Messages

1411

Feature Requests / Re: steps per unit calulator NEEDS FIXING.

« on: July 06, 2020, 05:45:22 PM »

Hi,
all development on Mach3 ceased six years ago.....I doubt anything will change now.

Mach4 is equally adept at mm units or inch units.

Craig

1412

Newfangled Mill Wizard / Re: Can I add to the Tool Library??

« on: July 05, 2020, 03:06:12 PM »

Hi,
kool, thankyou.

Craig

1413

Newfangled Mill Wizard / Can I add to the Tool Library??

« on: July 03, 2020, 09:51:51 PM »

Hi,
I use MillWizard alsmost daily, its so handy for doing small jobs.

I use 0.5mm, 0.8mm and 1.5mm endmils alot. The 0.8mm and 1.5mm are four flute and the 0.5mm
are two flute.

When I go to do a new job you have to select the tool but none of these endmills occurr in the tool library.
I've not found a way to include my go-to tools in the library. Is there some technique or manipulation that I'm
missing?

Craig

1414

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach4 - Square tubing cutting with plasma (4 axis) G-code sample files

« on: July 03, 2020, 04:30:02 PM »

Hi,
Fusion 360 is free to start-ups and hobbyists and is overall....good.

Vectric seems to be slanted to decorative and/or artistic operations whereas Fusion 360 seems
better at engineering applications.

Craig

1415

Mach4 Plugins / Re: Mach4 not recognising plugin files XHC MK3_M4

« on: July 02, 2020, 03:58:03 PM »

Hi,
first you have to install both the plugin, the .m4pw file, and the signature file, the .sig file
in the plugins folder.

Then the plugin should appear in the plugins list of Machs Control/Plugin page per the attached. Enable it
and restart.

Now select the XHC board/plugin as motion device per attached.

Craig

1416

Mach4 Plugins / Re: Mach4 not recognising plugin files XHC MK3_M4

« on: June 30, 2020, 08:35:00 PM »

Hi,
you need to enable the XHC plugin by checking the tick box and then restart Mach.
You need to then select the HXC card as 'Acive Motion Controller' and again restart Mach.

Prepare to be disappointed the XHC plugin does not support Machs GUI so many of the screens and all screen editing will not work.
It would appear the XHC plugin supports the wxMach screen only (non-editable).

Craig

1417

General Mach Discussion / Re: Can you run cnc plasma cutter using Mach3 with a 24v dc Z axis motor?

« on: June 30, 2020, 03:53:37 PM »

Hi,
Mach3 is a step/direction controller, and that is what makes it ideal fo stepper motors  or servos with
ste/direction input drives.

A 24VDC motor requires an varying voltage, both amplitude and polarity, to control it. Mach3 doe not do that,
you need a drive that can and such drives require a motor position feedback device, an encoder or resolver, to
control the motor position. In short the simple and cheap 24VDC motor beomes a lot more complex and expensive
when it is required to be position controllable. A stepper is a cheaper and easier solution.

Craig

1418

General Mach Discussion / Re: Win7 64 + UC100?

« on: June 27, 2020, 05:31:57 PM »

Hi,
yes, Mach3 will run on a 64 bit OS and that will in turn will run a UC100 external motion controller.

Note that its not fair to call a UC100 a USB-parallel converter....it so much more than that although granted
it is what it appears to do. Inside the UC100 it has an FPGA which receives numeric motion data and generates
high quality pulse streams from that data. No USB-parallel can do that.

On Amazon, Ebay and the likes there are swags of Chinese fake UC100's......don't go there, they don't work like the real
thing. Buy direct from CNCDrive or their nominated distributor.

Craig

1419

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: How do I stop the pauses in motion while setting output signals?

« on: June 25, 2020, 08:45:09 PM »

Hi,
the API CntlGcodeExecuteWait(....), does just exactly as described, it waits until the move is complete BEFORE the next line of code is read.

CntlGcodeExecute(.....) does not wait. It will issue a motion command to the trajectory planner and on receipt of a successful transfer
to the planner the API function will return to the Gcode interpreter and the next line of code will be read and executed WITHOUT waiting for the previous
motion command to complete. Note the move will happen once the trajectory planner issues the PVT data to the motion buffer but in the mean time
more Gcode or other API functions are executing.

It may be that if you use the alternative execution API that the operations will execute smoothly rather than discontinuously  as at the moment.

Craig

1420

VB and the development of wizards / Re: (need help/ideas) lathe polar/C axis milling

« on: June 21, 2020, 09:13:06 PM »

Hi,
good work, it takes a bit of thinking about to generate the workarounds but it does work.
MacroB conditionals are pretty primitive whereas the conditionals in VB and Lua are much more advanced,
DoWhile, DoCase,For loops etc.

Terry, aka BR549, had a mastery of using simple constructs that allows quasi MacroB conditionals in Mach3.

Craig