Messages

541

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach4 Printer Port Discussions

« on: July 23, 2014, 07:19:58 AM »

Freeman:

  lol. I once showed the source to a Windows device driver professional when he offered to help in some questions I had,
he sent back a reply saying he didnt understand what the hell I did but as long as it worked..what the hell. Its truly not that
difficult, but it is a worm virus that uses a trick. To figure it out you kinda have to squint your eyes and look at it sideways...
 Someday I will release the code to it, like most magical tricks, you might be surprised at what you end up seeing..

Art

542

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach4 Printer Port Discussions

« on: July 22, 2014, 06:09:03 PM »

Hi Daniellyall:

>>Art I have been playing with Darwin a bit more, every new release you do seams to make it more stable on my win xp computer. decided to push my luck and set it at 45000 hz it ran fine I moved it back to 35000 hz and it runs very nicely.

  Good to hear.

>>I am haveing a couple of  problem one is with the graphics I think it is a m4 problem it comes up with vertex buffer objects not available this has also shown up on my win 7 laptop from release 1900 before that it was ok.

 Id mention it to the M4 guys, I dont use vertex object and I know they do. It may simply be a opengl issue or somethign with widgets.

>>And I cant get the spindle to run properly I can start and stop it but it runs at full noise I have try all sorts of different configs cant seam to get it to work right its connected to a super pid what is connected to a g540 what has pin 17 on/off and pin 14 pwm.

  Im no expert on either g540 or SuperPid... but form what I recall, you need to hook a 10volt source to the G540 ( pin 7 & 9?) and then feed in a 50hz PWM to the PWM input. It will then put out a voltage from 0-10volts based on pwm to control a vfd..or a superPid Im assuming.

   TO do that with Darwin youd create a signal, name it SpindleOn and just set it to be high active. Youd map that in Mach4 to SpindleForward and connect it to pin 17 for on/off. Youd then create a signal named SpinPWM in Darwin and put 50 in the frequency box, connect its output to the g540 on pin 14. . Then in M4 map that to SpindleOn. If you then command M3S500 in the mdi the pin17 should go high and the pin14 should see a (50%?) duty cycle if your m4 spindle max is 1000 for example. The G540 then will put out 5volts.. ( 50% power) on its vfd output.. again, Im no expert on any of that, its just my understanding of how it "should" work. Try it and see whats on pin14.. pwm? Does pin17 toggle? etc..

Thx for the report.

Art

543

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach4 Printer Port Discussions

« on: July 22, 2014, 07:28:46 AM »

Hi Alistair

 
>>Tested tonight with Darwin 1.10 and was able to get the motors moving Smiley The movement appears to be good on a test run of road runner with the pulse width stretched to 3us.

  Very good, thank you.
 
>>As someone else reported the charge pump doesn't activate when you first click enable in Mach4. It then activates when you click disable.

  M4 bug, being fixed by Steve, IO isnt inited until after an enable disable toggle..

>>Charge pump frequency measured on an oscilloscope is half the value that is set.

   Probably my fault, I think its toggling at the set frequency which does make it 1/2 the right rate. Differently from
M3 the charge pump I think is a wide pulse, Ill check and correct.. thc for that test and report..

>>I cannot jog from within Darwin configure. Charge pump was toggled on when testing.

  On the ports screen there is a RESET button, press it if the led above it is red, otherwise no motion can be done.

>>Changing the setting for pulse width doesn't take affect until you restart Mach4.

  True, part of driver design. Ill have a message put out in near future to tell a user that fact.. agains, thx, I missed that one.

>>Frequently when exiting Darwin configure Mach4 stops responding and the Mach4GUI task cannot be ended via task manager. Only option is shut down and restart.

   Ive heard of this one, but I only use wxMach so far, this appears to be a Gui error of some sort..will iron out in future.

>>I will do some more testing when I get some spare time. For now thanks go to Art for Darwin and to Brian and the team for the effort and time that has gone into Mach4.

Thx for the testing, I know its a drudge bvut it does help get things right.

Art

 

544

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach4 Printer Port Discussions

« on: July 22, 2014, 07:23:42 AM »

Hi:

  You need to map the homing in Mach4. Check the Mach4 config screens and youll find a way to map the home switches you named in Darwin to the axis in m4. All the inputs and outputs you turned on in Darwins config, you need to map inside m4's config screens...

Art

545

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach4 Printer Port Discussions

« on: July 21, 2014, 11:50:11 AM »

hmm.. weird that over 2us causes trouble..Id have thought youd never notice if the pulse was too wide.. Ill have to check why that might be..

Art

546

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach4 Printer Port Discussions

« on: July 21, 2014, 11:49:14 AM »

Tweakie:

 Hard to say is the M11P0/P1 capability will be repeated. Up to Brian really. I added it for engravers but its not a Gcode staple.. Id ask the M4 guys if they intend to offer a realtime on/off signal capability..

Art

547

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach4 Printer Port Discussions

« on: July 20, 2014, 05:32:30 PM »

Ahhh.. OK, good to know.

 Im not sure why the smoothness issues occur, wether its computer related or some setting. My system
is silky smooth, but then Im using servo's, they tend to be forgiving.. On the other hand my lathe is stepper and
seems to run quite smooth as well, which agian makes me think its some setting or the cpu.

  The registers now available will allow you to try 5us step width ( which is really about 7us in size..), that
may help... Let me know if it does anything for the quality of your motion.. Ill give some thought as
to some test I may be able to devise to help us figure out why it would be rough..

Art

548

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach4 Printer Port Discussions

« on: July 20, 2014, 02:37:41 PM »

Hi guys

 this version changes only the plugin, so you only need to copy in the plugin file.

 This should correct homing of a slave as to its direction. This also adds changeable registers. In the
Operator/Regfile youll find a Darwin entry. There you can specify a min freq and max freq for Frequency based spindles,
and you can select if a PWM spindle is in effect .. this replaces the even/odd signal number selection.

 You can also specify a step pulse width from 0 - 5us in width.

Steve is fixing a diags bug where signals dont show up till toggled. This will probably be finxed in next mach release.

Thx
Art

549

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach4 Printer Port Discussions

« on: July 20, 2014, 07:44:58 AM »

Tweaky:

   I promised to keep you appraised on my laser project. I now have an arduino
programmed to give me a good tickle at 1us with the ability to send any pulse or
number of pulses from 3us to 190us at any frequency up to 5khz in 1000 different
power levels.

   Just waiting now on some final components before making a laser control panel
which will accept step signals from the x,y and a axis in order to be able to engrave
with 1000 discrete power levels while M4 ( or mach3) does a simple grid raster or spiral
or whatever rastering shape one wishes. The idea is to remove mach's control of the laser
and rather have the control panel monitor position and pulse its output based on uploaded
photos or other criteria. So the steps signals will simply be paralleled to the "MasterBlaster"
control panel , which is wireless, and will operate in concert with Mach3, Mach3 ( or any
step/direction controller). This will allow on the fly pulse to pulse variation in power
based on photographic input prior to any raster scan. Thats the plan anyway.

  Im hoping such a panel could be used on any laser and with any cnc system to allow
3d engraving in a new way. We'll see how reality intrudes on my plans.

Art
 

550

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach4 Printer Port Discussions

« on: July 20, 2014, 07:37:04 AM »

Greg:

 So in version 1900 in metric it sounds smooth? Is that the upshot?
That's an important thing to know I think, it would tel me that something in your CPU
is being dragged down by M4 in terms of having enough time to properly function.

 Video seems implicated on at least one system Is this in wxMach or in MachGUI? Ive
also heard of differences there...
Thx for the testing, Ill find out about the homing on Monday and fix up whatever I need to.
I suspect its still early to say exactly what goes on in such troubles, I need more experiences and
numbers to tell me. A grinding in the bearings sound usually means the stream is very uneven,
so if your waterfall is fine ( and everyones seems to be ) then Im really thinking M4's use of video
or something is creating a bottleneck.
  Unfortunately for me, external hardware doesnt need an unlagged system ,it'd be hard to tell when
overloaded, Darwin, like M3 needs a system without the cpu being bogged down. Im hoping we
can find that bottleneck. By the way, has anyone looked at CPU load during a noisy run compared
to a smooth one?
   Yours is the third time Ive heard switching to metric makes a difference. Darwin knows nothing
of number systems it works solely on steps.. but VIDEO on the other hand works in inches or mm's...
so Im thinking perhaps of some unknown effect there.. but I could be wrong.

Anyway, thank you for the response, it adds to the knowledge base.   , testing continues..

Art