Messages

21

General Mach Discussion / Re: Help controlling a stepper motor as a lowRPM spindle

« on: August 29, 2012, 01:36:25 PM »

Thanks Hood, I thought G0 and G1 were the robot equivalents of Robot moves and Linear moves. A Robot move moves all 6 axis from one position to the next at the same time and the speed that they move can be set (how fast you want to get from one position to the next). In Linear move it keeps the Tool Centre Point along a straight path at a set speed of travel. I didn't know (now I do) that G0 moved all axis at maximum speed.

Thanks again.
Barry.

22

General Mach Discussion / Re: Help controlling a stepper motor as a lowRPM spindle

« on: August 29, 2012, 12:00:20 PM »

Hi Hood,
I was testing the Z axis position from code with the code I got from the wizard for the spiral I wanted to do. I decided to do another code I had been working with earlier and move the Z axis in that. It worked fine unless I put the Feedrate greater than 10 IPM. I will never need the Z axis to go faster than that so it should not be an issue.

The code from the wizard included the lines before the Z move:
G0 G49 G40 G17 G80 G50 G90
G64
G20
G0Z1F0.2
M30

Is there anything in that code that would have affected it?

Barry.

23

General Mach Discussion / Re: Help controlling a stepper motor as a lowRPM spindle

« on: August 29, 2012, 11:00:23 AM »

Hi Hood. I can jog the Z axis at quite a decent speed .05 inch/sec when my low jog speed id set at 75%. Any higher and it acts the same as when I try to make a commanded move. The motor seems to stall but the positional counts increment. I was think that the rpm of the motor was too fast for these moves, but it does the same when I put my speed at 0.02. When I jog on the keyboard, the speed is faster than I will ever need, so I don't understand about the F0.02 giving me a problem.

Barry.

24

General Mach Discussion / Re: Help controlling a stepper motor as a lowRPM spindle

« on: August 29, 2012, 09:18:56 AM »

Hi guys, sorry to mess you around, but I see the jog on/off in the Tool Information screen, I turned it on, now it is OK for jogging and axis calibration. I have a situation with my Z axis calibration though. I am driving the axis through a 10:1 gearbox, which put my pulses/unit to around 109,000. When I jog the axis an inch, it moves an inch and the display says 1 inch. If I try to calibrate it and I send it 1 inch, the motor sounds high pitch, the axis barely moves, yet the display reads 1 inch. I put in a code to send the Z axis to 5 inches at F10, again the motor went high pitch, the axis hardly moved, and the display read a move of 5 inches. Any ideas?

25

General Mach Discussion / Re: Help controlling a stepper motor as a lowRPM spindle

« on: August 29, 2012, 08:31:23 AM »

Hi Guys, I loaded up another Machmill job, and when I tried to jog the axis, the axis never physically moved, but the display increased and decreased in value for the axis I was jogging. I have gone back to my job and still have a problem with not being able to jog. I ran a G code program I have used previously and it ran fine. Just no jogging from the keypad.

26

General Mach Discussion / Re: Help controlling a stepper motor as a lowRPM spindle

« on: August 29, 2012, 07:36:14 AM »

Hi Russ,
Only axis B & C are green. Now I have lost the ability to jog XYZ or A from my keypad. I have never had that problem before.

27

General Mach Discussion / Re: Help controlling a stepper motor as a lowRPM spindle

« on: August 29, 2012, 07:15:18 AM »

Good morning Hood, would the jogging being turned off stop the axis calibration? I can't remember turning it off anywhere, where do I turn it on?
Barry.

28

General Mach Discussion / Re: Help controlling a stepper motor as a lowRPM spindle

« on: August 28, 2012, 03:29:16 PM »

I was having fun up to now Hood. So I get my axis A working from the jog and go to zero buttons, so now I go to calibrate it. I can go into the teach mode and type in

G0A50F10

And away she goes. I go into the Settings screen and calibrate the axis A. I tell it to go 1, enter, it doesn't move. Then asks me how far it went, I say 0, and it tells me I cant have 0. I tried all my other axis XYZ as I have before, now they won't go either. Ideas

29

General Mach Discussion / Re: Help controlling a stepper motor as a lowRPM spindle

« on: August 28, 2012, 10:43:34 AM »

Thanks Hood, my reasoning for the posts over the past couple of days are because all of a sudden my simple 3 axis machine went to:

A 3 axis with spindle (speed but no position control)
A 3 axis with A axis (rotating acting like linear with position control)
A 3 axis with A axis and B axis (angular)
And now a 3 axis with A, B, and C (angular) with a possible spindle

I have been asking the questions to cover all my bases for when we decide which way we want to go.

Thanks again, Barry.

30

General Mach Discussion / Re: Help controlling a stepper motor as a lowRPM spindle

« on: August 28, 2012, 09:45:27 AM »

Was messing with something else for myself and thought about this post. The macro I posted earlier wouldnt work properly, code wouldnt wait until it was finished but this should work, the trigger for the macro doing what you want would be the Cycle Start Led, also the sleep dropped my CPU % from 40% down to 0-1%. (I thought the sleeps were automatic now but not in the version I am using iot would seem)

If GetOemLED(804) Then
Do
  ActivateSignal (OutPut1)
 If IsActive (Input1) Then Exit  Do
 Sleep 10
  Loop
  DeActivateSignal(OutPut1)
   Code "G91G0A60"
  While IsMoving()
  Wend
 Code"G90"
End If

Hood

Hood, is this the only code/macro I need to run for the following process?

1. Axis A at 0, robot starts to lase part 1.
2. Robot finishes lasing part 1, moves to Clear Position, send input to Mach3 to move axis A 60 degrees.
3. When at 60 degrees, Mach3 sends input to robot Move Complete
4. Robot starts to lase part 2.
5. Robot finishes lasing part 2, moves to Clear Position, send input to Mach3 to move axis A 60 degrees (now 120 degrees from 0) to position3.

Steps 3, 4 and 5 are repeated 3 more times to Part 4 (180 degrees from 0), Part 5 (240 degrees), part 6 (300 degrees).

The robot will stop at the end of part 6, and the A axis will be returned to 0 for the next batch.

Ideally all I want the Mach3 to do is move to a position and sit idol waiting for the input to go to the next position. I dont mind writing a small macro to wait for the input, and then use code to send it to the next position.

Barry.