Messages

4581

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Out-Of-Band Axes in Hobby vs Indusrial

« on: May 11, 2018, 08:17:17 PM »

Hi Steve,
my most recent purchase was a HP 54720D scope and three input amps and active probe. 5 Gsamp/sec so about 1 GHz bandwidth.....The guy I bought it from was a retired HP Engineer and he did a nice job on
it. The thing weighs 70lb and shipping to NZ was going to cost over $1000, got around that by using UPS, no tracking, no insurance, but it got here!

Bought a house since and mortgage has put paid to any plans for more RF gear. In addition now working for a company fixing welding gear, a good percentage of inverter types.
As a consequence I've built up a selection of HV isolated probes, high bandwidth current clamps and  a 13kV HF voltage probe. Most of my electronic hobby time seem to be designing
and building wiredrive PCBs, phase controlled bridges to hundreds of amps etc for work related projects. Have had some fun designing and building a servo drive for a decent (2.6kW) AC servo
fitted with an eight pole resolver. All in all a great learning curve. Cheaper than RF too!

Craig

4582

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach 4 Config Menu's Won't Save

« on: May 11, 2018, 07:26:38 PM »

Hi,
there is a simple way to view the various screen sets....

On Mach's View menu choose Load Screen and select from the list. It will load and if you decide you like it better than the one already stored in your Machine.ini file just close Mach. By
virtue of closing Mach it will cause any configuration changes you made during the session to be flushed to the Machine.ini file. Saves having to manually edit the .ini
file, although the file layout is very much more readable and amenable to manual editing than the .xml files of Mach3.

Craig

4583

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Out-Of-Band Axes in Hobby vs Indusrial

« on: May 11, 2018, 07:15:33 PM »

Hi Steve,
my cheap and nasty spectrum analyser cost me $5000NZD when I bought it and it was a demo unit at that!

That was before the advent of Ebay, or perhaps me being aware the Ebay is a pretty fair source for test gear. Still you have to shop
around and the good stuff can be had at good prices, just plain expensive....as opposed to eye-watering pie-in-the-sky stuff.

Craig

4584

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach 4 Config Menu's Won't Save

« on: May 11, 2018, 07:08:40 PM »

Hi,
if you are new to Mach4 there is a couple of issues that you should be aware of. May not make much sense to you now but when you
update to the latest build and you realize all your screen edit tweaks and all your individualized macros are gone, overwritten with Machs standard
issue screen sets and profiles you will!

You must have an uniquely named profile AND screen set.

The reasoning goes that over a period of months you will add all sorts of little tweaks to both your profile AND screen set. When you update, wx4.set, for
instance, will be overwritten with a fresh copy with any new stuff from NFS. If you had specialist DROs, buttons and similar they will be overwritten, often
you can't get them back and you'll have to redo the lot. I know because that is exactly what I did and others have fallen in the same trap.

Most new users have a uniquely named profile, like WatchmakerMill or MyMill say, which are copies of one of the standard Mach4 supplied profiles.
What is less common is to have a new user generate his own screen set. I suggest you experiment from among the standard Mach screen sets to find
the one most suitable for your needs.

Once you have identified it go to the Mach4Hobby\Screens folder and create a uniquely named copy of the desired screenset, Watchmakerwx4.set for example.
Then create a new profile that uses this screen set or open Machine.ini of your existing profile and edit the screen set entry to your new individualized screen set.

As I say it may not make any sense to do this now, and if you choose not to do so Mach will carry on and work fine. Only when you update to the latest build
of Mach will it become apparent.

Craig

4585

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Out-Of-Band Axes in Hobby vs Indusrial

« on: May 11, 2018, 05:58:13 PM »

Hi,
well we should be used to NFS developing new stuff and leading their documentation.....I mean I'm of course happy that mc.JogAbsStart() exists but how is anyone supposed to know!
Further, what other gems have been introduced that we have no idea even exist?

Craig

4586

General Mach Discussion / Re: "Goto Zero" getting Soft Limits Error

« on: May 11, 2018, 05:27:34 PM »

Hi,
if you do not have home switches or have some other means of referencing your machine Soft Limits are useless, in fact as you've discovered worse than useless, they keep faulting.

As Thomas says 'Zeroing' is different to 'Referencing'. Note that most people use 'Homing' interchangeably with 'Referencing'. 'Homing has a number of connotations which increases confusion
so 'Referencing' is preferred.

Without referencing your machine you have to turn 'Soft Limits' off as I've showed you.

Craig

4587

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Out-Of-Band Axes in Hobby vs Indusrial

« on: May 11, 2018, 05:09:26 PM »

Hi,
when I used Zero Brane to write a macro mc.JogAbsStart() is compliant but its not mentioned in the API.chm.

The version of the API.chm I have is Rev 1.01 March 2015. Is there a later revision? I recently updated to 3756 and I would have thought that if there
were a later revision it would have come with the update.

Craig

4588

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Out-Of-Band Axes in Hobby vs Indusrial

« on: May 11, 2018, 04:33:25 PM »

Hi Chad,
where did you find:

I've got it to move using the mc.mcJogAbsStart

I cant find mcJogAbsStart in the API.chm.

Craig

4589

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach 4 Config Menu's Won't Save

« on: May 11, 2018, 04:13:20 PM »

Hi,
there is no .xml file in Mach4, it is an .ini file in the profile folder under the name of the profile you are using.

When you exit the Configure screen are you hitting Apply? When you close it should flush all the changes to your profile.

Craig

4590

General Mach Discussion / Re: "Goto Zero" getting Soft Limits Error

« on: May 11, 2018, 04:38:08 AM »

Hi,
just under the DRO block.

Craig