Messages

1671

General Mach Discussion / Re: Mach3 ESS and Endurance 10W Laser

« on: March 05, 2020, 02:54:46 AM »

Hi,
port 1 pin 17 from the ESS is buffered and converted to an analogue output on the C62.
If you wish to get access to the raw TTL PWM output (buffered) then you will have to solder a wire between
the buffer IC and the digital-to-analogue circuit.

Craig

1672

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Modbus ASCII Support for Mach4?

« on: March 04, 2020, 04:15:25 PM »

Hi,
the Mach4  Modbus plugin supports ASCII and RTU protocols.

Modbus however is not a realtime communication protocol and so can not be used to control synchronous
axis servos.

Craig

1673

General Mach Discussion / Re: Possible configuration problem on new Mach3 installation

« on: March 04, 2020, 04:10:08 PM »

Hi,
thats good news. A genuine UC100 has an FPGA inside and it is a motion controller , way WAY WAY more sophisticated
than a USB to parallel converter. Of course it looks and appears like being a USB to parallel but it is in fact a genuine
motion controller.

Where did you get it? The Chinese make any number of fakes and they are not a patch on the real thing.
A genuine UC100 requires you install a special driver, an ordinary USB driver doesn't work. Did you install such a driver?

You need to install the UC100 plugin in Machs plugin folder and select the UC100 as the active motion controller, have you done so?

Given that your PC is no longer burdened with the responsibility of generating pulse streams (Machs parallel port) you can use just about
any PC you like, including 64 bit OS's up to and including Windows10.

You report the UC100 operating correctly but what breakout board are you using? Can you get the EStop input to stop Mach?

Craig

1674

General Mach Discussion / Re: Stepper motor speed varriations

« on: March 04, 2020, 01:21:25 PM »

Hi,
what happens when you MDI G0 moves on each axis rather than keyboard jog?

Craig

1675

General Mach Discussion / Re: Possible configuration problem on new Mach3 installation

« on: March 03, 2020, 06:56:31 PM »

Hi,

We had to get a parallel port to USB adapter for the new PC.

Mach's parallel port WILL NOT WORK with a USB to parallel adapter.

You must have a genuine parallel port or parallel port card fitted to the PC. Note also that a parallel port WILL NOT work
with ANY 64bit OS, it requires 32 bit Windows 7 or earlier and a desktop not a laptop.

If you wish or need to use either USB or Ethernet then you MUST use an external motion controller like an ESS or UC300.
Avoid cheap Chinese controllers, they don't work like they should and you won't get any help from them.

Craig

1676

General Mach Discussion / Re: I can Jog Fine but everything stutters when running GCode or even calibrating.

« on: March 01, 2020, 12:37:31 AM »

Hi,

However if it doesn't move home when simply hitting the home button I do not understand why it would running gcode

When you hit the Home button....do you actually know what is going on inside Mach? Does it shift a certain number of steps or what?
When you execute the small Gcode program I have suggested then you know EXACTLY what Mach is supposed to do. If your motor
tuning is 500 steps per unit say, then a move of 100mm should produce EXACTLY 500 x 100=50,000 steps, if you had a  pulse
or frequency counter you could count the pulses and confirm Mach/ESS/BoB. Can you do the same when you hit the Home button?

I have decay set to 0, Torque 100% and steps to 2, not 8.  I can try that again however anything other than 2 the motor makes a high pitched wine and will move very fast and continually stall out. 

That absolutely wrong and suggests a fault right there. If you set the microstepping to 2, that is called 'halfstepping' and
therefore 400 pulse per rev, exactly double the number of 'fullsteps' per revolution. If you set the microstepping to 8
then the number of steps per revolution is 1600 steps/rev. If the motor tuning remains the same then the axis should move
at 1/8 the speed of fullstepping and 1/4 the speed of half stepping. If its trying to move faster then your settings are wrong.

I still don't know what your drivers or steppers are but that description suggests that there is a fault or you are misapplying
the settings somehow. I repeat....'what drivers?'....'what motor specs, including inductance?'.

Either way you absolutely need to establish why your drivers are not responding to the microstepping settings correctly.

One thing that sticks out is the acceleration.  When I first built the router and started jogging around the motors rampped up, starting slow and increasing in speed until at full speed.  After a bit that stopped and the motors just start and stop at full speed.  I have not been able to get them to start slow and ramp up after that.  Not sure if I changed a setting or why that action changed. 

This is plain faulty, without an acceleration phase at the start of any move I would expect a stepper to stall. Likewise I would expect more
missed steps if the axis did not have a deceleration phase.

In the first instance try and sort out the driver/stepper combination....it may, with any sort of luck, rectify this second fault as well.

Craig

1677

General Mach Discussion / Re: I can Jog Fine but everything stutters when running GCode or even calibrating.

« on: February 29, 2020, 06:16:57 PM »

Hi,
it sounds like you have experimented enough to have established that the fault IS NOT Mach, nor the ESS, nor probably
the BoB.

I suspect that either (or both) the driver or motor are faulty.

What model driver and motor, and in particular what are the motor specs....including the winding inductance?.

My suggestion is to set up Mach/ESS/BoB to systematically test the motor/driver combination. You have been conducting
various tests in a scatter gun approach and it has not produced any meaningful results.

First, set the driver current to the rated stepper current....then leave it at that setting. Altering the current settings is
just confusing the issue. At best reducing the current reduces the torque and therefore INCREASES the likelyhood of
missing steps.

Second set the microstepping to 8 microsteps per full step, ie 1600 steps/rev and leave it there. Altering the microstepping
is confusing you.....it is just not relevant to the issue you want to solve.

Now you need to devise a Gcode program designed to test the motion of an axis. I would suggest something like:

g1 x100 f200
x0
x100
x0
x100
x0
x100
x0
x100
x0

Note I have assumed millimeter units.
Note also that I have used g1 so that the rate of motion is determined by the feed rate f.
This allows you to have several programs with indentical motion, that is back and forth 100mm, at different
speeds, from slow, say 200mm/min up to the max of your machine say 5000mm/min.

Tune the X axis motor for some very high and probably unobtainable max speed, like 20,000mm/min but set the
acceleration low, say 100mm/s².

Now work through your test programs, starting at the lowest speed, that is f=200. If at the end of the test the X axis
returns to the original start point, that is, it has not lost steps then you can conclude that with the motor tuned
to low acceleration, 100mm/s² the motor did not miss steps at f=200mm/min.

Now run the same program but with f=400mm/min say. Should that test conclude successfully, run the program again but
with f=600 etc.

Eventually you will find a feed rate that means that the stepper starts missing steps. You have just exceeded the maximum reliable
speed of that stepper. It may be slower than you want but that's too damn bad....this is what you have got. Carry on with the other
tests and once they are complete you may then ask the question 'are the test results I have obtained a genuine and correct
reflection of the hardware limitations or is there a fault....maybe power supply/signaling/extraneous electrical noise?

You should now have systematically found the maximum speed of your stepper, lets say it is 3000mm/min. If you reduce the feed rate
to somewhat less than 3000mm/min you could expect the stepper to NOT miss steps and therefore always correctly return to the
starting point. Write your test program with a feed rate of about half of your established maximum, say 1500mm/min.

Now you run your test program again, but always at the same feed rate, namely 1500mm/min. Between each successive run of
your program increase the tuning of the motors max acceleration by 50mm/s².  Eventually you will find a limit
such that if Mach attempts to accelerate that axis beyond that limit, say 350mm/s² then the axis will stall.
You have established the maximum acceleration the driver/stepper/power supply can sustain. Your operation of this stepper
will require that you apply tuning LESS than this maximum.

Please conduct the tests and report back.

There are a number of choices to be made about maximum velocity and maximum acceleration that can be made and applied to
you motor tuning, it is not for instance always desirable to go for max reliable speed, acceleration is often much more important to
accurate toolpath following and should be favoured over max speed.

Craig

1678

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Problem with "Tool Offset" and “Current Position”

« on: February 29, 2020, 03:23:04 PM »

Hi,
this post should be in the Mach4 General Discussion Board and no doubt tweakie will shift it there in due course.

Mach (3 or 4) has two modes of calculating the current position, the first WITHOUT tool length compensation and the other
WITH tool length compensation.

May I suggest reading G43/G43 Tool Length Offset on page 42 of 'Mill Gcode Programming Guide' in Mach4/Docs.

My guess is you don't have G43 active.

Craig

1679

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Script editor strange behavior - or is it me?

« on: February 28, 2020, 11:37:29 PM »

Hi,
this post belongs on the Mach4 General Discussion Board and no doubt tweakie will shift it there.

I'm trying to edit my ScreenScript.lua

ScreenScrpit.lua IS NOT EDITABLE.

It is in fact ALL the Lua code fragments/marcos put together into one large file, it is not nor was ever intended to be
editable.  If you wish to edit it you must edit that Lua fragment and that edited fragment will get included in the new ScreenScript.lua.

Craig

1680

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Z zero randomly changes on its own

« on: February 28, 2020, 06:59:36 PM »

Hi,
you don't have any extraneous setting in the Offsets Tab do you?

How about taking a screenshot of the machine diagnostics block when this happens.

Craig