Messages

991

General Mach Discussion / Re: All kindsa troubles

« on: June 16, 2008, 09:44:43 AM »

sounds like you have not set your steps per unit up correctly. Look in the Support section of this for the Mach manual. It goes into great detail on how to calculate and set up the steps per unit.

992

Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) / Re: OMAG Stone/Granite mill retrofit..........

« on: June 05, 2008, 05:18:04 PM »

Scott, as I said I just hate seeing good people get screwed. By no means am I a contract expert, I kind of fell into my contract job by chance and the company has a policy to have such contracts. After I read it I was even more impressed with them as it included several protections for me as well, even though primarily it is meant to cover them (an understandable so). Still, they were happy to make the changes I asked for. If you do any coding work for this guy again, specify that you copyright your code and that he only gets only license. I'll be glad to help you any on contracts if I can...

993

Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) / Re: OMAG Stone/Granite mill retrofit..........

« on: June 05, 2008, 12:02:08 AM »

Scott,

I've been thinking about this all day. I really hate to see good people get screwed over. What's really bad is that both the guy you built the control for and you could have done well with the idea of producing many similar controls (and you may have even designed things differently if you knew it was not a one-off), but he was dishonest and greedy.

I wonder what sort of contract you may have had with this fellow. Just because somebody hires you to build/configure/program something for them it does not me they own the IP (design, software, etc). It all depends on the contract. For instance: I got into some contract programming work a few months back (for company A), the company had a standard contract which I reviewed and asked for a few things to be changed. Because of this we both know who owns the IP (company A), it specifies that any work I do for my full-time employer is there property, that I am not prevented from doing other contract programming, that I have a guaranteed rate and term, and if they renig they still have to pay me. Such a contract protects both parties and more importantly it makes everything clear up front and helps to keep everyone friends if things go south.

Take this free advice as any other, it is worth what you paid for it...

Another example: I bet when Brian makes a custom MachII for and OEM that they don't own the source code. They would probably pay to have it customized for their use and then have a preset license fee.

Now, I would say this guy was deceptive up front, while I admire your spirit helping out the second poor schmo ( I think I would have felt sorry for him to), I really hope that you will consider protecting yourself with a contract this time. I would hate to see this clown copy all your hard work and make a bunch of money while sticking it to you. You should make it clear that any code you do for him (macros, brains, etc) conveys a single use license only, any design work on this machine is for that machine only. If he wants to mass produce the machine, he owes you for every unit sold.

994

General Mach Discussion / Re: Should I scrap Vista for XP?

« on: May 30, 2008, 09:59:10 AM »

A message for Jeff Birt

The fact of the matter is the best time to get a new OS is when like XP it is near the end of it's life all the bugs "Well Most Of Them" have been ironed out as with XP and SP3 this link shows that Vista takes more than twice as long to complete a task http://news.cnet.com/Windows-XP-outshines-Vista-in-benchmarking-test/2100-1016_3-6220201.html

From the linked site:

Vista, both with and without SP1, performed notably slower than XP with SP3 in the test, taking over 80 seconds to complete the test, compared to the beta SP3-enhanced XP's 35 seconds.

Vista's performance with the service pack increased less than 2 percent compared to performance without SP1--much lower than XP's SP3 improvement of 10 percent. The tests, run on a Dell XPS M1710 test bed with a 2GHz Core 2 Duo CPU and 1GB of RAM, put Microsoft Office 2007 through a set of productivity tasks, including creating a compound document and supporting workbooks and presentation materials.

My response: Who cares?? It has nothing to do with this thread or anything I said. Win 95 used more resources than 3.1, 2000 more than 95, and XP more than 2000, why is it amazing that Vista would run better with more resources than XP? I merely said that everyone jumping in to bash a particular OS wasn't very helpful; showing that under ONE condition in ONE test on ONE machine that Vista is slower than XP is somewhat helpful, but shows nothing about its applicability to Mach. That's the way benchmarks are, you can choose just the right tests to show anything you want. Some folks will run Vista and XP and Vista on the same machine and jump up and down when they see that Vista uses more of the available memory. My question was: Why shouldn't it. Why would you want to to put 2GB of memory in your computer and only take advantage of half of it??? (You wouldn't cram all you tools in half your shop would you?

I have yet to see a single fact that shows why Vista would not be a good operating system for Mach, only different people opinions. I really don't care if anyone like Vista or not. That is not the point. Bring facts to the table to support your opinion on why one OS is better for Mach than another.

995

General Mach Discussion / Re: Should I scrap Vista for XP?

« on: May 29, 2008, 11:04:46 AM »

Hood, look at posts 1, 3, 6, 7, 8....and no I don't work for 'Bill' (exactly the kind of mindless comments I was referring to.), in fact I would say most comments in this thread have done nothing to help out the OP...

Let's compare memory to shop space. You have a 2000 square foot shop and N number of tools. Are you going to figure out how to cram all your tool into as little space as possible (and keep tripping over everything when trying to work) or are you going to figure out how to make the best use of the space you have available? I bet you choose the latter. You wouldn't use up every square inch as you may need to bring items in/out, but you would lay your tools out to take the most advantage of the space you have available.

Operating systems 'should' treat memory the same way. If you have two gigs of memory then the OS should make the most out of that space, not cram every application into as little RAM as possible (and wind up with big slow swap files).

As you said Hood, the problem lies in the driver or Mach set up (most likely), my bet is on the driver as most drivers suck (Machs LPT driver is great though). The OP should be certain that he has the proper driver installed, sometimes the default one that Vista (or XP) chooses are 'generic' and do not fully support all of a devices functions. The biggest issue probably is that it is a laptop. A quick search would reveal all number of problems with Mach and laptops. I would again suggest that a SmoothStepper would be the way to go.

996

General Mach Discussion / Re: Should I scrap Vista for XP?

« on: May 29, 2008, 09:23:41 AM »

Hood the laptop i bought HAS 2 gig ram Intel duel core CPU, with vista about as fast as a snail.

Forgot this comment: Laptops are problematic with Mach anyhow. I had issues getting Mach to run properly on my older Dell Latitude properly it was running XP. I did all the power management tweaks (look for thread here called something like "how to use a laptop with Mach"), and got it sort-of working. It is VERY likely that power management is handled differently with Vista on a laptop than with XP and nobody has put together all the tweaks to make it work. In my case I had an older desktop that was going to run the machine anyhow on the machine so I switched over to it and have had no issues since.

If you really, really want to use your laptop then look into using a SmoothStepper board. It connects via USB and moves the pulse generation off the PC. I think it will solve your issues.

As a side note I have been running Vista on the laptop I am using now for 8 months or so (don't have Mach on here) and have no complaints. 99.999% of all anti-Vista complaints I have read are bunk. Something happens on the PC so folks mindlessly blame Vista.

997

General Mach Discussion / Re: Should I scrap Vista for XP?

« on: May 29, 2008, 09:11:22 AM »

I think all this anti-Vista smack talk is rubbish. It sounds like to me that your parallel adapter does not work properly with Vista. So, it is a driver issue.

998

Mach3 under Vista / Re: Your opinion of Vista ?

« on: May 06, 2008, 04:28:23 PM »

So to recap, you have found that Vista 'works' pretty much like XP, in that there are no drastic changes to the UI to hamper usability. And, in your opinion, that shows that is is just fluff?

Why not take a few minutes and actually do a bit of research into what IS new in Vista, before rambling on in ignorance? Not trying to pick a fight, it just kills me when people offer opinions on things they are ignorant of. I would suggest starting with http://channel9.msdn.com/, and then searching MSDN for whitepapers, etc.

Again, don't take me wrong, I'm not being mean, you seem like your probably a smart guy. Take some time, do a bit of research, and form an intelligent opinion on the matter. If you still find yourself not liking Vista, than great 

999

Galil / Re: Mach3 + Galil

« on: April 08, 2008, 09:34:05 AM »

The encoder on the servo is the 'main' encoder. The Galil uses this to control to motor, and the servo control is done on the Galil card, Mach just tells it where to go and monitors the encoder readings. The encoders on your ballscrews are 'auxiliary' encoders, Mach can display the reading from the auxiliary encoders, but I'm not sure how the Galil makes use of them, many controls use aux encoders to 'double check' positional accuracy.  (I have an 1842 that does not have aux encoder capability). If you know you have backlash it's best to remedy it mechanically as much as possible, fancy controls can help, but not work miracles.

1000

General Mach Discussion / Re: "Holding" vs "Running" torque

« on: April 05, 2008, 10:50:12 AM »

Holding torque is easy to spec as it is pretty much independent of the type of drive used. In steppers 'running' torque is inversely proportional to speed. The faster you step the less torque you have. Then you have to consider the type of power supply and driver that you have. Modern stepper drivers use a power supply 2-3 times what the stepper is rated for and control the current flowing through the stepper coils. This allows for the current/torque to build up faster providing more torque while stepping.