Messages

11

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach4 build 4.2.0.3481 released

« on: September 01, 2017, 07:56:43 AM »

I get the same error message (: Handle in NULL! Failed to load core at 'G:\VS-Project2008\Mach4-3485-lava\Plugins\Mach4Core.dll'.) in v3485. Seems it is related to M4 itself.

12

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: EtherCat Pulgin...co-operative venture?

« on: June 14, 2017, 02:38:34 AM »

As far as I understood the slave documentation of EtherCAT, you need to buy a Conformance Test Tool if you want to sell EtherCAT slave devices.

Complexity of EtherCAT master seems to be less than with slave system, but still there's special plugin hardware for PC. This could be the point to start with.

13

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Is M4 supposed to save axes position on shutdown?

« on: February 09, 2017, 08:47:42 AM »

Fully understood. Everything as you said. Even the fact that I'm not rich and don't have access to absolute encoder motors

I really appreciate the time you spent here helping me out.

Still, I have one thing I'd like to get cleared up for me:
While G54 spans a sub-coordinate system relative to my machine position, the machine coordinates are absolute (or at least: only relative to the last homing position). So machine coords actually track the table position (e.g. X;Y). Of course, those machine coords can get corrupted if I drive my mechanics against the limits for a while. But if I work inside those limits, I suspect them to correlate to my table position relative to home.

When I close M4 on machine position (X;Y)=(40;40), am I wrong in suspecting that M4 comes up with that latest machine coordinates it recorded?
Of course, M4 cannot know if I have moved the mechanics while the software has been offline. So is M4 resetting machine coordinates to 0;0 on every start-up because it cannot know the "exact" position (missing encoders)?
That's like I'm going to sit down in my office chair in London. After some hours of work I probably have moved forth and back the chair a little bit, so I proclaim I'm at Greenwich now (zero meridian).

It all comes down to: Why does it zero the machine coords on every start-up?

14

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Is M4 supposed to save axes position on shutdown?

« on: February 09, 2017, 03:07:06 AM »

Thanks for helping hands, Daz and Russ.

I tried exactly the steps described by Russ.
When closing M4, it does not ask me about saving anything. Maybe I once clicked "Do always, don't ask me furthermore".
Or it might be the circumstance that I cannot home all axes, but only a few, because rotational axis does not have homing ...

Still, the system seems to behave wrong after I load up M4 again, because machine coordinates changes between closing and opening M4. That's what should not happen, because they are _machine_ coordinates.

I'll try to explain (only for axis X):
- Zero axis X (G54 X=0).
- Do homing for axis X (both G54 and machine coords are 0 now). Green led is lit.
- Move X to +40.94 and zero X axis. Now both G54 and machine coords say +40.94, while DRO says it it at 0. Correct.
- Close M4 and re-open it.
- Machine coord is now at 0!! Why is that? DRO displays it is at -40.94. If I move back to zero (G0 X0), DRO displays 0, machine coord is 40.94!

This means, I moved the axis by 40.94 units in positive direction to have the machine position as before closing M4?
Next time I reload M4 again from the exact same position, machine coordinates have reset to 0 again. So everytime I restart M4, my machine coords get shifted by G54 position.

15

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Is M4 supposed to save axes position on shutdown?

« on: February 08, 2017, 09:10:29 AM »

Hello all,

the problem is still there. To eliminate misunderstandings, here's what I tried:

- Open M4.
- Machine coords and G54 offsets are all 0.
- Home X axis (yes, we have homing sensors). Machine coords and G54 does not change (as expected).
- Move X axis by 2.91 (or something). This changes machine coords accordingly.
- Disable -> close M4
- Restart M4
- And the machine starts with machine coords / G54 all zero, although X axis should somehow display 2.91 or something similar.

And no, it didn't ask about saving anything on shutdown.

16

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Connecting to Mach4

« on: February 08, 2017, 09:04:11 AM »

A plug-in (MSVC DLL) compiled against the Mach4 API should be working. But you are required to sign your plug-in with a special developer key. I'm not sure if the M4 team currently hands those keys to any other than hardware devs (e.g. motion plugins).

Using the Lua code should also be fine. You can add your own wizards. Havent tried building a TCP client/server app in a wizard, but the socket library (see subfolder "Modules") provides anything you need.

17

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Is M4 supposed to save axes position on shutdown?

« on: February 06, 2017, 05:05:47 AM »

Hello cncman172,

I feel like your answer lead me more close to the resoultion of my problem - still I'm missing something.

In some cases we do not use homing, because it does not allow our work piece to be positioned with precision of less than 10 µm. Instead, we do fine-grained jogging methods to get the exact position, then zero relevant axes and start the process.
I tried to reproduce the scenario like this:
Start M4. G54 offsets are all zero, machine coords are also zero, resulting in all axes being zero'ed.
Then I moved axes X and Y to 79 and 359 and zero'ed them to update G54 offset to 79 and 359. After this I moved both axis to 86 and 1086.
After closing and restarting M4, the axis positions have been set to -79 and -359, which is exactly negative values of G54 offsets. If I now _move_ them to zero positions, they will definitely not be at the position assumed.

I expected M4 to start up at positions 86 and 1086. Also it does not ask me to save G54 offsets (it does this by default).

18

Mach4 General Discussion / Is M4 supposed to save axes position on shutdown?

« on: February 02, 2017, 06:41:14 AM »

Hello,

I'm not sure about the following feature: Is Mach4 supposed to save the axis position of all axes on shutdown and re-load them on start-up?
If not, is this a property of the motion plug-in?

Regards,
Paule

19

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach4 Mcode script problem

« on: February 02, 2017, 06:37:32 AM »

Cannot spot any problem with the code. Maybe you can check return code "rc" of the function calls.

20

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Error displays when trying to access EDIT G CODE

« on: May 30, 2016, 07:23:03 AM »

Please check if gcedit is located in directory C:\Mach4\.