Messages

4571

General Mach Discussion / Re: Plasma Z floating head

« on: May 12, 2018, 09:03:36 PM »

Hi,
the code you have posted looks like it doesn't  quite cover the first letter....can you post more so that we can see how the code calls for the transition from one letter
to the next.

Craig

4572

Third party software and hardware support forums. / Re: A way to control the direction on VFD

« on: May 12, 2018, 08:51:05 PM »

Hi Luke,
just as a matter of interest why do you want it to go backwards? Do you have LH cutting tools or LH drills?

Craig

4573

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mache4 Lathe-pmdx411 incremental move problem

« on: May 12, 2018, 05:46:55 PM »

Hi RT,
how about having your program cut marks at 10 degrees say, but over two revolutions. I ideally the cuts made during the second revolution would land
on top of the cuts made during the first revolution.

It may give some insight into whats happening.

Craig

4574

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Assistance Configuring an Ethernet SmoothStepper in Mach4

« on: May 12, 2018, 05:40:16 PM »

Hi,
my standard reply to anyone talking about the charge pump is Why bother?

In the five years I've used Mach without the benefit of a charge pump I've never had a problem....have you

I understand its to prevent outputs from fluctuating prior to the PC and Mach assuming control of the outputs. This is to prevent the motors or whatever
doing something strange before the controller is genuinely in control. If that's the case then I've never had a problem, so I'm not going to try and fix it!

Craig

4575

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Assistance Configuring an Ethernet SmoothStepper in Mach4

« on: May 12, 2018, 04:27:45 PM »

Hi,
instead of me rabbiting on try Daz's video:

http://www.machsupport.com/forum/index.php/topic,29878.msg207695.html#msg207695

Craig

4576

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Assistance Configuring an Ethernet SmoothStepper in Mach4

« on: May 12, 2018, 04:22:59 PM »

Hi,
welcome. Mach4 does have some challenges that put a few people off. On the other hand those who stick with it become very keen, if you
stick around you'll find that I am very keen, rabidly so!

Both the ESS and  the 540 are good pieces of gear, I would guess a setup fault rather than  hardware failure.

Have you got an Estop button  wired to the 540? If so does operating the Estop cause Mach4 to go into Estop as well?
I'm thinking that the ESS is not communicating with the 540, possibly charge pump or enable or something like that.

If the Estop trick doesn't reveal anything useful can you probe the DIR pins of the ESS?

Can you post a screen shot of your ESS pin assignments? Also a shot of your motor outputs?

When I first started with Mach4 I too used the ESS and I found it quite confusing to start with, there seemed to be some things you set up in the ESS plugin
but others had to be done in the Mach plugin.

The general rule is set everything up in the ESS plugin. Setup changes you make there will be automatically updated in the Mach plugin as well. If, in your
confusion, you go and change something in the Mach plugin the settings for the same item could be different in the two plugins and Mach can be excused for not
working under those circumstances.

In the first instance keep your setup as simple as you can...no limit or home switches. On the ESS inputs page you should have, at least to start with,
the Estop enabled only. Again to start with try just having Motor0 Step and Dir enabled and all other outputs disabled.

If you try such a cutdown setup you should be able to experiment with either/or charge pump or Enable signals to determine the right combination.

Craig

4577

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Lua Stats

« on: May 12, 2018, 03:58:24 AM »

Hi Steve,
a lot of that was above my head.

This is in the Makefile  in the top directory of plplot:

# CMAKE generated file: DO NOT EDIT!
# Generated by "MinGW Makefiles" Generator, CMake Version 3.10

# Default target executed when no arguments are given to make.
default_target: all

.PHONY : default_target

# Allow only one "make -f Makefile2" at a time, but pass parallelism.
.NOTPARALLEL:

Is that what you were asking about/alluding to?

In plplot there is a folder called dll, and at the start of this excerise I thought it was empty. Now it has a number of files
of the type libqsastime.dll . Does this mean that some binaries are being generated?

There is also a folder called Bindings and in it a whole bunch of files, one for each language that binds to plplot, including one for Lua.
I'm almost certain that before the 'Make' process there were a few Cmake files and a Cmake folder in the Lua folder. After the 'Make' process
nothing seems to have changed. I changed directory to Lua and issued another 'make' command, it returned almost immediately and produced
no new binaries or any other file within itself.

Craig

4578

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Lua Stats

« on: May 12, 2018, 03:30:01 AM »

Hi,
the knitting needle is about half way though....

I had to download GnuWin32 Make and install it. Had to put its path in the PATH variable. Thereafter at the 'make' command in the plplot directory produces a whole
bunch of files....but I don't know where they all go.  The plplot directory doesn't seem to grow at all and very few new files have been added to it?

I suspect there must be a bunch of command line switches which I haven't tumble to yet.

Craig

4579

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Lua Stats

« on: May 12, 2018, 01:53:24 AM »

Hi Steve,
thanks for the knitting needle analogy....it makes me cringe.

The binaries are available for Linux and Mac but not Windows. I downloaded the source files as a zip archive which I then expanded.
I have Cmake installed so I pointed the unzipped source file to it and had it build in Program File\plplot.

The original expanded source file is a little over 100M but the files in Program File\plpot are only about 5M. When I inspect the individual files I was expecting bianary code,
but no, each file is a CMake file. I have come to the conclusion that the binaries have not in fact been created but rather a whole bunch of Cmake files which presumably
direct the complier/linker in the creation of the files. Its just that they haven't done so yet.

Then you have to go to the old command prompt, change into the build directory, and type "make".  

I think this is where I am at.....I'll look a bit harder and try to replicate what you have described.

Thanks for your help....this is not Mach per se, so I really appreciate that you would take the time to help out. I like the thought of being able to attach or otherwise incoperate
some of the very wide ranging Lua compatible libraries. Whats more if I can do it so can others,,,,

Craig

4580

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Lua Stats

« on: May 11, 2018, 11:15:59 PM »

Hi,
OK, I've finally got CMake and MinGW installed.

I've downloaded PLplot and built it and have it in C;\Program Files\plplot so now what?. As far as I know its all there and OK, but its not a program you can run....there's no .exe
file in it anywhere. I don't know what I was expecting but I didn't get it!.

If I understand correctly its really a library that allows me to write a program in Lua which calls on a very extensive library of functions for drawing graphs. So how do
I go about using it?

I guess I have to let Mach know that I wish to use functions from an external file. How do I do that. Do I require a module? I see a Lua function called dofile()...what does it do?

Craig