Messages

151

General Mach Discussion / Re: Arduino Charge Pump Code/Sketch?

« on: September 20, 2014, 07:32:05 PM »

And you advocate downloading, not writing your own code ;-)
Well written code on a PIC or any other platform will out perform lazy, cobbled together, downloaded libraries on any other platform.
But as an experienced embedded programmer you must know this and not be bothered by it,
Hey, Ho,
That's the industry as it stands,
Slackers balancing on the shoulders of those they percieve as giants ;-)
Enjoy!

152

General Mach Discussion / Re: Arduino Charge Pump Code/Sketch?

« on: September 20, 2014, 05:32:48 AM »

There are countless public-domain libraries for doing almost anything you can think of

Ah yes, that old chestnut, and if you can't download it you can get some sap to code it for you - the "Modder & Maker Generation" at work :-(
There's a difference between getting something going by cobbling together the work of others and optimising your own code, most of the bloated, resource hungry software available is the result of "Libraries You Can Download"

Each to his own, or even "Someone Else's" ;-)

153

General Mach Discussion / Re: Arduino Charge Pump Code/Sketch?

« on: September 19, 2014, 05:05:12 AM »

because its too big too fit in my package, and teaches me nothing.

simple enough?

good.

You'd have been better off using a PIC chip, smaller and faster and available with a wide range of onboard I/O and memory options, if you only need the basics you're not wasting space or power, programmed in assembler too, so total control of the hardware with no wussy high level programming, then you'd really have to learn something ;-)

154

General Mach Discussion / Re: engrave on a bat

« on: August 28, 2014, 04:18:52 PM »

But seriously, it will depend on the shape of the bat, you can only go so far around a cylinder with any cutter form, I use an engraving spindle of the type used on pantograph engraving machines which has an adjustable collar to set the engraving depth, it's belt driven and on it's own spring loaded slide, for most work on cylindrical surfaces I can just use a flat engraving program with depth set deep enough to follow far enough around the cylinder,

 - Nick

155

General Mach Discussion / Re: engrave on a bat

« on: August 28, 2014, 03:39:50 PM »

What fixture and anaesthetic are you using?

156

General Mach Discussion / Re: 4th axis

« on: August 15, 2014, 06:56:37 AM »

I voted randomly as I don't understand the poll ;-)

157

General Mach Discussion / Re: running 2 CNC machines from 1 pc

« on: July 23, 2014, 06:38:44 PM »

A friend of mine uses a good quality 2-way parallel port switch to swap between lathe & mill

158

General Mach Discussion / Re: How to use a 4th axis on a 3 Axis system

« on: July 23, 2014, 09:20:47 AM »

If you add an unbuffered breakout board such as the one from Routout CNC you can use a pass-through for all the connections in current use to your existing BOB/controllers and divert the required, unused connections to an additional buffered BOB or straight to a buffered controller such as those offered by Routout CNC.
Alternatively add a second Parallel port card to the PC,
Regards,
Nick

159

General Mach Discussion / Re: Homemade CNC wood planner

« on: May 09, 2014, 01:27:43 PM »

Nice machine!
If you define your machine like a Horizontal Milling machine in your CAM package you could define absolutely any profile you wanted, even profiles which would prove extremely complex to express where Z is a function of X,
Regards,
Nick

160

General Mach Discussion / Re: Closed loop system, encoder connected to mach3

« on: May 08, 2014, 03:47:34 AM »

I dont know EMC for myself... Its just another one of the stories I heard..

Sticking to what you either know, or from experience have a good reason to believe, is an excellent strategy when standing on a soap-box ;-)

And indeed. the thing that emc is "realtime thats also the thing i've heard... SO i think for that reason its not possible in mach3.. because windows is too slow..

My House Rabbits are "realtime" ;-) what are you saying?

Anyway the idea whas... the stepper system is an open loop with no feedback at all.. My idea was.. if there is something watching over the movements and could do "something"about eventual errors that would be better than nothing...

Stepper systems are designed to be open loop, having steps becomes unnecessary once you close the loop - Think Servos - If you are getting missed steps you have a faulty system or setup which will be far easier to fix by correcting the faults than by bodging on something unnecessary for a good working system,

 - Nick