Messages

391

Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) / Re: mach3 3D printer

« on: September 12, 2015, 11:16:12 AM »

This is bad, now I am going to have to finish the printing attachment for my CNC machine! I bought some reprap parts and they were all either poorly designed or poorly made and failed before I even got the first part.  So I decided to use some industrial parts and haven't installed the new parts yet.

One question.  What travel speeds are you using?  Build time is a function of size and travel speed. I have no desire to print something that large, but I'd like to know what speeds you are doing with a router as my machine has ball screws.

392

General Mach Discussion / Re: NOT CONTINUING WHERE LEFT OFF AFTER FEED HOLD

« on: August 22, 2015, 07:02:40 PM »

Does Mach 3 pop up a window asking a question about where to restart? You need to answer NO in my experience.

393

General Mach Discussion / Re: Mach3 will not load file

« on: August 14, 2015, 10:39:32 AM »

If it loads G code but doesn't show the toolpath it means the tool path coordinates don't fall within the travels of the machine you have set up.

394

Mach SDK plugin questions and answers. / Re: trajectory buffer - missing vectors after STOP and START

« on: August 03, 2015, 03:39:30 PM »

I suspect that when using the printer port where Mach3 is generating every step it knows exactly where the stop happens as long as no steps are lost, like from a crash.  However stopping with an external controller when the path has not completed leaves Mach 3 not knowing where the tool is. Using feed stop issues a command that tells the motion controller to bring the machine to a stop so position is maintained.

395

Mach SDK plugin questions and answers. / Re: trajectory buffer - missing vectors after STOP and START

« on: August 02, 2015, 01:51:27 PM »

Never use stop while the machine is moving. Use Feedhold instead. If you stop a program you need to be very careful how you restart. I always single step on a restart and watch carefully where the machine is versus where it need to go.

396

General Mach Discussion / Re: Mach3 turn spindle synch issues

« on: August 02, 2015, 08:04:52 AM »

I suggest the answer is simple. The wizard writes G-code for the speed you entered. If you look at the G-code there is likely to be an S word for the spindle speed that your lathe does not respond to. So the index pulse does nothing more than set the starting point consistently as you saw.  If you had a VFD on the spindle the threads would have been the correct pitch.

397

General Mach Discussion / Re: Machine goes wild with uncontrolled jog

« on: July 29, 2015, 08:14:28 PM »

This is a known repeatable bug in Mach 3 unrelated to the SmoothStepper.  I have a different motion controller and it does the same thing.  I understand it even happens with the parallel port for some people.  First time it did it I was trying to teach my 11 year old grandson how to pick up an edge.  It ran away breaking off the edge finder against the vise, and then ran until the X axis hit the limit switch, which on my machine actually disconnects power from the stepper drivers.  So it didn't crash against the ends stops and break anything.  However it scared hell out me and my grandson thought he did something wrong so he won't work on the machine with me anymore.  I built it to teach him about building things, so that is a real bummer.  Keep your hand on the big red button if you use the shift key!

398

General Mach Discussion / Re: Should I Earth the CNC Machine?

« on: July 24, 2015, 08:47:28 AM »

An earth ground is only a safety item to prevent something from being at a different potential which could be hazardous. If it seems to 'cure' a CNC problem then you can be sure you just haven't discovered the actual problem. When I hear a CNC manufacturer recommends an earth ground it gives me very little confidence in their control.

399

General Mach Discussion / Re: IF you had a NEW controller whta would it do/not do ?

« on: July 22, 2015, 08:30:10 AM »

Art,
Yes I was unaware that all the operations you cite was still in Mach 3.  I used to build a low class robot for the commercial greenhouse industry.  It used a 6809 microprocessor at 2 Mhz, 32K eprom, and 64K ram. All the programming was done in Assembler and burned to the eprom. It also had a speech synthesizer and PWM for the motor controller so there was a lot going on. When my programmer got hired away after 4 years we turned the programming job over to the company making the boards.  They were shocked when they printed out the Assembler code and it was over 40,000 lines! Fortunately he had done a great job thoroughly documenting nearly every line of code and they had no problem working with it. Production on that control system went on for about 15 years and ended when some of the critical chips were no longer available even on the surplus market. At the assembler level you can do an amazing amount of work with very few resources. Extremely time consuming though.

400

General Mach Discussion / Re: IF you had a NEW controller whta would it do/not do ?

« on: July 21, 2015, 08:01:34 PM »

>> I am not really sure that Mach 3 or Mach 4 needs to be much more than the HMI for the iron

  I suspect you underestimate just how much M3 is doing and overestimate how much the smoothstepper is doing. The smoothstepper is a 6 channel organ, m3
is the orchestra, the meistro and the music interpreter. There is far more to it behind the scenes than most realize, even if you stripped out the macros
and many other things. Not that it might not get there someday, but controllers still perform a very important function in the process....

Art,
You are probably correct, I really don't know how much is done by a smoothstepper or even what you feed it. It seems like when unload the realtime motion control to the smoothstepper that most of the work left would be user interface and I/O but as you say that may be a gross misinterpretation.

Art