Messages

1331

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: macro failed to compile

« on: December 10, 2020, 01:39:33 PM »

Hi,
a little more thought about this....

Up until about a year ago the 'flavour or dialect' of Lua used in Mach, the language used for scripting and macros,
was Lua 5.2.

Since then Mach has been modified to run Lua 5.3.

While the differences between 5.2 and 5.3 are small many program chunks written under 5.2 will not compile under
the later 5.3 compiler.

My guess is tha its not so much that you have corrupt software but that it was written and compiled with an earlier release compiler.
The same solution applies, delete the offending chunk and compile whats left over.

Craig

1332

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: macro failed to compile

« on: December 10, 2020, 01:33:05 PM »

Hi,
then I think that one or more of the macros that has been bundled with the profile is corrupt.

Try deleting the profile and then see if Mach will compile and load.

Craig

1333

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: macro failed to compile

« on: December 10, 2020, 02:45:42 AM »

Hiu,
I doubt its the controller or drive hardware.

Mach is complaining that one piece of all the bits of code it has to compile and merge into one large runtime program is failing to compile.
That in turn prevents the runtime file from completing and Mach won't run.

Either you have a corrupted copy of Mach or more likely a corrupt screenset/GUI. Have you modified any code in the screenset?

In almost every case in the event of a compile time error the Lua compiler will do a diagnostic dump which includes the location
of the offending code. Can you post a sreenshot of the diagnostic?

Craig

1334

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Do I need Hobby or Professional?

« on: December 01, 2020, 03:22:45 AM »

Hi,
Mach4, either Hobby or Industrial can do all of those things in a lope.

Mach4 does not have 'Brains' like Mach3 but it does have PLC code that you can add to and/or edit and it has ladder logic
module called PMC which is very similar to Mach3 Brains......but so SO much faster.

Mach4 has certain standard screesets which you can edit and/or edit at will. You can add buttons, DROs and so much more.....and
you can do it live. No having to use a screen editor like you do with Mach3, all the screen editing code is built into the GUI.

Mach4 uses Lua which is way better than the VB variant of Mach3. It does have a learning curve, a steep one at that, but once mastered
you'll wonder why you stuck with VB for as long as you did. Wizards, Macros and Modules can be crafted for specialist operations like dovetails.

Craig

1335

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: When homed, machine coordinates are not 0,0,0

« on: November 28, 2020, 03:30:57 PM »

Hi

Is it a function of the machine slightly backing away from the prox's after triggering them? Any help would be appreciated.

No, at least that is my understanding.

The homing process is done by the motion controller not Mach. Mach supervises and supplies the settings data, aka the Home/Soft Limits data page.

Each axis is in turn, determined by the Homing Order setting is driven in the Home Dir at the Home Speed% setting. When a limit switch event
on that axis is detected the controller stops the axis at the max deceleration permitted, and then backs up until the home switch de-activates.
At that moment the controller sets the machine coordinate of that axis to 0, or whatever value you have in the Home Offset setting. Those coordinates
are reported to Mach4 and they form the machine coordinate positions displayed by Mach.

That is what Mach expects and to my knowledge all Mach4 ready controllers comply.

Why the Hicon should be reporting 'residual' machine positions is I suspect an issue with the Hicon rather than Mach.

I personally dislike the use of proximity switches for home switches, they work well for limit switches but are less than ideal for home switches.
Good quality snap action micro switches have a definite and repeatable hysteresis that proximity switches lack.

I use these as home switches and achieve 0.02mm repeatability without any special indexing operations.
https://nz.element14.com/honeywell/bzc-2rq18-a2/switch-basic-top-roller-plunger/dp/1525198

Would this have anything to do with soft limits? Do they need to be set up? I'm not using them currently, since I have 6 limit switches, protecting each axis +/-.

No, Soft Limits have nothing to do with Homing. Once the machine is homed (also called referenced) then and only then do Soft Limits become useful.
Note that it is still advisable to use soft limits, set up to 'go off' a few mm 'inside' the physical limit switches. The advantage of that is that the machine
can decelerate on detection of a Soft Limit violation without loss of machine reference. A physical limit switch violation causes an EStop which is a crash
stop which loses machine reference.

Physical limit switches are the absolute last line of defense against machine damage. All previous steps including checking Gcode and Soft Limits should
have detected a violation prior to physical limit switch violation, and you would have to explain to your boss, possibly in writing, why it was that those
techniques failed to safegaurd the machine and you stacked an axis into a limit switch Estop. A second event like that will see you taken off a machine
and put on floor sweeping duty, if you have a job at all.

Craig

1336

General Mach Discussion / Re: PWM vs Analog output for spindle control?

« on: November 23, 2020, 06:05:44 PM »

Hi,

My question is:. If bypass the 0-10v converter, and feed the PWM signal directly to the 1200BWD driver and use PWM duty cycle to control the speed, would I get better linearity?   

I doubt it, the non linearity is largely because the controller is actually a 'phase controlled rectifier bridge' and the transfer function ( the mathematical description
of the output verses the input) is highly non-linear with phase controlled bridges. It is in fact approximately linear to sin² over a range of 0 to 90 degrees.

Is precise speed control that important?  For years a and years we used manual mills and lathes which which not adjustable so had to accommodate whatever gear
ratio that was available.....so why the fixation on spindle speed now?

Craig

1337

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: I need more motors to set up

« on: November 18, 2020, 01:34:15 PM »

Hi,

The problem is that mach4 only offers me eight motors, but i need nine.

That is not correct.

Mach4 has six simultaneously coordinated motors (motors 0 through 5) and six Out-of-Band motors (motors 6 through 11).
Each may have up to five slave motors, thus you could have up to 36 simultaneously coordinated motors.

Despite the potential number of motors defined, Mach4 has somewhat more limited ability than the theoretical potential:
having 32 home signals, 32 ++limits and 32--limits. None-the-less you can have up to 32 motors with individual homes and limits,
more than enough!!.

I suspect the bottleneck will be the ESS, its going to run out of IO before Mach4 will.

Lets do a count up of the required IO:
nine motors each with one step and one direction signal =18 IOs
nine home switches=9 IOs
one Estop=1 IO
one drive enable (commoned to all motor drives)=1 IO
one limit input per axis=5 IOs

TOTAL IOs=34. So the ESS should be OK (having 51 IO's)

There may be a restriction  of the number of motors the ESS can address, I'm not near my machine PC to confirm
at the moment.

Craig

1338

Mach4 Plugins / Re: Adding a plugin & lost Machine diagnostics

« on: November 12, 2020, 04:46:40 PM »

Hi,
I have not done so myself but am repeating various posts on this same subject.

As you have noted certain screensets are minus some tabs that are the norm in other screensets.
The Machine Dignostics tab is missing wxRouter but is present in wx4.set for example.

If you open and load a screenset that has the desired tab and open the screen editor and expand the Main_Tabs menu
in the file tree you will find all the elements required to make the tab what it is. If you copy it you can then paste it into
a screenset of your choice.

You could for instance paste the Machine_Diagnostics tab and all its code into wxRouter. There would be
an issue when at some later date you update Mach to the latest build. wxRouter.set, your modified/augmented version
of wxRouter, the base code donor, will be overwritten by a new wxRouter screenset but which you can be bound does not
have your additions. All your additions/tweaks will have been lost. Bugger!!!

The correct procedure is to decide which of the screensets is most appropriate for your machine and make an individualised copy,
lets say MywxRouter.set for instance. You can then happily modify/add/edit etc to that set and yet be confident that when you update
your individualised screenset will not be overwritten whereas the basic screenset that you chose as base code donor will be.

Craig

1339

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Seig 2.7

« on: November 12, 2020, 02:11:59 PM »

Hi,
sorry....typo:

My mini-mill operates that way, ie three limit switches only an no limit switches

,
should be three Home switches and no Limit switches.

Craig

1340

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Seig 2.7

« on: November 12, 2020, 12:51:34 PM »

Hi,

Irrespective of the machine knowing where "it" is, I want to jog it to where "I" want it to be, and set 0,0,0 there.
And have Mach 4 let me cut from the 0,0,0 I have just set.

Is that possible?

Of course it is possible.....Mach4 would be a complete dud without being able to do that.

Given that you have a UC100 and are therefore very 'input challenged' consider having three home switches (one per axis)
and forgo limit switches.

With good limit switches and a repeatable Referencing (Homing) procedure then Soft Limits work well. While not as secure
as genuine Limit switches they still work. My mini-mill operates that way, ie three limit switches only an no limit switches
and I have operated that way for years, and in recent months it sees several hours use every day.

Craig