will still need to do the motor tuning.

92

General Mach Discussion / Re: First job and the machine freezes mid cut.

« on: June 17, 2014, 05:23:16 PM »

You mean like on the 'Licensing/Demo mode' tab of the Mach 3 page? http://www.machsupport.com/software/mach3/

I'm just giving you a good natured hard time; there are 10,000 thing to learn when you are first getting started so it is easy to overlook or forget something.

93

SmoothStepper USB / Re: ESS Smoothstepper

« on: June 06, 2014, 09:22:06 AM »

Can you attach your XML?

94

General Mach Discussion / Re: Homing Not Working

« on: June 06, 2014, 09:21:15 AM »

Also Bob, does this machine have any Brains or special macros that interfere with homing? I have seen people so all sorts of screwy things with the homing process, trying to be clever, and typically it just screws things up. I take it from you description that the machine uses eth same prox sensors are home and limit? Are all three axis tied together or do they go to separate inputs. Have you tried homing each axis individually?

95

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach 4 Feature Request

« on: May 30, 2014, 10:14:10 AM »

A couple of you guys seem to have lost sight of the fact that this is a BETA release, let me repeat that again "THIS IS A BETA RELEASE!". Your comments are now bordering on the absurd. A BETA release gives the advanced and/or curious user a sneak peak of a piece of software and allows them to ask questions and make suggestions. There have been good suggestions as a result of this, I think adding a slot number to the tool table makes sense for an industrial environment, that is an example of an excellent suggestion. I have also seen where folks found bad LUA bindings and asked questions like, "Hey how would I do this?" which can lead the programmers to say, "Oh! I can make that easier!"

BETA software by its very definition is NOT FINISHED and is NOT READY FOR RELEASE, i.e. it is in a state of flux and can and will change several more times before it is released. Writing user documentation when things are in a state of flux is not very productive as attested to by the very person who tried to do so.

Bitching and whining because a BETA RELEASE of a piece of software does not do 'function x' right now, exactly the way you think it should be done is childish. Remember a BETA release of a piece of software is like a physical prototype of a new device. It gives you a mostly workable platform for testing functionality and promotes new ideas. A prototype is never a completely finished product.

96

SmoothStepper USB / Re: ESS starting spindle kills my USB mouse and keyboard

« on: May 21, 2014, 10:32:38 AM »

You have to seperate the source of the problem from the symptom sometimes. When you have a problem with high frequency electrical noise the symptoms you experiance can vary greatly, sometimes just repositioning one cable a bit will cause a new symptom to appear. I've seen changes in humidity cause plasma cutting systems / TIG welding systems to behave diffrently, i.e. high humidty and there are probelm low humidity and things are fine. The high humidity was not the cause of the problem it just changed the observed symtptom of a high voltage insulator breaking down.

With VFDs I like to mount them in a seperate metal box to contain any radiated emissions (RFI), I'll mount the AC line filter and a power contorl rleay in the same box. If you add a small fan to help pull air through the VFD you can use a smaller box than you could otherwise get away with. Then I'll use proper VFD cable from the VFD to the spindle motor. There are also 'line reactors' that can go inline between the spindle motor and VFD for extrmeme cases but for most jobs they are not required. Most VFDs have an isolated digital control section (on/off, direction inputs) and Analog control section (input to control speed), it's important to make sure you don't confuse the DC Common for these two sections. I also like to use relays in my control box to trigger the VFD inputs rahter than have a direct electrical connection, if you don't have isoalted outputs from your control box this is doubly important. Also, it is better to power teh VFD from a seperate source (circuit breaker) this helps prevent electrical noise from feeding back down the mains into your PC/control.

What sort of connections do you have between your PC and control box/machine? I have found a lot of folks try to steal 5V from a USB port for something in their control box and this just opens up a very easy route for electrical nosie to travel between the two. The Etherent connection is isolated at both ends of the cable by small transformers thus there is no direct electrical connection. This effectively isolates your PC from the control box unless you have some other sort of cable runnign between them. Your contorl box and PC should share a common earth ground however.

97

SmoothStepper USB / Re: ESS starting spindle kills my USB mouse and keyboard

« on: May 20, 2014, 04:18:00 PM »

VFD are excellent generators of electrical noise. If you don't take care in wiring your machine, using the proper filters, etc. you will will have nothing but problems with any brand of motion cotrol or other circuit boards. A LOT has been written on this subject both here and on the warp9TD forum. Do a bit of searching in both places for 'VFD" and 'noise' and you will find out a LOT of information. If you have specific questions about how to implement one of these ideas on your mahcine than please ask.

98

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Load GCode from fixed directory - for TP

« on: May 07, 2014, 01:11:48 PM »

You have the idea. You can also include all supported types as you have and also list them separately which can help you sort out a lot of files.

Code: [Select]

local fileDialog = wx.wxFileDialog(wx.NULL, "Open file", myGCodePath,
        "", "All CNC (*.nc; *.tap)|*nc;*tap|NC files (*.nc)|*.nc|TAP files (*.tap)|*.tap",
        wx.wxFD_DEFAULT_STYLE);


99

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Load GCode from fixed directory - for TP

« on: May 07, 2014, 12:25:58 PM »

Look in the lower right corner of the dialog....

100

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Load GCode from fixed directory - for TP

« on: May 07, 2014, 11:50:39 AM »

The only tricky bits I have found are remembering to put 'wx.' before things and learning the specifics of how Lua does things, like strings, or the not equals operator '~=', etc. It is not hard, just a learning curve. Some things like the format of the path, i.e. using '/' as un Unix convention instead of '\' as in Windows through me for a loop only because I could not find any documentation or samples of what the format was supposed to be.