Messages

2511

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Huanyang GT-5R5G-2 VFD control spindle on/off & Fwd/Rev Mach4

« on: May 10, 2019, 04:14:47 PM »

Hi,
P0.01 bottom of page 28 and top of page 29.

You need to set P0.01 to 1 in order that the VFD be controlled by the multifunction input terminals.

Craig

2512

General Mach Discussion / Re: Motors stalling /growling

« on: May 10, 2019, 04:02:09 PM »

Hi,
good question.

The fact that the machine does perform well on most occasions but not all suggests to me that the hardware is
OK.

I am still of the opinion that Mach3. or rather the parallel port driver, is going cranky at certain times. The DriverTest.exe
is very good indeed but what it does not do is show how the parallel port performs when 'under load' ie running Gcode.

I would now be trying to observe the step output pulse with an oscilloscope. That may not be easy. Even modest variation
can cause what looks to be a very poor trace. There are some scopes that collect histogram data about the signal under
test  but they are rare beasts but wuld be ideal for this purpose.

Craig

2513

General Mach Discussion / Re: Motors stalling /growling

« on: May 10, 2019, 03:47:26 PM »

Hi,
that is a very good plot. The average jitter is 3.2 us which is very good.

I would expect this PC to run smoothly.

Craig

2514

General Mach Discussion / Re: Can't Install Mach3 on my PC

« on: May 10, 2019, 11:20:39 AM »

Hi,
the cheap USB external controllers supplied typically have the equivalent of 'one ports' worth of IO,
that is the same number of inputs and outputs as Machs parallel port......12 outputs and 5 inputs.

You are pretty much required to have one input as an Estop. that leaves just four inputs for limit switches,
home switches and a probe. As you can see inputs are at a premium.

Over the years many people have used different wiring schemes to combine as many limit and home switches together
to conserve inputs.

You will have to identify the inputs on your board and use those. Support and documentation for those cheap USB
boards is atrocious. Good luck.

I bought an Ethernet SmoothStepper (ESS) and it has 'three ports' worth of IO, 51 inputs and outputs....plenty!
It means I don't have to combine limit and home switches. My current setup has three home switches (x,y,z), each
on there own input and all six limit switches wired in series on another input and one input for a probe.
I could, and in fact should, have all six limit switches on individual inputs, it lessens confusion and improves
the safety and security when recovering from a limit event. The ESS has plenty of spare inputs so why not use them?

Craig

2515

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Huanyang GT-5R5G-2 VFD control spindle on/off & Fwd/Rev Mach4

« on: May 10, 2019, 11:00:17 AM »

Hi,
my understanding is that the older model Huanyang VFD's had a non standard Modbus setup and caused a lot of grief
for users. The later model VFD's like your GT model now conform to industry standard Modbus.

Like all VFD's you have to nominate the primary source of control. Typically they come in default condition
to be controlled by the keypad.

In this case however you wish the ON/OFF and FWD/REV to be controlled by Machs outputs and speed controlled
by the PWM derived analogue voltage. Typically the parameters for setting this control mode is right at the very top
of the parameter tree......P0.nnn or P1.nnn.  Have a look at the instructions to determine which parameter/parameters
are responsible for setting the control mode.

Craig

2516

General Mach Discussion / Re: Motors stalling /growling

« on: May 10, 2019, 10:37:18 AM »

Hi,
the main data to be retrieved by DriverTest.exe is the timing jitter of the interrupt timer. On most
PC's on which I have run Mach's parallel port the jitter is about 4us.

If you have Mach's kernel speed set to 25kHz the period is 40us. The jitter is therefore 10% of the period.
If you set the kernel speed to 35kHz with the same 4us jitter the percentage is 14%, ie worse.

The Mach wisdom passed down is that 'run Mach at the lowest kernel speed consistent with the minimum required
to meet the maximum output pulse train determined by the motor tuning'. Mach's parallel port runs more smoothly at lower
kernel speeds not higher.

Craig

2517

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: A few MCode questions - Mach 4

« on: May 09, 2019, 03:04:57 PM »

Hi,
a few things that might help.

First name all your m  code macros m100 or higher. All of Machs built in macros are m99 or less. If you name your macro
in the same namespace you risk corrupting a in built function.

Second all macro names an calls should be lowercase without leading zeros. On a windows PC
M25 and m25
are the same, however Machs Gcode interpreter is looking for 'm25', I suggest using lowercase because you will end up with
impossible to detect errors otherwise. On a Linux PC which is case sensitive the equivalence fails.

X10M25

There is no 'goto' command contained within that line. I assume you mean g0 or g1?
The linear movement commands are modal thus:
g0 x10
x0
x10
x0
x10
x0

will cause the x axis to move back an forth 10 units at rapid traverse rate established by the modal g0 at the top.

The line that you posted:
X10M25
is relying on Mach already being in g0 (or g1) mode already, but because you have include an m25 command on the same line
the previously prevalent mode is lost.

This would work:
x10
m25

In this circumstance the x10 'goto' command is executed under the existing motion mode and then the second (m25) line is executed.

Look up mcCntlGcodeExecuteWait() and mcCntlGcodeExecute() in the API.chm

Craig

2518

General Mach Discussion / Re: Motors stalling /growling

« on: May 08, 2019, 02:27:08 PM »

Hi
please post a screenshot of DriverTest.exe.

Craig

2519

General Mach Discussion / Re: Can't Install Mach3 on my PC

« on: May 07, 2019, 03:24:36 AM »

Hi,

NFS= NewFangled Solutions, the current business name of what was Artsoft.

What was very common with Chinese made controllers was that they did not support certain features of Mach, probing for example.
What they did was modify Mach to work with their controller because it would fail with standard Mach.

Craig

2520

General Mach Discussion / Re: Motors stalling /growling

« on: May 06, 2019, 04:45:20 AM »

Hi,

Jog may appear Ok because the MACH3 Factory default Jog speed is at 50% (unless it had been changed by user).

True....however this from OP:

in motor tuning I have set my/ steps per, to 1600/ and I have changed my velocity and acceleration to many different numbers

rather suggests that he has tried a range of accel/speed that might have given acceptable results.

Craig