Messages

551

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach4 Printer Port Discussions

« on: July 19, 2014, 10:21:54 AM »

Hi guys:

  Here is version 1.09 of Darwin. The driver is the same, it will report 1.08 (lower number), you dont need to replace it.
The dll's version is the upper version reported, and it should read 1.09. So all you need to do is overwrite the plugin and the dll and your good to test..

The plugin is also 1.09. This plugin turns on the step stretching. ( The code was written in I just hadnt turned it on). I have
no way for you to set it as yet, so I set it to 2 extra uSecs on the step pulse only.

  Unfortunately, this version has a few changes that made a reset necessary. You will have to remap all the signals in Mach4.
They will sill have a checkmark, you just need to map them to "Darwin" since "parallel0" is no longer a name in the system,
all mapping should now be done to the Darwin device. Just do a remap of any signal and youll see what I mean.

  If this doesnt fix roughness its OK, what I need to know is , Is it Smoother than it was..? If so Ill turn on a setting you can change to make it match your system. If indeed pulse width is the culprit, this should at very least make it better.

 I need to discuss with Brian a solution for the homing a slave axis direction, Im askign M4 what direction to go so perhaps
the plugin should reverse any slave in homing ( though that seems arbitrary..what if the axis isnt reversed..)..

 Anyway, Ill take that up on monday and correct as necessary..

Thx
Art

552

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach4 Printer Port Discussions

« on: July 19, 2014, 08:10:44 AM »

Hi:

>>"Art’s ‘Darwin’, parallel port driver, performed beautifully during the tests with no faults or bugs to report. It is very easy to set-up and the motion produced is just so smooth it is difficult to describe the difference from Mach3."
My experience is VERY different which makes me think I am doing some rather stupid things.   I am using Darwin 1.08 with Mach4 1888

     Goes to show experiences do vary. Could be machine, could be something else..time and testing will tell. Doesnt make you any dumber than I.. Im sure testing will show why things are screwy.. I havent had any limitations even up to 70,000 pulse frequency..BUT Im using servo's which can smooth timing discrepancies out of a stream. Its very possible that some problem or
another is creating trouble. Tweaky is the second to have grinding noise above a certain value.. Its something Im hoping time
and use will point to. It may be pulse width as one person pointed out. I only pulse at the default of 1us or so on the step, allowing the minimum time of pp port register changes to control the time. Im m3 I added up to 3-4 us to make the pulse
longer.. I may have to try that to see if it helps. (Tweaky: did you have to add time before to the pulse widths?)

>>Firstly I abandoned any idea of using Metric.   The results just confused the hell out of me.

   I used only metric, but I found any switch between inch and mm caused huge trouble for me, first you have to restart the program and something about the switch junked many things.. until latest version 1900 which seemed to fix that up for me.

>>For the life of me I could not get B axis (motor 4) selected as slave to Y axis.  Had to settle for A axis (motor 3)  Just could not figure how to get it to allow me to select B as slave.

   In M4 no motor actually owns an axis. Your "B" axis is simply motor 3. So youd map motor 3 to B axis in M4 and slave it. But Ive done no slaving tests so I cant confirm slaving works.

>>Maybe that is a built in limitation of hobby version.  That would be a shame as I have one slaved axis and also a 4th axis (rotary).  That would blow Mach4 out of the water for me as a future option.

   Darwin only handles 4 axis at the moment, I havent turned on the others, Ill list to do so, no reason for them to be off anymore..

>>Dual axis homing I have not worked out yet.  Master and slave work well together up until I reference that axis.  Then they try to move in different directions. 

  Probably has to do with the mapping, the homing can handle slaved axis, interesting that they move in different directions... ID have thought theyd home the same way they move, in reverse to each other. (Listed for checking)..

>>However all that is small potatoes compared with the smoothness of operation (or lack of it) compared with Mach3.
>>25000 kernal speed.  Good driver test graphic.  Time in interrupt approx 7 micro seconds (is this my problem?)

   Thats low compared to M3, and likely due to the decreased pulse width. Did your M3 have pulse width setting higher than default? Ill add a setting for that to see how stretching the pulse might help in smoothness for you. Mine is very smooth as was tweakies, but even Tweakie has roughness above a set number...that makes me thing pulse width..

>>Any ideas what silly mistake I have made?

  None. , you tested and reported, Im gratefull. I will add in a pulse stretch by making all steps take a 1us wait to make them longer, we'll see if that helps, and Ill check the homing to see why a slave might home in the reverse direction.. ( Thats ahandy report..). Ill also turn on the other two axis so 6 motors can work..

Thx
Art


Greolt

553

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach4 Printer Port Discussions

« on: July 18, 2014, 09:11:52 AM »

alastair:

   That kick is a suggestion the step and direction pins are revered. Direction is held until a reversal, so if when you reverse you get a small kick.. thats the step seeing the direction change. Check your step and dir arent reversed..

Art

554

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach4 Printer Port Discussions

« on: July 17, 2014, 08:08:02 PM »

alastair:

  Sorry, at this point no. Darwin only puts out step pulses at 1 interrupt length in size. If I find this is too
limiting Ill look at stretching it, but initial polls showed most were fine at the default 1us that the printer ports usuallt
take by default.. Does it seem to lose steps without any stretching?

Art


 

555

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach4 Printer Port Discussions

« on: July 17, 2014, 03:58:26 PM »

hmm.. Have you tried running the 32 bit runtime for vs9.. ? I dont have any reports of not loading in
that way as yet. Download the VS9 runtime from microsoft..   vsredist_x86.exe , might help with that error,
though you should have gotten somthign about side-by-side config error if that was the trouble..

Art


 

556

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach4 Printer Port Discussions

« on: July 17, 2014, 07:22:00 AM »

Freeman:

  No, there is no doc, its why it will take a little while to stabilize plugs, its still early for the developers in terms of docs.
Things are getting better though. When you home, the machine coordinate gets zeroed to the offset value. For example,
if you have an offset of 10, the X axis will read -10 plus and decel distance observed. So the machine coordinate should
read the actual distance from the trip point of the switch. Doing a G53X0Y0Z0 would then move you to machine zero. If you then zero your fully zeroed in the work coordinates.

   Ill fix up the Charge pump activation, I noticed M4 doesnt show a signal on the diags till its toggled as well.. minor issue..

  The limits triggered will happen if you map the home switch to the X-- for example on X. The switch being triggered will stop any joggin in that direction as a side effect.

Have fun , preciate the feedback..
Art

557

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach4 Printer Port Discussions

« on: July 15, 2014, 09:43:57 PM »

Hi Guys:

  Here is version 1.08 which fixes many many things. First, homing is done in the order you declare in m4. You may set a home or limit to Estop tripable in Darwin and it will work. If, when trying to re-enable a limit is found to be tripping an Estop, it will be
disabled and the control will enable to allow you to jog off, at which point it will auto-re enable.

  Charge pump will work, though the led may or may not, the guys are looking into it.. Most everything works in this version, a couple of bugs remain, I will turn on a register to allow you to calibrate the spindle frequencies if not in pwm shortly, also M4 doesnt show the IO on its diag until after the signal changes.. Ill fix that up with a delayed refresh after startup...but other than that all seems to work well and a great many bugs were repaired. Thx for the reports, it really helsp to get these things out of the
way as quick as I can.

No limitations in this plugin at all at the moment..Please let me know what you find. The driver test should show 1.07 on each.
 

Art


 

558

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach4 Printer Port Discussions

« on: July 15, 2014, 07:26:59 AM »

Installed Darwin 1.07 under Mach 4 build 1889.  I had to use pnputil to remove the 1.05 darwin driver since it constantly got re-installed.

>>Ive heard of that, the other solution is to find and delete the old one from windows/system32 or whereever your system put it.

Charge pump now seems to get set correctly when enabled.  I verified this using a PMDX-111 serial monitor that has provisions for monitoring the charge pump on pin 17.  I  added a LED for Charge Pump #1 on my diagnostic screens and it never activates, even though the PMDX-111 says it is.

>>Im thinking charge pumps are only used in printer port systems so they never hooked it up.  For my part I actiavet it when the plugin is running,
really thats the only spec on a charge pump, run when the program is running. Mach3 used it as well for Estops, M4 will not, it will just put
out its frequency when running. Im not sure why it doesnt show in led's, Ill check that out.

Art, in your configuration video you configured your limit switches to be homing switches and had them trigger e-stop.  I have done the same. I have all my limit switches tied to pin 11 and they are used for homing. When homing, should the e-stop be triggered by darwin when the limit switches are reached? 

>> No, Darwin igores the limits when homing.. Im think perhaps m4 doesnt .. Ill check this as well.. Darwin works as m3 did in that area.


When I home my axis and the limit switches are triggered, I get stuck in a situation where I cannot back off my axis due to not being able to re-enable the machine.  I have to physically back off the axis by removing power and using the hand dials I have on the X & Y.  The Z axis I have to disable e-stop trip and then jog off, since I don't have a hand dial on it.

>>yes, not good, Ill figiure out whats up there..


Oddly the diagnostic screen doesn't show any input signals causing the problem (such as the emergency signal).  Should darwin tell Mach4 that the emergency signal was triggered?  Better yet, should Darwin not issue the e-stop when it is homing.  Does darwin even know it is homing when Mach4 homes?

>>>I only found there is a difference between emergency and disable in m4, so Ill see about what coudl cause this and fiux it up ..


Is the homing order column in the Homing/SoftLimits work?  No matter what values I use in this column to set the order of which axis homes, my mill homes all axis concurrently.  I would assume (Danger Will Robinson) that setting the Z to a smaller number than the others would cause it to home first.  Setting any value to zero would disable homing for that axis.

 >> Thats an M4 thing.. I think.. I get a call for homing.. and it homes. If all three go together Im not sure where I coudl stop it. But Ill ask the guys why that might be.. perhaps the plugin is supposed to hold them to an order but that seems a bit weird..

Thx
Art

559

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach4 Printer Port Discussions

« on: July 14, 2014, 11:55:03 AM »

Hi Guys:

   Found the problem with Charge pumps and weirdness with other signals. M4 was telling enable  to turn on before re-enabling the control.
Its always been my habit to refuse IO when in EStop, so the enable got refused in many cases. Thats been fixed. The Charge pumps were a typo
on my part and are also fixed. Finally, frequency based spindles were on my list. I cant find a way to get M4 to give me any sort of frequency vs rpm
information, so I guess the plugin has to figure that out. SO Ive put a workaround in there for the moment. If you have a PWM spindle, use an even numbered
output signal and proceed as you did in previous versions. If you have a frequency spindle, use an odd numbered signal. (For example if PWM set signal #6 to
the name Spindle, and set your PWM base frequency in the freq box in darwin. All will work properly., if you have a frequency driven spindle set signal #7 to the
name Spindle. This will put out a frequency equal to the S word. S5000 will put out 5khz, etc.. ). If you just want On/OFF , then map the signal SpindleForward
instead of Spindle in Mach4. Using the Spindle output will map you to PWM or freq, depending on if the mapped SPINDLE signal is even or odd numbered.

  When you config the pulser, version numbers are now displayed for driver and dll , both should read 1.07, if they dont your driver or dll didnt update
properly. Soem people find they must delete the old driver or it will reinstall itself instead of installing the new one.

Art


 

560

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach4 Printer Port Discussions

« on: July 13, 2014, 07:34:26 AM »

Freeman:

   The charge pump should turn on and off depending on if your in EStop or not. If in ESTOP, no frequency should come out, if not that 100hz should be present, Ill check that
and report back.
  As to homing, its the specification of M4 that in homing the axis should move to the switch. No other action occurs and the home is considered complete. I was told originally that scripting or other user operations would move the axis back off the switch.....or not. However , just as in M3, if you share a home and limit, the limit safety trip is turned off until you jog, script or otherwise
make the axis move off the switch. Ill ask Brian how they handle that in other hardware , it may be a macro or other operation that moves off the switch. The Axis are all zeroed at the switch trip position so really whats needed is just an execturion of a G53X0Y0Z0 after a home to get it to move to the machien coordinate of 0,0,0.

Art