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Messages - joeaverage

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2871
General Mach Discussion / Re: Mach3 / PMDX-122 Issue
« on: March 19, 2019, 10:55:38 PM »
Hi,

Ok, not familiar with that stepper drive but I see from the pic of your BoB you have four wires going to each drive,
two of which are Com and the other two presumably Step and Direction. I would have thought that you would need
at least two more wires, one for yet another Com and the remaining wire an Enable.

Do you have any documentation for the driver?

Craig

2872
General Mach Discussion / Re: Mach3 / PMDX-122 Issue
« on: March 19, 2019, 09:47:50 PM »
Hi,

Quote
)...when I put my meter across the USB it appears to short the BoB out....meaning all the LEDs go dark when I connect my meter.

That doesn't sound correct to me.

Can you use your meter to measure some other known good voltage source? Please confirm that the leads are plugged in
to the meter to measure voltage (high impedance input) not to measure current (low impedance input).

Is it possible that the USB cable or the USB port into which it is plugged is faulty? Looking at the pic of your BoB
there is a regular DC input jack adjacent to the USB socket. Do you have a supply that could be plugged in there
to try it?

It also looks like from the pic that the LEDs associated with each output are working? Is that correct? It is those
LEDs I would expect to change state when you run the MDI codes I posted earlier.

I notice also that you have wires running from the step/dir pins (pairs 2&3, 4&5, 6&7) but I don't see any enable
wire/wires hooked up. Can you post a pic of your stepper driver? I'm just guessing that they have an enable input
which you are not energizing.

Craig

2873
Hi,
I think there are a number of issues that you need to consider.....and probably the choice between Mach3 or Mach4 is
less important than others.

The first thing that occurs to me is that you want to be able to load your machine and then to all intents and purposes
walk away from it while its working. I don't know how much CNC machining you have done but that sounds like a disaster
waiting to happen.

There is a reason that production companies employ CNC operators to run their machines......they need looking after.
Things like tool wear....the tool goes blunt....it overloads and breaks. The machine can't tell, that's the operators job.
A piece of material shifts in a vice, the machine cant tell and it carries on machining...crash.  Mach3 (or Mach4
or LinuxCNC or UCCNC.....) has a moment and your steppers lose steps, the machine can't tell and it carries on
machining....crash.

I could go on listing examples but the bottom line is that a CNC machine needs supervision. Very expensive production
machines with equally expensive dedicated hardware controllers like Fanuc and Seimens ($20,000 plus) run reliably
enough that an experienced operator might monitor several machines but still each machine needs supervision.

I would recommend that if you have a good quality machine which has been well integrated with a Mach3 controller
then I would stick with it for some time. Make some parts, gain some lots of experience. Once you have that
experience you will also know whether further automation of starting/stopping/loading material is realistic or not.

As far as the debate between Mach3 and Mach4.....both are Gcode interpreters and trajectory planners, so they both read
nearly identical Gcode and cut nearly identical toolpaths. There is little to pick and choose between them.
The real strength of Mach4 is its ability and flexibility to be customized. You are not ready yet to customize your machine
and therefore see no reason to break up what you have got.

Further down the track when you do, if your experience concludes that automation is desirable and realistic, then consider
the change to Mach4. If indeed your controller is based on an Ethernet SmoothStepper then you could change to Mach4
without any hardware changes or rewiring.

Changing from Mach3 to Mach4 can be quite challenging. No doubt if you do some reading on the forum you will find
comments along the lines 'Mach4 is complicated to set up', and there is a certain amount of truth to that. All that flexibility
that I have mentioned comes at a cost of complexity. Many recent converts or those upgrading from Mach3 seem to be of
the opinion that the software should operate this way......and another believes it should operate that way.....and all seem to
believe that it should operate perfectly with no setup involved. That is not the case. Fortunately there is now an increasing
body of knowledge on the forum and, say, the Warp9 website to assist.

You can put a ring around spending a week or more pulling your hair out but once over that hump it is much easier,
even a pleasure.

Thereafter there is still the challenge of learning Lua, the Mach4 scripting language. As it turns out Lua itself is pretty simple
but you need to combine that with understanding the underlying control structure and API of Mach4. I'm not going to say
its easy but its far from impossible. Once you have that under your belt then Mach4 is limited by your imagination only.

Craig

2874
Hi,
what you have described is certainly possible in Mach4, I've upgraded from Mach3 2-1/2 years ago.

I'm sure it would be possible in Mach3 as well.......almost anything you can do in one you can do in the other.
Mach4s strength is the ease and flexibility with which it can be customized. The scripting language of Mach3 is
less flexible and so would require a greater effort to program as you wish but possible.

If indeed you have a SmoothStepper (Ethernet SmoothStepper by Warp9TD) then you could run Mach4 if you wish.

Craig

2875
General Mach Discussion / Re: Mach3 / PMDX-122 Issue
« on: March 19, 2019, 02:04:30 PM »
Hi,
can you confirm with a multimeter the power supply to the BoB?

Craig

2876
Mach3 under Vista / Re: RnR Mtion Card Not Found
« on: March 19, 2019, 02:00:59 PM »
Hi,
a Gecko G540 is a parallel port input device whereas your existing board is a USB input external motion controller,
different animal. Unless your PC is Windows 7 32 bit or earlier then a parallel port is not an option.

If you want an external motion controller to replace what you have then I would recommend US or European made.
Just about all of them are Ethernet connected these days as they are very much preferred over USB in CNC use.
The Ethernet SmoothStepper by Warp9 or a UC300 by CNCDrive are worthy boards.

There are plenty of Chinese boards, many of them USB connected, but they don't work at all well, if they work at all
and you will get no help from them if you encounter trouble. Don't go there.

Craig

2877
Mach3 under Vista / Re: RnR Mtion Card Not Found
« on: March 19, 2019, 01:10:33 PM »
Hi,

Quote
Could it be a problem with my CNC controller board? I was experiencing some static on my final job and wonder whether the contoller board may have been damaged.

Yes, it is possible, even likely. Those boards are cheap and low quality. Very little is known about them.

Craig

2878
Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Proper way to use work / tool offsets
« on: March 19, 2019, 10:09:49 AM »
Hi,

Quote
Does Mach 4 support the extended work offsets beyond G59?

Yes. Open the Fixture Table and scroll down.

Craig

2879
General Mach Discussion / Re: Mach3 / PMDX-122 Issue
« on: March 18, 2019, 11:54:58 PM »
Hi,

Quote
but what do you mean BoBs?

Sorry, it means 'breakout board', in your case the PMDX-122.

The fact that you can cause an Estop by hitting the button confirms that an input to the PMDX-122 is propagating
through it to Mach. Its a pretty fair bet then that the reverse is true, that is that Mach can communicate to the BoB.

We can test that.

MDI he following:
G0 X1
X0
X1
X0
X1
X0

That sequence would ideally cause the X axis to move back and forth one unit. What I want you to look for
is the LEDs associated with the X axis stepper driver. I would guess pins 2 and 3 are associated to the X axis,
and probably pin3 is the direction pin. With the sequence of moves I would expect the LED to light in one direction
but then go out in the other direction. Does this in fact happen?

Craig

2880
General Mach Discussion / Re: Mach3 / PMDX-122 Issue
« on: March 18, 2019, 11:27:30 PM »
Hi,
OK, that looks pretty good, the parallel port driver seems to work.

What we need to test now is the BoBs ability to signal Mach. Do you have an Estop button?
If so can you enable/reset Mach and then cause an Estop by using the physical Estop button?

Craig

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