Messages

3951

General Mach Discussion / Re: CS Labs CSMIO/P-A

« on: July 31, 2018, 06:13:41 PM »

Hi,

If you ultimately switch to ac drives, one thing is very important: use matched drives and motors from the same manufacturer. In that way, the drive will be pre-programmed with all of the salient motor parameters.

So true, my Allen Bradley servo has a PC apllication that loads the servo data straight into the drive, it has all the
usual resistances and inductances but also has a peicewise linear approximation to the magnetic hysteresis properties
and also includes a thermal model......just brill! They are SO FAR AHEAD of brushed servos it just has to be experienced to
be believed.

Craig

3952

General Mach Discussion / Re: CS Labs CSMIO/P-A

« on: July 31, 2018, 03:18:06 AM »

Hi,
I made this same argument earlier in this thread, whether you have a tacho loop in addition to the CSMIO loop or just the CSMIO loop the
net result is the same. Clearly the PID coefficients will differ but both will achieve dynamic equivalence.

You are now really starting to pay for your choice to retain the existing servos. You paid a premium for an analogue controller to close the loop,
700GBP= 915USD. You are now looking at more cost to repair or replace your servo drive which takes the spend to just over $1000.
 If you had replaced the servos with AC servos and drives you could have used an open loop Step/Direction controller like a UC300
or an ESS for $150-$180. Two 750W DMM servos and drives are $1052, taking the total spend to about $1200.
New and modern AC servos/drives are so superior in so many ways.

I am of the opinion that spending more money on your existing servos or drives is a case of 'sending good money after bad'.

Craig

3953

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: configure menu greyed out!

« on: July 30, 2018, 02:20:39 PM »

Hi,
that pic shows Mach is enabled (button green vs red flashing when disabled).
Can you manually cause a limit switch to operate to cause an Estop?

Craig

3954

General Mach Discussion / Re: Touch adjustment problem auto tool zero

« on: July 30, 2018, 03:58:34 AM »

Hi,
I'm not familiar with your RNR board. What I can tell from the pic is that it is a USB connected motion control board. That multi-pinned square
IC in the center of the board is a microcontroller/DSP/FPGA. Its job is to decode the numeric data sent to it by your PC via Mach and the .dll
plugin over the USB and turn that data into pulse streams for your motors. That makes it way WAY smart....even if it doesn't support a probe.

The second board you linked to is a parallel breakout board, its got no microcontroller/DSP/FPGA. The PC produces the pulse streams
by virtue of Machs parallel port driver and communicates to the board over the parallel port cable. The breakout board is just an amplifier,
it doesn't do anything smart. The USB port on the board is just a way of powering the board from the PC's power supply, here is no communication
on it. In fact if you used a separate power supply for the board you could disconnect the USB and the board would still work.

Mach's parallel port CAN handle a probe, that's the good news. Mach's parallel port works on Desktop PC's (no laptops) with XP or Windows 7 32bit.
No 64 bit Windows will run Mach's parallel port driver. No USB to parallel converter will work either. Even if you have a 32bit Win7/XP PC you must be really
careful not to load ANY other software on it because it will interfere with Mach and stop it. In short there are quite a few limitations with a parallel port,
it has a slow pulse rate and is inclined to stall/stop/stutter depending on the PC. It is free and its how Mach got going in the first place. A lot of people
still use it but many have gone to an external motion controller.

The problem is there are a lot of crap external controllers out there which don't support all Machs features, you have one.
If you bought a good one like a SmoothStepper, UC300ETH or a PoKeys 57CNC you would never look back. Don't buy s*********t Chinese or Russian or Martian...
buy US or European and don't buy off EBay or AliExpress they are full of ripoffs, buy direct from the manufacturer or their nominated distributor.

You have three choices:
1) Stick with your existing board BUT WITHOUT a probe
2) Buy a parallel port breakout board and use an old XP clunker PC, even a cheap ($30-$60) breakout board is adequate
3) Buy a decent, well supported external motion controller, anticipate such a device will cost from as low as $120 up to about $250 for a more capable
    board with more inputs and outputs.

Craig

3955

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: New people welcome !! Come in here and introduce your self!

« on: July 30, 2018, 12:16:23 AM »

Hi Phantom Wolf,

I am comfortable with corel draw, photoshop and illustrator.

Those are drawing/sketching/illustrating programs.

You need CAD/CAM....Computer Aided Drafting/ Computer Aided Manufacture. You might find it possible
to import a picture of what you want into a CAM program but generally you'll have to draw a technical
diagram, usually using the same program.

If you have not had a look try Fusion 360....its free.....if you had to pay for it you would be up for thousands!

Have a look also at Machs Wizards, it will  give you an idea of whats required to convert an idea into
usable Gcode.

Craig

3956

General Mach Discussion / Re: Touch adjustment problem auto tool zero

« on: July 30, 2018, 12:08:38 AM »

Hi,
so whats the deal with the last link you posted? Is that the board you are using or not?

Its an entirely different beast to the pic that you first posted.
That is a USB EXTERNAL MOTION CONTROLLER for which you need to use the manufacturers plugin.
The second link is a PARALLEL PORT BREAKOUT BOARD for which you use Machs parallel port driver
on a 32Bit Windows 7  or earlier PC.

You cant mix the two. If your original board doesn't accept a probe you may be required to use the
parallel port although most would consider it a backward step.

Craig

3957

General Mach Discussion / Re: Touch adjustment problem auto tool zero

« on: July 29, 2018, 09:09:08 PM »

Hi,
that looks like a parallel port breakout board, the USB cable is just for a power supply from
the PC.

Do you have a parallel port driver installed on your PC? What does the DriverTest.exe tell you?,
a screen shot of it is preferred, an 'excellent' report is not enough.

Craig

3958

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: work zero in mach 4

« on: July 29, 2018, 02:26:18 PM »

Hi,

How do the offset settings relate to all of this and do i need to set them up???

No, that happens automatically.

When you turn on the machine and enable Mach hit <Ref All Home> and the  machine will reference itself by driving to your home switches
in turn and thus set the  MACHINE COORDINATE 0,0,0. Now manually jog to the corner (or maybe the center depending on how you drafted the Gcode)
of the piece of material. <Zero> each of the axes, the WORK COORDINATE 0,0,0. That will automatically update the offsets. The offsets are the numbers
that translate from the machine 0,0,0 to the work 0,0,0.

Craig

3959

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Z axis travels the wrong way when running a program

« on: July 29, 2018, 03:28:30 AM »

Hi,
this post should be in the main Mach4 Discussion board.

The problem is when I come to run a program my Z axis travels up in the positive Direction

I don't have anything like your experience however in my experience a move in the positive direction is upwards.
I would expect the work co-ordinates to be zeroed at the surface of the material so a positive work coord is above the
material and a negative coord is below the surface, ie cutting. To my knowledge this is also the standard convention for
CAM programs.

You can either reverse the Gcode or reverse the direction of the Z axis.

Craig

3960

General Mach Discussion / Re: Flipped the switch! It runs but having a few problems.

« on: July 29, 2018, 12:30:35 AM »

Hi,
what breakout board are you using?

How about a couple of pics to get a feel for what you are trying to do?

Craig