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Messages - joeaverage

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4531
Mach4 General Discussion / Re: spindle setup help
« on: May 18, 2018, 10:24:58 PM »
Hi,
if you want really accurate spindle speed Mach can measure it and display it for you.

It requires a sensor attached to the motor shaft that pulses once each revolution, an index pulse. If you connect that to a spare input your controller Mach will measure the time
between pulses and calculate the motor speed. There is a DRO already in most screen sets to display it.

It is not uncommon for the spindle speed to vary somewhat from what you programmed. The error has multiple sources but usually it is non-linearity of the analogue
output of your BoB which is derived from the PWM signal from your controller. There is also a degree of 'slip' between the VFD frequency and the spindle rotational frequency,
its how asynchronous motors work.

Error between what you have programmed and what you actually get are seldom more than 10%. The question I ask is 'does it matter that much'. No doubt any number of people will
jump in and lambast me for my sacrilege...but there you have it. I think in many cases people spend hour upon hour and hundreds of dollars trying to get spindle speed just so
and really gain little.

All the old manual mills, lathes and drills I've used over the years had fixed ratios. I couldn't get exactly the speed I wanted, I used the closest I could get and got on with the job.
Did not having exactly the right ratio stop me....no.....did it make a bad job of the parts I made....no....did I have to make intelligent feed allowances for the speed that could be achieved...
yes.

You will have to decide how much effort you want to make to 'linearise' your spindle speed. Note that Mach4 is not a realtime controller therefore Mach4 cannot in itself close a feedback loop.
Closing a feedback loop requires realtime hardware, ie your controller. I don't believe at this time that your UC100 or in fact any of the UC series has the ability to close a speed loop with
PWM output.

The ESS of Warp9 does have that ability but it is very new and so I can't tell how good a job it does.
The PoKeys 57CNC has the ability and also has PoBlocks board level programming and I suspect would do a good job.
The Hicon of Vital Systems can do it but you have to pay an extra $500-600 to have that feature activated.
Not sure about the PMDX-422, I know it has a good suite of features for lathe threading and would guess that its very possible that it can close a speed loop.

Another possibility to improve spindle speed accuracy without a feedback loop is to use a look up table. You would have to take and record speed measurements.
Then you could construct a table in Mach so that if you programed a speed of 15000 pm say Mach would tweak it to 16300 rpm because your spindle is a little slower than it should be.
It would not be as good as a feedback loop but I imagine you could get to within 5% or so.

Craig

4532
General Mach Discussion / Re: Understanding Mach3 pulses
« on: May 18, 2018, 09:45:03 PM »
Hi,
well yes, the challenge of doing something just for the hell of it is something I know a bit about....

While its being built though a wireless pendant with LCD display, and they have an Estop button on them could be sitting in a bracket on the gantry or
even in hand....

Craig

4533
General Mach Discussion / Re: Understanding Mach3 pulses
« on: May 18, 2018, 08:01:59 PM »
Hi,

Quote
Although I have no experience of microprocessors, I am using a programme for PICAXES that uses graphical algorythms for programming.  Ignoring the last two decimal places (0.00014) as being too small to make any appreciable difference, I intended to count pulses up to 7 (third dec place), increment the second dec place then reset, then the same again up to 5 for the second dec place and up to 8 for the first dec place.  And then the processor outputs to the second decimal place of the actual display and so on by inputting to the 'UP' on the CD40110 up/down counter-driver chips (Cascaded; one for each digit).   hope that iis not too convoluted.

Yes, I understand what you are getting at. What you have outlined is a 'position accumulator'. All step/dir servos for instance require such device.

The next question is why? Mach3 has it built in. The DROs in Mach usually display work co-ordinates but at a click of a button can display machine co-ordinates at programmable resolution.
If you wish it you can use the OEMDROs built into Mach and have access to the raw encoder count. That would place the data on the PC screen, would that be adequate?

If you wanted to have a separate numeric display that could be done by 'sending the numbers' by serial to a display unit, maybe with a micro to 'untangle' the incoming data.

You may have seen advertised CNC pendants. The ones I am thinking of are VitsaCNC but there are heaps of others  and some of there models have an LCD numeric display built in...

Craig

4534
Mach4 General Discussion / Re: No Script Engine Found for ...
« on: May 18, 2018, 07:21:55 PM »
Hi Dan,
when you update to the latest build you should have BOTH an individually named profile AND screenset. This is a post I made a wee
while ago that explains why:

http://www.machsupport.com/forum/index.php/topic,37337.msg255420.html#msg255420

Craig

4535
Mach4 General Discussion / Re: No Script Engine Found for ...
« on: May 18, 2018, 06:42:03 PM »
Hi Dan,
just as a matter of interest what build of Mach are you running?

I downloaded 3756 which was a development version at the  time but it has the new Zero Brane editor and is a very good step up from the previous Lua editor.
Amongst other things you can launch it without actually having any macros or whatever for it to act on. It has a navigation panel so you can scan around within Machs
directory to find what you want. This makes it possible to have say a macro that you are working on to go in your own profile but have an example macro from
the Examples folder and screen scripts, ie not macros at all, ALL open and available on the desktop as separate tabs, each editable and can be run in debug mode
with much increased facilities compared to previously.

Byranna has just released a video on it.

Craig

4536
Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Taig Mill: Mach3 --> Mach4
« on: May 18, 2018, 06:29:39 PM »
Hi,
all of that gear should work well with Mach4, the PC may be a bit old school but it should still work.

You can download Mach4 and run it in demo mode with the Sim(ulator) plugin for as long as you like but if you load a motion plugin
like the ESS plugin thenit will run for about six minutes before needing to be reset. The upshot is you can have a go without spending a cent!

Mach4 is stable, it is not prone to random or unexplained errors. It is a very different program to Mach3 and when you try it you will find certain things
behave differently and when you complain 'its not like Mach3' the reply is 'so what, its not Mach3 and is not meant to be, get used to it!'.

Mach4 with the ESS is a little confusing to start with. Have a look at Daz's series of Mach4 videos, they are superb and there's a couple that deal exclusively
with ESS setup.

Mach4s real strength is the facility with which it can be customized. For basic mills/routers you probably wont have to do any coding but inevitably you will
want to tweak a few things.  Learning Lua, using Machs API, using the screen editor, understanding Machs structure and operating sequence is a big learning
experience and if you like a challenge you'll love it. If you don't want that sort of brain stretching exercise then Mach4 may not be right for you.

Either way you can download it and start experimenting with it for free...whats not to like about that!

Craig

4537
General Mach Discussion / Re: Plasma Z floating head
« on: May 18, 2018, 04:37:14 PM »
Hi,
the only other possible culprit then is:
G92 Z0

You may have noted that the short Gcode reference in Mach3 does not recommend this legacy G code. I don't recall having used it or had
any Gcode generated by a CAM/post that used it either.

I'm wondering if it updates the work  co-ordinates ie your current G54 or whether it changes your machine co-ordinates?

I think some experimentation on the effects of this code are in order.

Craig

4538
General Mach Discussion / Re: Understanding Mach3 pulses
« on: May 18, 2018, 04:28:30 PM »
Hi,
in a sense a stepper motor is like your pulse counter.

Every step pulse with the direction pin high cause the rotor to go 1.8 degrees clockwise and if the direction pi  is low it will go 1.8 degrees counter-clockwise.
If you like the rotor position is an accumulation of all previous pulses. If for instance from the start of the session the rotor has turn 431 turns and 113.4 degress
then net number of pulses in one direction  is (200 X 431)+(113.4/1.8 )=86200+63=86263.

Does you project require the net number of pulses, ie a position accumulator or  a total number of pulses?

Craig

4539
Hi,
with the ESS you have lots of inputs so you don't have to combine by wiring in series or parallel the fault switches.

Assign one input pin to each fault switch and program Mach that any of those pins is to cause an Estop.

Craig

4540
General Mach Discussion / Re: Plasma Z floating head
« on: May 18, 2018, 12:28:50 AM »
Hi,
I would guess that its the M6 T1 and/or the M9 lines between letters.

Do you actually need a toolchange? I suspect not. May I suggest commenting out the M6 T1 lines,
or edit them out, even just the first few occurances, and see what happens.

Craig

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