Messages

1431

General Mach Discussion / Re: new here, question about mach software capabilities

« on: June 15, 2020, 05:05:23 PM »

Hi,

nice, could you recomend me a exemple setup for me to be based on?

Not quite sure what you mean. You can download Mach3 and/or Mach4 free in Demo mode. Experimentation
may prove that one is better for your needs than another, although I would guess that if you want an indexing
spindle axis and/or a coordinated spindle then Mach4 has better features for that purpose.

In effect Mach4 requires an external motion controller (hardware) There is a parallel port called Darwin ($25 license fee applies)
and requires 32 bit Windows7 or earlier just as Mach3's parallel port requires. Darwin is not and is not intended as a fully featured
motion controller and thus an external motion controller is the right choice.

There are seven different manufacturers of Mach4 ready motion controllers and can seem initially at least to be a bewildering choice.
Excluding the one Chinese manufacturer (XHC) that has an extremely buggy implementation and CSLabs which have an expensive
albeit good quality device but has a buggy plugin, any of the remaining manufacturers have good products and well supported.

At the current time probably the most complete realtime support suite is offered by the Ethernet SmoothStepper (ESS) at $180. The Hicon Integra
is another fully featured product but starts at $600.

Note that the ESS, UC300  requires one or more breakout boards, which can range from $23 to $180 depending on the sophistication of the board.
The PoKeys 57CNC does not require a breakout board but benefits from it. The Hicon Integra and PMDX-424 do not require a breakout board,
it is in effect built-in to the controller.

May I suggest download and experiment with Mach, 3 or 4 or both, and then decide if it warrants investment in hardware. Some of the very
simplest controllers are around $120 but better developed solutions with more IO and a breakout board  are in the range $250 to $360 and the
Hicon at $600. Avoid XHC like the plauge. CSMIO products (600 Euro) are good quality but the plugin is somewhat buggy, hard to recommend.
Note my caution about CSMIO products applies to their Mach4 plugin, their Mach3 plugin is on the other hand very good indeed.

Craig

1432

Mach3 under Vista / Re: mach3 demo with windows7 64 bit system cant get stepper motor to work

« on: June 15, 2020, 10:12:57 AM »

Hi,
Mach's parallel port wold run on one (32bit) PC well but not on another (32 bit) PC without any ryhme or reason.
The simple expedient is to get an external motion controller like an Ethernet SoothStepper.

Thereafter you can use just about any PC, 32 or 64 bit, any Windows OS from XP through Windows 10, and laptop
or desktop. In addition Mach will be less inclined to stutter or stall with other software on the PC being either installed
or running, alway a definite no-no with a parallel port.

The $180 cost of an ESS is the best single improvement I ever made to my machine,

Craig

1433

General Mach Discussion / Re: new here, question about mach software capabilities

« on: June 15, 2020, 12:13:55 AM »

Hi,
yes Mach can handle that.

All development on Mach3 ceased six years ago so if you are new I would recommend Mach4 because it is under active development. Having said that
there are many thousands of Mach3 users.

Mach (3 or 4) is optimally a milling CNC software, is does have lathe features, certainly Mach4 does a good job with indexing/positional spindles,
aka a Caxis.

Craig

1434

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Help with Mach4 simple button - dro script

« on: June 14, 2020, 10:28:35 PM »

Hi,
Lua is a bit of a learning curve, in fact its not really Lua but more Mach4's structure and API.
Notwithstanding the effort required to get to the point of writing your own code the combination
of Machs structure, API and the surprisingly flexible functionality of Lua is very powerful, and to master it
is very rewarding.

Keep up the good work.

Craig

1435

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Spindle Brake Switch

« on: June 14, 2020, 10:11:45 PM »

Hi,
when Mach's Gcode interpreter encounters an 'm' code (note the use of lowercase) it first searches in the
macros folder of the current profile, if it doesn't find it there it searches 'up the file tree' until it does.

For example if you have an m3 in your code Mach will search for m3 in your macros folder. If it doesn't find it there
it searches upwards until it find Mach's built in standard m3 macro and executes that.

If you wanted you own code to run you write your own m3 and stick it in the macros folder of your profile. Then when the
Gcode interpreter is searching for 'm3' it will find your macro and execute that instead.

You need to use some caution, it maybe that Machs built in code does something like turn a signal on that you are not aware of.
Thus when it runs your m3 that signal would not get turned on because you didn't explicitly code it to happen. In short you need to
include in your m3 all the functionality of Machs built in m3 plus whatever extra you want.

Second issue is that Machs Gcode interpreter parses code it converts all uppercase to lowercase, strips out leading zeros and whitespace.
So  Mach will search for 'm3' but if you named your macro 'M3' it might get missed because they are strictly speaking different names.
Get into the habit of writing all Lua  and Gcode in lowercase without leading zeros. I find to make my code readable I leave whitespace emedded
within the string....and have thus far not encountered any problems.

Craig

1436

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: ShuttlePro Wheel time lag

« on: June 14, 2020, 06:58:05 PM »

Hi,
if you have the shuttle wheel setup with a high increment value then it is possible for you to issue more incremental moves
than the machine cankeep up with and therefore it stores them up in a buffer. When you stop spinning the wheel the steps stored in the buffer complete
leading to a seeming 'after-run'. It is doing exactly as it should.

My VistaCNC pendant did exactly the same when I had set 1mm per step. It was possible for me to store up significant movement in the buffer
with the after-run that entails. Even when I reduced the max increment to 0.5mm if I spun the MPG vigorosly it was possible to build up stored incremental
moves in the buffer which is the root cause of after-run. When I set the maximum to 0.1mm per step, the machine goes as fast as I can spin the wheel without any
(noticable) after-run, if I go really REALLY crazy trying to spin the MPG I can cause a few mm's worth of after-run. Under normal operating I now no longer
get any after-run.

Another alternative is to use Velocity mode rather than Step mode. In Velocity mode the axis advances at a speed proportional to the MPG
pulse rate. When the MPG pulses stop then the axis stops. This means however that the distance jogged is not tied to the number of MPG pulses,
but rather its speed.

In Step mode the axis will move exactly the right distance, that is, if you jog 69 'clicks' then the axis will advance 69 x (prevailing increment value).
That's exactly what it should do and is by far my prefered mode. If I need to move the axis 10mm I spin the wheel exactly once, that is 100 'clicks'.

Craig

1437

General Mach Discussion / Re: Mach 3 backlash and circular interpolation

« on: June 14, 2020, 05:20:53 AM »

Hi,
backlash compensation is a myth. If you are trying to cut circular paths and your machine has
backlash the results are as you described. Fix the backlash.

Craig

1438

General Mach Discussion / Re: What to buy for a new project

« on: June 12, 2020, 01:08:25 AM »

Hi,

(I guess you did something called a "thread split")

No. I didn't but probably Tweakie, he is an active forum moderator.

That kit also includes a power supply.  In many DIY CNC projects, I see a big toroid.  Will one be needed for a servo kit like this?

DMM have two types of servo drives, the DYN2 which requires 75VDC input, so a high current power supply will be required.
The DYN4 however, a few dollars more, has 230VAC input, so no power supply required. The higher voltage allows full exploitation
of the servo whereas the low voltage driver cannot quite extract all that the servo is capable of.

Delta B2 series (160,000 count encoder), A2 series (1,280,000 count encoder and load sensing), A3 series (24 bit absolute encoder) and B3 series
(24 bit absolute multiturn encoder) are all 230VAC input, so no extra supply required.

Craig

1439

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Help with Mach4 simple button - dro script

« on: June 11, 2020, 03:34:17 PM »

Hi,
start here:
https://www.machsupport.com/forum/index.php?topic=40051.0

Craig

1440

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Help with Mach4 simple button - dro script

« on: June 11, 2020, 03:06:24 AM »

Hi,
you are using the 'scr.GetProperties(…)' functions and that is not their purpose.
You can indeed read the a DRO using scr.GetPropeties….but you are reading the graphic screen element, not the underlying Mach variable
that holds the true numeric value.

For example, this a one of Machs API's that 'reads' or otherwise retrieves the position of an axis:

Code: [Select]

LUA Syntax:
pos, rc = mc.mcMotionGetPos(
number mInst,
number motorId)

Or you could read a register with:

Code: [Select]

LUA Syntax:
value, rc = mcRegGetValue(
number hReg)

Or read a pound variable:

Code: [Select]

LUA Syntax:
value, rc = mc.mcCntlGetPoundVar(
number mInst,
number param)

Likewise when you want to set a specific value you should use the API's that address and update the register or pound variable designated to store
that data rather than just writing some alpha-numeric characters to the screen, are you even sure for instance that writing a value to the screen
would actually be stored in a Mach register or variable at all?

Craig