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Messages - ART

491
Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach4 Printer Port Discussions
« on: August 10, 2014, 12:05:08 PM »
forgot to answer on homing.

 Yes, the design spec called for the user to either use modified homing scripts or buttons to ellicit
behaviour other than "stop on switch".

Art

492
Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach4 Printer Port Discussions
« on: August 10, 2014, 11:55:35 AM »
Hi:

>>When clearing the E stop, it is necessary to clear, set, then clear again before motion will be available. 

  Hmm. First report of this, doesnt happen on my system. I can move immediately after enable is pressed.

>> This is true in both Darwin and M4.

  You mean in the config? Ill try to reproduce. But I cant image as yet why..

>>Pin mapping in the port setup appears to have some errors.  On my system, port 2 input pins 5, 6, and 7 are also tied to pins 15, 13, and 12 respectively. 

Ouch..Thx. Ill check that out, I havent used a port 2 as yet, I have only one. I may have screwed up a mask. Preciate the report.

>>In addition, my input pin 11 does not toggle with the actual input (probe). 

This is also on Port2?

Thx
ARt

493
Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach4 Printer Port Discussions
« on: August 10, 2014, 09:26:33 AM »
Sorry guys..

 It fooled me again. It just erased my motor settings again after 10 runs..

 I guess theres no way I can track this down myself. We'll just have to wait
for Brian or Steve to take a look at it.

Art

494
Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach4 Printer Port Discussions
« on: August 10, 2014, 08:55:02 AM »
Hi All:

  I "think" I found the problem with the settings being forgotten. It seems an MPG call when made can, but not always, cause
the ini file to get corrupted. Please let me know if you have the same forgetting of settings in this version. You need only
update the m4pw file, only the plugin changes in this one...

Thx
Art

495
Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach4 Printer Port Discussions
« on: August 10, 2014, 08:34:06 AM »
Daniell:

   If the PWM changes when you set a new value, then its probably the setup. I screwed up in the video. You need to set the
frequency in the box to the PWM base frequency you want. So set that number to whatever the base frequency in M3 was set to.
You get only the number of steps equal to the kernal freq / base. SO , if you set 5000 in that box, and your kernal is set to 40000, youll
get 8 steps of PWM. Here an example setup and result.

 In M4, you have spindle min set to 0rpm and Spindle max set to 25000rpm in the spindle setup.
 In Darwins Spindle output you have entered 4000 as the base pwm. The kernal freq is set to 40,000hz
 You command an S5000.

   The system will put out a base pwm of 4Khz since thats what youve entered in Darwins Spindle signals frequency.
   The system will ratio 5000 into 0-25000 and come up with a power of 20%.
   It will then see you have a base of 4Khz, and set its duty cycle to 20%.
   Since your kernal is 40000, abnd the base is 4000, you have 10 levels of pwm.
   the 10 levels availble are then S4000 , S8000, S12000,S16000 etc..

   So in this example, you would need to use those S words for those power levels.
   Any S word in between would give you the same pwm as the closest lower multiple of 4000.

  So make sure the base frequency is what youve entered in the box.. not
some arbitrary output frequency.

Art

496
Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach4 Printer Port Discussions
« on: August 10, 2014, 06:38:23 AM »
Tweaky:

   Thank you for pointing me to that, I wasnt aware. ( Ill be honest, I dont follow all
the m4 threads, Im a busy enough person I follow only what I need to.. I appreciate it
when Im pointed to a pertinant thread.. thx)

   I tend to agree with you, I dont think scripted codes will ever be enough for lasers,
Im convinced there is only one way a laser should be operated and thats with commands tied to
a step pulse. Darwin is prepared to trip commands via waypoint, which is a guarenteed trip
within 16 steps of any specified point. the command can include modifiers to move that to a
particular step..).  Im facinated that you get 10ms early on an MCode.. thats pretty early..

Daniel:

    The pwn should vary.. but its output must be mapped to the "Spindle On" signal
in M4, and your spindle range must be set properly. At that point it should follow the
S word commands. ... For next iteration Ill add a message output to show what Darwin is
thinking on an Sword interpretation. It may help in tracking down such things.

Art


  Hopefully we can find why the intermittant errors we're getting now occur, get it all working
and do some focus on things like laser triggering.. I cant speak for other hardware..but Im pretty sure
I can make Darwin trigger such things with absolute timing..

Art


497
Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach4 Printer Port Discussions
« on: August 09, 2014, 07:32:54 PM »
Freeman:

>> is having a problem feeding Darwin fast enough to to keep it from starving, or

  The problem IS that M4 isnt calling Darwin to fill it up often enough if the CPU load is too high. Its identical to problems seen in early Mach2.
Now normally Mach4 shouldnt take any more than a few % of a CPU usage, so it has no trouble calling the Plugin often enough to keep
the waypoint buffer full. But your right, in your case there isnt enough time, which is why you run into trouble. If you step at 18khz, that means m4 must fill 18000 positions per second or it starts to strutter. That shouldnt be a challenge right up to 75000 or so per second on a system that isnt bogged down.

   So if your CPU is above 20% or so I can see where your frequency would cause a limitation. Yours seems pretty accute. I dont know whats slowing it so much.. maybe your cpu runs hot and is throttled or something in the video chain is very slow.. just about impossible to tell at this point.

Your right on the symptom, but the cause is as yet unknown..

Art

498
Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach4 Printer Port Discussions
« on: August 09, 2014, 04:49:51 PM »
Well, I found a workaround for the problem on my machine. Every once in a while, ( 1 out of 4-5 runs) the ini file gets loaded wrong. If you try fixing the
mapping you crash..but if you exit and then overwrite the ini with a good one, your fine again until it loads bad data again. So if you setup
Darwin, then exit, copy the machine.ini file to good.ini youll be ok as long as when you run the program and any signals are missing, you copy the good.ini  back to machine.ini . Your next run will be fine.  Probably a code order thing where Im using the file before it can be done safely or something.. hopefully fixed soon...

Art

499
Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach4 Printer Port Discussions
« on: August 09, 2014, 03:42:26 PM »
Freeman..

  Well, Im still seeing symptoms of weirdness, so dont give up hope, yours may be just more
sensitve to whatevers wrong.

Art

500
Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach4 Printer Port Discussions
« on: August 09, 2014, 02:25:19 PM »
Gerry:

  No, Darwin really cant screw with you, but rebooting always has a chance of it. I too noticed that runnign DriverTest won twork most of the time,
Ive been hard booting as well. Id advise leaving it till we figure out why the settings are slowly disappearing. The fact they CAN come back
means their not getting overwritten, I think instead a bug is happening.. We'll wait till monday and see what Brian thinks..
Thx
Art