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Messages - joeaverage

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41
Hi,
Ethercat is a realtime communication protocol and Mach4, because it runs on Windows which is not realtime, cannot do Ethercat natively.

There are two ways to induce Mach4 to do Ethercat.
1) Buy a Vital Systems motion control board. Mach4 talks to the motion board per normal but the motion board itself does realtime Ethercat comms
to any and all Ethercat slaves.
2) Buy a system from Kingstar. Kingstar have collaborated with Interval Zero. Interval Zero have a solution where one core of a multicore PC is dedicated to realtime
and it communicates to the rest of the cores which run Windows. It is a way for Windows to enjoy the benefits of a genuine realtime scheduler. Kingstar wrote the Etherctat comms
software to take advantage of the realtime scheduler. Such a system is on sale, it consists of a refurbished PC, probably ex lease??, with a high end Ethernet card, a Mach4Hobby
license, and the Kingstar and Interval Zero runtime licenses for $1600USD.

I considered this later option very VERY closely indeed when I built my machine. As I already had Mach4Hobby and an ESS I could not justify the extra expense of a Kingstar
Ethercat solution....but I wanted to.!! Put a proverbial 'horn on a jellyfish' that Kingstar Ethercat does!

I'm of the opinion that the Kingstar solution is the best, with the Vital Systems solution next. Neither are cheap.

Why did you buy Ethercat hardware? Presumably you knew you must have an Ethercat Master to make them work.....and that an Ethercat Master is not free.

Craig

42
Hi,
I can only guess is that you are seeing  the delay through the motion buffer.

As you know Mach, both 3 and 4 are buffered motion control solutions. Thus Mach 4 will calculate a move, a numeric motion command, and push it out to the motion control where is goes into a buffer.
That buffer will be several hundreds of milliseconds by default. If I recall the ESS default is 180ms. The ESS will consume each '1ms motion time slice' from the buffer every
1 ms. In the mean time Mah4 may have raced ahead and has actually processed quite a few more instructions......and they will happen, but up to 180ms after Mach has
instructed. This is what a buffered control solution means.

This occurs because Windows is not realtime. If the machine were dependent on Mach and Windows to serve up motion commands it would fail because Windows buggers off and does other
jobs that need doing. Then the machine would starve of data and stall. A machine absolutely must have a continuous stream of data otherwise it fails. Windows PCs can't do that natively,
and must  buffer motion commands so that when Windows goes off to some other task the machine has motion commands to carry on with and hopefully Windows comes back before the motion
controller has consumed all its instructions so Windows/Mach can again fill up the buffer.

The other time I have seen behaviour as described is when Mach is doing very VERY many tiny little moves. Mach's screen does not show anything happening, but that is because Mach's Motion core
is not 'releasing' so Mach's GUI can update. Mach's core and Mach's GUI operate as a cooperative co-routine. If Mach's core is so busy with little moves it never releases and therefore the GUI can get
badly left behind.

I see this when I sometimes use a 1.5mm endmill, which I use a lot with the small parts I make and yet I want to drill a hole of 1.6mm (just right for accepting a 2mm tap). Rather than stop and put in
a drill I circularly interpolate the hole, but that means the X and Y motions are less than 0.05mm. While that is running the GUI does not update at all, you'd swear the machine was broken because
Mach shows that its stopped, but the machine is still spiralling down the hole it meant to. Once the hole is complete then Mach's GUI get processor service and gets back up to date.

Craig

43
General Mach Discussion / Re: Mach3 + NEW UC100 - erratic operation
« on: May 21, 2023, 04:21:22 PM »
Hi,
if I'm not mistaken a genuine UC100 requires that you install a specialist drive on your PC whereas the Chinese clones rely on the PC's existing USB interface.
Were you required to install such a driver?

Craig

44
Hi,
do you have a test to determine whether the required module is already open? I seem to recal that if you attempt to open a module that is already open
it is a fault.

Craig

45
Hi,

Quote
You don't actually need a machine home ref position.

I'm not sure I agree with this statement. It is certainly true that you don't have to reference your machine, as John does go to the work zero coordinate of the part you
are working on, zero the DRO's and away you go.

What happens if you have an over-travel event? Well how about soft limits you say? But soft limits ONLY work or make any sense if the machine has been referenced.
Soft limits work a bit like setting boundaries. The Northern boundary is 15m from here, the Southern boundary is 5m from here, the East boundary is 30m form here
and the West boundary is 1m from here. This works fine if you know where 'here' is. If you don't know where 'here' is or it changes then your data describing the boundaries is useless.

When I first started I had no home or limit switches, and used to do as John suggested. After a while I put Home switches on my machine, just the three switches, not Limit switches,
but now I could reference the machine, ie I know where 'here' is and now Soft Limits works the wat they should. I had three crashes in seven years thereafter whereas I had about three a month
prior to. Putting Home switches on my machine was the single best addition I ever made. I was always going to put Limit switches on it, but never got around to it.

I've built a new machine, and its way bigger, much faster and hugely more powerful, so not only do I have Home switches but Limit switches also. I always engage Soft Limits after
referencing (homing) the machine and I haven't hit a limit switch in operation in 18 months of daily use. Home switches and Referencing are extremely useful.

Craig

46
Hi,
there are various THC units with ever increasingly sophisticated operation.

One of the goto standards for Mach users is the Proma 150. In essence you hook it up to the plasma without even the need of a divider,
set the target voltage and the unit produces two signals THC_UP and THC_DOWN. This works but has no anti-dive.

If you use an ESS motion controller then the WarpRunner THC board is the correct choice. It is an optimized design of the TMC3in1 which
preceded it, and is specifically meant to work with the ESS. It has good anti-dive functionality. Overall, the WarpRunner provides functionality
that you might expect from Hyperthrm but at a fraction of the price.

If previously you've had successes without THC, then you can again have that success without it, but you do need to hook up your plasma to your
breakout board/motion control combination to take advantage of the Mach4Hobby Plasma screen and the features it includes. That you can do
without having to spend anything. I suspect you'd find that combination a significant step forwards and upwards in terms of automation and usability over what
you have been accustomed to in Mach3......and may decide therefore that THC is just an un-warranted expense.

Craig


47
Hi,
yep, 'piece of piss mate' (translates to 'too f*****ing easy!!). See on the CNC board its got a voltage divider, either /16.67 or /30 or /50 and that you need to hook the input of the divider
to the terminal on the main board that is connected to the tip, ie arc voltage.

Five dollars worth of resistors and a couple of capacitors and you'd have divided arc voltage for THC if you want. These things are pretty basic, and its
all there if you want it. Ideally you get the additional option board that has the 'you beauty' plug on it and all that s***t but you don't need it. I'd solder the wires in in ten minutes.

Craig

48
Hi,
I found this within a few minutes.

There is an ARC_OK signal, its closing relay contacts called OK TO MOVE by Thermal Dynamics. The Start/Stop presumably you've already got sorted.

It would be no trouble to tap into the machine to read the torch voltage, I've had these things in 1000 bits on a number of occasions. They have an IGBT
to close the earth to nozzle circuit used at start up. If it fails short circuit, and it often does, the nozzle blows out repeatedly in short order. I used to keep the IGBTs in stock,
and given how tight my boss was that was a battle!

Craig

49
Hi,
what you need is an ARC_OK signal. I think Thermal Dynamics include one. Look in the manual. If you have an ARC_OK signal then you could get
the rest working no trouble. If I'm not mistaken there is a round multi-pin plug on the back of the machine, called Machine Plug or similar. Find it and get the pinout
of the plug.

Craig

50
Mach4 General Discussion / Re: M6 Lua script help!
« on: May 16, 2023, 07:30:48 PM »
Hi,
I did not intend that the function I wrote would actually work in a machine. I just wrote it to show what such code would look like.
The reason that I encapsulated it was so that you can single step through the code with Zero Brane to ensure it works as you expect.
Its an essential technique when coding in Lua within Mach. You need to 'put the code in a sandbox' so you can write it, fiddle with it and get it going
before you put it in the main code area. If you do so without having gotten the bugs out you'll crash Mach.


This is especially true for any code that you put in the PLC script. You put screwy code in there you'll drive yourself up the wall!

Craig

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