Messages

1291

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Updating to Mach4 and have questions

« on: January 02, 2021, 05:12:04 PM »

Hi,
do you wish to plug/unplug the ribbon cable OR use 17 change over relays (per parallel port equiv.) OR use an electronic
'Diverter'?.

Note 'Diverter' is my own term, its not in any tech dictionary somewhere (to my knowledge). What is does is when one digital input,
or alternately a miniature toggle switch, is set: all the IO from the ESS is directed to one ribbon cable socket, and when the input (or
switch) is un-set: all the IO is directed to the alternate ribbon cable socket.

I have started this morning drawing up a circuit diagram and it looks as I could do it with 5 74LS126 IC's, which if you use the
SIOC surface mount version of the IC could be done in a circuit board of less than 70mm x 70mm. Even if you use the DIP through hole
variant the board would still be less than 70mm x 140mm.

Craig

1292

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Updating to Mach4 and have questions

« on: January 02, 2021, 11:37:32 AM »

Hi,
the ESS has supported  single point lathe threading for several years also.

Craig

1293

Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) / Re: Microstep with encoder

« on: January 01, 2021, 11:19:36 PM »

Hi,
well the advertising material certainly says 1000 counts per rev.

In any event the encoder resolution is what it is, you need to set the microstepping, and your proposal of 20 microsteps
per full step for 4000 pluses/rev sounds good. That would result in 400 steps/unit in Machs motor tuning page.

So if I understand I must choose a microstep to match the encoder max value If the value of encoder is 1000 I must set the micro step to 5 (1000/200) ?

No, you can set the microstepping higher than the encoder resolution but the actual resolution you are going to achieve is determined by the encoder.
Given that your proposed micro stepping regime is at a higher rate than the encoder suggests that you will be able to extract ALL the resolution the motor is capable of.

Craig

1294

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Updating to Mach4 and have questions

« on: January 01, 2021, 07:22:28 PM »

Hi,

Then there will be no switcharoo with cables

Don't think that will work, what you are relying on is that the inactive and depowered ESS presents no appreciable impedance to the active and powered one.
You really need to isolate the inactive device by either physically un-plugging it OR tri-state all its inputs/outputs.

Additionally the ESS at $180 is often more expensive than a BoB,  basic bi-directional C10's are $23.00 each and a C25 is $29.00. A C10 is one parallel port
equivalent whereas the C25 has one parallel port equivalent with pins 2-9 as outputs and a second parallel port equivalent with pins 2-9 as inputs.

My recomendation is to have one ESS directed to one of two breakout boards, one breakout board per machine. You can avoid having to plug/unplug cables
by using multiple change-over relays, or its electronic equivalent: parallel tri-state buffers.

Craig

1295

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Updating to Mach4 and have questions

« on: January 01, 2021, 05:06:26 PM »

Hi,

The smoothstepper has 2 ports that can funtion as parallel ports. Would it be possible to use one port for the mill and one port for the lathe?

I have given this a little thought of late, I am building a new mill but wish to keep my existing mini-mill operating while I test and tune my
new build. So my question is only slightly different to your own....can I run two separate mills independently off the one ESS albeit one at a time?
I think the answer is....yes......but with potential problems.

Firstly Mac4 is designed, although not yet released, to run multiple instances of itself. Have you ever wondered why all Lua scripts need an 'inst'
variable? One day in the future it will be because you could run multiple instances and the variable will become critical. This has not happened yet....

Lets imagine that you have one ESS but two profiles, one profile for each machine.

Mach4 can handle six motors, so you could assign three motors for one machine and three for the other. No problems right?
Mach4 allows only one out-of-band (OB) axis be spindle however. That is to say of the six potential OB axes one and only one will have all
the features that we associate with a spindle, things like m3,m4,m5 and s5000 etc. Thus you could have but one regular spindle in your
two machine scenario. You could have a second OB axis as the other spindle but you would miss on the usual control features we have
become used to. Not withstanding that lack you can use the usual jog features of an OB axis to achieve spindle like behavior.

In my case I'm not really concerned with having an operating spindle on my new build machine....yet. This exercise is only to test my
new build.

I came to the conclusion however that to really monkey with my existing installation is likely to cause me problems with my existing mini-mill,
and it has become critical to my work. I have elected not to do this.

A second option is to have still just the one ESS with two profiles as before but two breakout board assemblies, one for each machine.
It would require that you unplug the ribbon cable(s) from one machine BoB assembly and plug in the alternate BoB assembly.
Not quite as convenient but I suspect very much less likely to cause issues with one machine setup screwing with the other.

It has always been my intention to make my own breakout board, electronics is my thing. My own design would be perfectly tailored to my
machine with regard to balance of inputs and outputs, the circuit characteristics of each input, (24V tolerant?, opto isolated?) and
output (line driver vs single ended?, active high vs active low?, 24V or 5V?). Thus if I advanced the timeline for this project I could
have my two BoB assemblies without any extra purchases.

If you follow this general idea, that is, one ESS, two profiles and two BoB assemblies, you could automate it somewhat that would mean
that you did not have to repeatedly plug and unplug the cables. You could have in each profile one digital output that when set caused
all the ESS IO be directed to one BoB assembly and when unset all IO be sent to the alternate BoB assembly. Would require a dozen or
so tri-state buffer ICs (74lLS125's for example), and some logic to glue it together. If you are handy with electronics I could help you with a design.

Just as a matter of clarification the ESS has three equivalent parallel ports while the nearly obsolete USS early model had only two parallel port equivalents.

Craig

1296

Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) / Re: Microstep with encoder

« on: January 01, 2021, 03:23:30 PM »

Hi,
I would double check the:

. The encoder have 1000 CPR.

I rather suspect that the encoder is 1000 line per rev which would make it, with quadrature encoding, 4000 count per revolution.
Almost all of the closed loop steppers I've seen advertised are 1000 line, a subtle difference in terminology.

I'm not sure that microstepping has any relevance, the best resolution you can obtain is determined by the finest resolution of your encoder,
1000 count per your post or 4000 count per my guess.

One of the few and genuine advantages that closed loop steppers offer over open loop steppers is resolution. With open loop steppers no matter
what you microstep settings are you can really only expect genuine resolvable steps of half full steps, ie 400 steps per rev.  Closed loop steppers
can however genuinely interpolate between steps up to the max resolution of the encoder.

I otherwise agree with your calculation. May I suggest plug the numbers into the Mach4 Control plugin and try it. You'll soon see if when you MDI a
100 mm move whether it moves 100mm or not.

Craig

1297

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Updating to Mach4 and have questions

« on: January 01, 2021, 03:06:01 PM »

Hi,
there are external motion controllers that have a Mach4 plugin that are USB connected:

UC100, one parallel port equivalent=17 IOs
PMDX412, one parallel port equivalent=17 IOs
57CNCdb25, one parallel port equivalent=17 IOs

There is a greater selection of Ethernet connected Mach4 external motion controllers:

Ethernet SmoothStepper, 51 IOs
UC400ETH, 34 IOs
UC300, 85 IOs
57CNC, 57 IOs
PMDX424, 34 IOs
Hicon Integra, not sure how many IOs, depends a little on what extra equipment you buy, but lots of IOs
CSMIO/S and CSMIO/A, not sure how many IOs, but plenty.

You see that the USB connected devices only have one parallel port equivalents worth of IO, whereas all the Ethernet connected
devices have at least two parallel port equivalents worth of IO, and in many cases much more than that.

One of the greatest advances that Mach4 offers over Mach3 is the ability to customize your machine by the addition of switches, sensors
etc, write Lua scripts to handle the extra inputs, and modify the behavior of your machine to suit. Much of that power and flexibility is lost
if you are constricted with just 17IOs.

Another of the problems with USB connected devices is poor noise immunity. They are to all intents and purposes not useful
for any plasma machines, the electrical noise of the plasma defeats the USB every time. Ethernet connected devices have much
better noise immunity.

A second issue is latency. USB data is transmitted in packets several milliseconds apart, whereas Ethernet the time between packets
is much reduced, several hundreds of micro seconds. If you are waiting for a piece of data from your controller you could be
waiting for something like ten times longer with USB vs Ethernet.

I would have to recommend to anyone who wants to upgrade to Mach4 that they get an Ethernet connected device, despite the extra cost
and required 5V supply. A good and capable controller you will have for years, whereas an underperforming, noise prone and IO challenged
device is likely be thrown against the wall in frustration in short order.

Craig

1298

General Mach Discussion / Re: Just installed Mach4 V2 in conjunction with a UC100 controller and......

« on: December 30, 2020, 01:09:30 AM »

Hi,
try the CNCDrive website.

How much assistance you'll get is debatable. CNCDrive are the manufacturers of UCCNC software, almost a direct competitor to Mach4.
It is highly likely that you'll get little assistance, specially if they have UCCNC customers to attend.

I'm sure that if you posted on the Mach4 General Discussion board you will find users that have had success with the UC100 and Mach4.

I personally use an Ethernet SmoothStepper, and is much preferred over a UC100. Firstly the manufacturer (Warp9TD) is committed to Mach4,
it has three parallel port equivalents of IO (51 IO's) vs the UC100 one port equivalent (17 IO's), is Ethernet connected for less latency and
greater noise immunity, and the Mach4 plugin is very much more complete, things like realtime THC, single point lathe threading, backlash comp
all of which the UC100 misses out on.

The UC100 is well regarded and widely used for Mach3. It maybe you could sell it to a Mach3 user and then get something a bit more useful for Mach4.
It might be unpalatable but is still probably the least fuss way to maximize the investment you've already committed to.

Craig

1299

General Mach Discussion / Re: Just installed Mach4 V2 in conjunction with a UC100 controller and......

« on: December 29, 2020, 01:23:14 PM »

Hi,
As I posted earlier I'm not able to help with the UC100 set-up as I have an Ethernet SmoothStepper.

I would guess that the #13 that is red is an Estop.......and the Estop precludes you from doing anything else.
Can you identify from the manual the significance of #13?

Craig

1300

General Mach Discussion / Re: Just installed Mach4 V2 in conjunction with a UC100 controller and......

« on: December 29, 2020, 03:04:39 AM »

Hi,
this post is best on the Mach4 General Discussion board, I have no doubt that Tweakie will shift it there in due course.

In order for the UC100 to run Mach4 you must use the CNCDrive supplied Mach4 plugin. Is that what you have used? It will
be in the form of two files, one ended .m4pw and the other ended .sig. Have you installed them in Mach4Hobby/Plugins folder?

You then need to open Machs Control Plugin and enable the newly installed UC100 plugin. Restart Mach.

Now you need to set the UC100 as the active motion control device. Restart Mach.

You should now be in a position to open the UC100 plugin and start populating it. As I use an Ethernet SmoothStepper my
experience will differ from yours.

One last question: Are you 100% sure that the UC100 that you have is a genuine CNCDrive UC100? There are dozens
of cheaper Chinese knock-offs on Ebay and Amazon and they won't work with Mach4, in fact they're not that good with
Mach3 either.

Craig