Messages

81

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Re: Comments about Mach4 in Demo

« on: July 18, 2014, 01:54:57 AM »

Why do we need a PP option? That is what M3 was for. It is an outdated platform. It is time to move on. M4 will be fine.

Thanks for your support!  We hope Mach4 will be worth the wait.  And some of these guys are having a blast with it!  Which is really nice to see.

Steve

HIYA Brian , looking at the fixture and tool tables I see that we can now use the keyboard to move around in the values windows to do updates to the values which is VERY GOOD  BUT I do not see a way to EXIT out with a mouse.

Also reviewing the G98/99 calls I see we can now GOTO a sequence line.  Can I assume the the sequence number is the LINE # ??

Can we expect conditional in the near future to make that useful.

Also the calls are not consistant.

M98 Pxx Qxx Lxx      Where Q calls the GOTO line #

M99 Pxx                Where P calls the goto Line #

Would it not be more consistant for the Q to be used in both cases to call the GOTO line#  ??

Sent from my Xoom using Tapatalk

82

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach4 Printer Port Discussions

« on: July 17, 2014, 12:53:00 AM »

Darwin 1.08
Mach 4 build 1900

Charge Pump works much better now.  Although I noticed that I have to cycle Mach 4 through disabled-enabled-disabled before the Charge Pump comes on.  After that it behaves.  The LED still doesn't light.

When homing, the e-stop is handled correctly.  I can now back off the axis.  Although Mach4 doesn't leave me in an e-stop, it does have the limits triggered and the axis is not zeroed.

Are there documents available for developers of motion controller drivers?  I would expect it would outline the division of responsibilities between Mach 4 and the motion controller driver.  It might also show points for where script drivers would interject their own Lua code to control behavior like homing, probing, etc.


-Freeman

83

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach4 Printer Port Discussions

« on: July 15, 2014, 12:26:35 AM »

Installed Darwin 1.07 under Mach 4 build 1889.  I had to use pnputil to remove the 1.05 darwin driver since it constantly got re-installed. 

Charge pump now seems to get set correctly when enabled.  I verified this using a PMDX-111 serial monitor that has provisions for monitoring the charge pump on pin 17.  I  added a LED for Charge Pump #1 on my diagnostic screens and it never activates, even though the PMDX-111 says it is.

Art, in your configuration video you configured your limit switches to be homing switches and had them trigger e-stop.  I have done the same. I have all my limit switches tied to pin 11 and they are used for homing. When homing, should the e-stop be triggered by darwin when the limit switches are reached? 

When I home my axis and the limit switches are triggered, I get stuck in a situation where I cannot back off my axis due to not being able to re-enable the machine.  I have to physically back off the axis by removing power and using the hand dials I have on the X & Y.  The Z axis I have to disable e-stop trip and then jog off, since I don't have a hand dial on it.

Oddly the diagnostic screen doesn't show any input signals causing the problem (such as the emergency signal).  Should darwin tell Mach4 that the emergency signal was triggered?  Better yet, should Darwin not issue the e-stop when it is homing.  Does darwin even know it is homing when Mach4 homes?

Is the homing order column in the Homing/SoftLimits work?  No matter what values I use in this column to set the order of which axis homes, my mill homes all axis concurrently.  I would assume (Danger Will Robinson) that setting the Z to a smaller number than the others would cause it to home first.  Setting any value to zero would disable homing for that axis.

-Freeman

84

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach 4 Bug Reports

« on: July 13, 2014, 02:32:51 AM »

Darwin2014-1.1.zip
Mach4 build 1889

Mach4 uses forward slashes to delimit port/signal information in the profile .ini file.  Darwin allows setting the signal description to include forward slashes.

When setting a mach4 configuration item, the drop down will show the signal name with a slash and appears to accept it when you save and exit.  When you go back and confirm that the setting was set it will be gone.  In some cases the selected port will be also missing.

-Freeman

85

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach4 Printer Port Discussions

« on: July 12, 2014, 10:31:13 PM »

Ok, I have my X3 moving in all three axis.  All my input signals are recognized.  I tuned my motors and they seem to be behaving just fine, no stutters or erratic behavior.

Issues I'm seeing at the moment:

  * Had to disable Charge Pump on board the C11G.  Works in Darwin when configured for 100Hz, but Mach4 doesn't seem to do anything with it (ie. toggle it on/off as needed).  Mach4 is configured to see it.

  * When initiating homing from Mach4, each axis moves in the correct direction until it hits the limit switch at which point I get an "hit limits" error without the axis backing off.  I have tried with "e-stop trip" turned on and off.  Is homing suppose to be functional?


-Freeman

86

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach4 Printer Port Discussions

« on: July 12, 2014, 07:44:28 PM »

I think I found a bug for Mach4. 

Don't use forward slashes in signal descriptions in Darwin.  The forward slash is used as a delimiter separating the port and signal name in the Mach4 profile configuration file. 

When setting a mach4 configuration item, the drop down will show the signal name with a slash and appears to accept it when you save and exit.  When you go back and confirm that the setting was set it will be gone.  In some cases the selected port will be also missing.

87

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach4 Printer Port Discussions

« on: July 12, 2014, 07:18:17 PM »

I figured out the issue about enabling jogging and the charge pump.  The Emergency signal needs to be configured correctly.

88

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach4 Printer Port Discussions

« on: July 12, 2014, 06:21:59 PM »

Art,

Most functions in the Darwin configuration screens seem to be working with the exception of jogging with any of the motors and triggering Charge Pump #1 (pin 17).

When I have motors 0 - 2 (x,y,z) enabled and I try jogging none of the jog LEDs light, the job box border turns red, and the state of the configured pins never changes.

The same with the Charge Pump #.  I can toggle the pin in the config screen and nothing happens.  I've tried with Freq set to 0 and 100Hz.  The only thing I can do in this screen to change the stage of the PP is to negate the signal - all it does it toggle the state of the pin on the PP.  Do I need to set the charge pump frequency (I think the charge pump is frequency triggered).

I suspect all of these are related to a root cause.  I'm hoping you can hit me with the clue bat, you may have to hit me several times 


-Freeman

89

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach4 Printer Port Discussions

« on: July 12, 2014, 05:09:27 PM »

Art,

Is the version of Darwin supplied in this thread limited to the first two motors?  I am getting "Too fast" errors in Mach4.  I thought I read or heard that this version had the motors all enabled.


-Freeman

90

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach4 Printer Port Discussions

« on: July 12, 2014, 04:03:11 PM »

Art,

I effectively side stepped the issue.  My X3 controller was using a PCI PP card that the original owner installed.  I enabled the PP on the motherboard and set it in EPP mode.  The Darwin plugin configuration and Mach4 now see changes from breakout board.  With any luck, I'll have Mach4 moving my axis in a very short while.

-Freeman