Messages

911

SmoothStepper USB / Re: Help ! From Incremental Jog to a runaway !

« on: April 09, 2009, 02:21:51 PM »

When I load your XML it gives me an error about not finding a 'Shuttle' which is an external pendant type device. I would have thought that I would get an error about the SS not being found (don't have one on this PC) but perhaps Mach is getting confused? I'll load it up later when I have a SS handy.

The SS does not work exactly as the LPT does in a dry run. I think it is one of the things that Greg has been looking in to.

912

General Mach Discussion / Re: Milled hardware don't match software preview

« on: April 09, 2009, 02:11:20 PM »

No, 10 degrees is too steep. The 60 degree bit is about optimum, but you can also use a 90 degree to get a little more material removed per pass. It sounds like you really need to resolve your backlash issue first. Perhaps some homemade split-nuts?

913

SmoothStepper USB / Re: Help ! From Incremental Jog to a runaway !

« on: April 09, 2009, 12:21:39 PM »

I see from your XML that your using a shuttle as a jog pendant? If so, try removing it and rename the plug-in with a different extension. Use only the keyboard jog buttons and see what happens.

I don't see a problem with your flood coolant output. You can test it by disabling the Flood/Mist outputs in Ports&Pins->Spindle Setup. If it quits coming on then you have something in your G-Code turning it on.

914

SmoothStepper USB / Re: Help ! From Incremental Jog to a runaway !

« on: April 09, 2009, 11:09:19 AM »

There were similar problem to this a while ago if you try to jog while the machine is still processing G-code. Mach and the SS would get out of sync. Greg has added some additional checks to prevent that though. I would suggest using the current lock-down version of Mach: Mach3 R3.042.026. The development version may have some bugs. Also when the machine runs away does mach lock up. Do you have to reboot the computer to get it going again?

Then you might want to take a look at how noisy your system is. Do you have optical isolation between the SS and the rest of the machine? This is absolutely essential. Do you have a lot of 5V loads driven by the SS? If so you may need to add an external 5V supply for the SS (and move the jumper on the SS to reflect this.)

Hope that helps.

915

Show"N"Tell ( What you have made with your CNC machine.) / Re: HD clock designed using Aspire

« on: April 09, 2009, 11:01:31 AM »

Very, very cool!

916

General Mach Discussion / Re: Milled hardware don't match software preview

« on: April 09, 2009, 10:59:09 AM »

There are a few things to keep in mind when milling/routing PCBs.

The first is your PCB must be mounted perfectly square to the spindle. Your mills table will probably be off 0.002" or so end to end so you'll need to use your mill to machine a surface plate to mount your PCB material to. This is essential as your only trying to take off the copper which is very thin.

Second trying to do mill the board in a raster pattern will not work well. What I use and suggest is using Eagle PCB layout software (http://www.cadsoft.de/) and PCBGcode (pcbgcode.org) to convert the Eagle board file into Gcode for Mach. This combination works very well. I have some pictures here on the forum of PCBs I have created this way.

Third you need the correct bit geometry for isolation routing. What works best is a 60 degree 'V' bit with a flute design for this application. Something like this: http://soigeneris.com/shop/Precise_Bits_86618.aspx . Look about 1/2 way down the page for the type of V-bit I'm speaking of.  At the bottom of the page you'll see 'Starter' kits that I put together to help folks get the most of the bits they will need to start milling PCBs. (Yes, I'm biased that is my web page. There are lots of other places that make similar bits. But I know the URL to mine really well  ).

Isolation routing does not try to remove all copper between traces. It just takes multiple (you can set how many) passes around each trace to isolate it electrically from the others. This works very well and produces very good results. If you need to/want to remove large areas of copper you can put this in the rub-out layer in Eagle and use a small end mill (far less precise) to do so.

Hope that helps...

917

General Mach Discussion / Re: new computer can't jog faster than 50 ipm?

« on: April 05, 2009, 12:27:33 PM »

As for the smoothstepper, I haven't followed it that closely, but I did look into it a bit yesterday.  I'll be considering this a last resort, since the parallel port can, and should work fine.

The way I look at it is the the PC does many things very well. It can crunch number, show pretty graphics, access lot of memory, lots of different types of I/O etc. What it does not do really well is real-time I/O. Art has done amazing things with the LPT driver but in the end the bottleneck is still the underlying PC architecture; it was not designed for real time I/O. Motion control cards also do some things very well. Mainly they do all the time critical stuff VERY well. So, by marrying the two you get the best of both worlds. You free up a great deal of the PC processor by not trying to make it generate the pulse streams for the steppers and you get the faster/steadier pulse stream from the SmoothStepper.

I agree that you 'probably' can get the LPT to work. Each motherboard is different and some folks have found that some simply will not work. One caveat on the video card is that some built in video chip-sets can't be disabled, so make sure your's can before buying another video card. Good luck.

If all else fails give me a holler for a SmoothStepper 

918

General Mach Discussion / Re: new computer can't jog faster than 50 ipm?

« on: April 05, 2009, 10:47:05 AM »

The first thing that jumped out at me is that you are running 4gB of RAM on XP. As XP can't address more than 3 gB, more memory than that can actually cause performance problems. I'm not sure that it is responsible for your lack of speed issue though as that sounds more like a HW limitation of the on-board LPT or perhaps the high precision HW timer that mach uses. If you have an O-Scope it might be worthwhile to look at the stability of the pulse stream generated.

As other have said you can try a PCI parallel port card or my personal preference upgrade to a SmoothStepper! The SmoothStepper moves the pulse generation to a dedicated motion controller giving you rock solid pulse streams and a faster pulse rate than the LPT could ever do. However if you use backlash compensation with the LPT you should be aware that it is not incorporated on the SS yet. Take a look at the SmoothStepper section of this forum or the Warp9TD forum or give me a call for more SS info.

919

SmoothStepper USB / Re: Issue uninstalling SmoothStepper

« on: April 02, 2009, 01:17:48 PM »

Go to Function CFG->Reset Device Sel..

Click OK on the dialog box, then restart Mach. When mach restarts you can choose the motion control device.

920

SmoothStepper USB / Re: Issue uninstalling SmoothStepper

« on: April 02, 2009, 01:12:36 PM »

Did you create a new profile? Did you change the motion control device in that profile to LPT?