Messages

3961

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

« on: July 28, 2018, 11:03:05 PM »

Hi,
given that your initial complaint was that the Y axis was playing up but the other axes were not....why throw away the parallel port that you had?
I asked you to do some tests that may give you an insight into the problem....what you have done instead is put in a new PCI card and introduced
a whole bunch more problems.

May I suggest you go back to your original installation and diagnose the issue/issues you have. Once you have diagnosed the fault or faults
THEN make some decisions about fixing them. One of the alternatives might be a USB or Ethernet connected motion controller.

Let me ask this, is the USB Bob or Ethernet Bob easier to work with?

They are different rather than easier. If you buy a Chinese made unit then it may prove to be very much harder than fixing your parallel port issues...
Chinese made boards have poor/no documentation and poor/no manufacturers support. If you buy a good US/European brand then it will work
as advertised and all of the best known (and loved!) Mach manufacturers will support it. Amongst the advantages that come with using an external motion
controller is being able to use a much wider range of PC's and 64 bit OS's.

The cheapest of the 'known good' USB motion controllers start at $120. There is a bunch of more capable (more IO and features) from four different
US/European manufacturers in the range of $150 to $250. A Vital Systems Hicon board will set you back $600 plus whatever extra features/activations you require.
If you want really REALLY topshelf.....go Gallil.....around $3000 for a three axis unit!

If you buy cheap off EBay you can expect to be ripped off....buy direct from the manufacturer or their nominated distributor...there are just so many
knock offs out there. There is a guy on the forum who is of the opinion that the controller he's got has a Canadian made Ethernet SmoothStepper built
into it.....bulls*********t....unless Canada has become a province of China!

The simplest and cheapest expedient is to go back to your original parallel port and diagnose the problem.....note that's DIAGNOSE the problem,
then and ONLY THEN try to fix it.

If you have $200 to spare then by all means get an external controller......they will pay off over time but you will still have some serious learning
and problem solving to be done. CNC is not plug and play.

Craig

3962

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: configure menu greyed out!

« on: July 28, 2018, 05:16:38 PM »

Hi,
can you open Mach4 and look to the lower right to determine the screenset in use? Does this compare to your expectation?

I've had on a couple of occasions when fooling around with Mach broken the editable GUI and then Mach would open a non editable screen
as a sort of primitive backup to the real thing.

The application that uses an editable screenset is Mach4GUI.exe whereas the basic screenset (non editable) is wxMach.exe.

Craig

3963

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

« on: July 28, 2018, 03:10:21 AM »

Hi,
does the Digitize LED light up on the Machine Diagnostic Tab when the probe strikes? Your description sounds like
Mach is not seeing the probe event.

Craig

3964

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach4 lathe / turning general state of development question

« on: July 28, 2018, 03:04:13 AM »

Hi,

Really I'd like the cncdrive uc300eth and uc400eth motion controllers to update their mach4 plugins for spindle sync

CNCDrive have had a Mach4 plugin for about a year. All reports are that its gone really smoothly and CNCDrive are to congratulated on
a trouble free introduction to the market.

They don't have much in the way of realtime controller support, lathe threading for instance.

Warp9 and the SmoothStepper is better placed.....backlash comp has been added over the last month or two and much of the underlying code
for lathe threading is already in hand. My understanding is that they elected to have encoder support rather than plain index support and also
PID control of the spindle. These very nice extras have delayed lathe threading support by several months.

Warp9 has a reputation for moving glacially on developing new features and have no doubt lost customers as a result. I for one could wish for warp one,
or even warp half speed!

PMDX have lathe threading well in hand.

Vital Systems Hicon is the pick of the bunch, lathe threading, THC etc. I guess the income generated from high value sales paves the way for feature development.

Craig

3965

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

« on: July 28, 2018, 01:12:01 AM »

Hi,
when the probe touches and the current flows the phototransistor will conduct, going low.

You need to set your Probe input to Active Low.

Craig

3966

General Mach Discussion / Re: Mach turn. Very very, very slow.

« on: July 28, 2018, 12:41:17 AM »

Hi,
this is from your Gcode:

G1F0.5.....so your cutting speed is going to be 0.5 units (presumably inches) per minute. That seems pretty slow...
is it want you wanted?

Craig

3967

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

« on: July 28, 2018, 12:10:31 AM »

Hi,
sounds like the Y axis driver has a faulty 'Direction' feed.
Do you have a mulitmeter?. If so probe the 'Direction' input pin, it should remain high while driving in one direction
and low when driving in the other.

It could be several different things...a loose connection between the driver and BoB or if your PC's parallel port is producing a high
level voltage of 3.3V, common for recent design PC's, where your BoB is designed for a 5V input, the TTL standard of years ago.
Often such BoBs will work with reduced input voltage but can be intermittent sometimes.
Can you probe the BoB to establish the input high voltage from the PC'S parallel port?

Craig

3968

General Mach Discussion / Re: Mach turn. Very very, very slow.

« on: July 28, 2018, 12:01:19 AM »

Hi,
when you first turn Mach on and Enable it the Feedrate is deliberately set to a slow speed.
Manually increase the speed override to the desired speed OR add to the 'Initialisation String' on
Config/General page. In the example I posted I set the feederate to 300mm/min, that is 'F300'.

Craig

3969

Mach3 under Vista / Re: The Classic: DRO's move, motors don't; Win 7

« on: July 27, 2018, 03:11:14 AM »

Hi George,
good to hear back...and glad you found some value in my recommendation. I recall for some years being quite  anti the idea of buying
an external motion controller like the ESS, I didn't like the thought of paying for something when the parallel port seemed to work OK.

It was not until I bought one, mainly for the purposes of upgrading to Mach4, that I realized just how much better a system/machine could
be with a high quality pulse stream like that from an ESS.

Craig

3970

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Run in parallel 2 Gcode files

« on: July 26, 2018, 03:48:53 AM »

Hi,
interesting looking machine.

I don't think that Mach4 can run two Gcode files simultaneously and I am fairly certain it can only run one motion controller at a time.

One possibility I could forsee would require two separate Mach4 machines, each on its own PC with its own motion controller, and having
synchronizing signals pass back and forth between them.

Clearly the way Mach is written it is meant to run multiple instances, in which case you could have one PC run two machines. You would have
to ask NFS about that, while it looks as if multiple instances are the intention it may not yet be a reality.

Craig