Messages

4721

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Lua file operations

« on: April 25, 2018, 06:23:29 PM »

Hi,
I think you have to open the file, then flush() and then close() before the file will stick even though
its empty.

Craig

4722

General Mach Discussion / Re: Which computer / operating system is best with Mach3

« on: April 25, 2018, 03:11:08 PM »

Hi,
LinuxCNC has a lot to recommend itself, its free and open source. Linux has realtime extensions which means that you don't require extra realtime
hardware as is required for Windows which is not realtime. The downside is that you need to be very very computer savvy to take advantage of it.
If you are not able to do that then you ill have to buy that expertise from someone like CandCNC and be locked in to their supply channel.

Mach3 is what it is, its fairly straight forward to do most things. Modifying it to do something special or modifying a screen is possible but not easy.
Mach4 is very much more flexible and can be modified any many different ways. The downside is that even simple installations will require some
customization and so you MUST be prepard to learn how to do it. Its not easy to start with and pisses a lot of people off, they expect that Mach4 will
be nearly 'plug and play' like Mach3 and its not.

If I'm not mistaken the your existing CandCNC controller has a parallel port input. Many of the readily available external motion controllers including
the UC100, UC300 and Ethernet SmoothStepper present their outputs as a parallel port which could in turn be fed into your existing CandCNC board.
Thereafter you can use just about any PC you want to run Mach3. You could expect to pay $120-$250 for a good external controller, I have deliberately
left the Chinese made ones off the list.

Craig

4723

General Mach Discussion / Re: Limit switch not working

« on: April 25, 2018, 01:26:40 AM »

Hi,
does this look like the correct manual?

https://www.peu.net/syil/X4_User_Manual.pdf

Craig

4724

General Mach Discussion / Re: Replacement Computers

« on: April 25, 2018, 12:50:37 AM »

Hi,

Can one run Mach 3 on new laptop running windows 10

You can, but ONLY if you use an external motion controller like a SmoothStepper or a UC100.

If you want to carry on using a parallel port then you are restricted to desktop machines running 32 bit Windows7 or earlier. If you are going to run your machine with a parallel port then
you would be advised NOT to install any other software on that PC. Competeing software can and will cause the parallel port to hesitate and stutter with disastrous consequences for your
CNC job.

Craig

4725

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: stuck in plc

« on: April 24, 2018, 06:34:43 PM »

Hi,
funny though...I thought you would have heard it.....it was when I was just getting started with Mach4 and I was doing a lot of shouting
and swearing VERY LOUDLY indeed....you are only 8000 nautical miles away...you must have heard it! LOL

Craig.

4726

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: stuck in plc

« on: April 24, 2018, 06:26:38 PM »

Hi,
kool, glad it worked...for some reason thought the switch was 'p'. Anyway your back in business. The first time I did that I ended up reinstalling Mach before I learnt the
trick from Daz.

Craig

4727

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: stuck in plc

« on: April 24, 2018, 06:19:11 PM »

Hi,
I've made that mistake, its a real ba...rd!

Daz showed me a way of doing it...it was a while ago and I've all but forgotten how.

Open a CMD window and navigate to Mach4, I think  run Mach4GUI.exe -p. The '-p' switch means that the program fires up in screen edit mode directly where you can dig the offending statement out.

Let us know how you get on, as I say its been a while...

Craig

4728

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: New people welcome !! Come in here and introduce your self!

« on: April 24, 2018, 05:24:08 PM »

Hi,
the powersaving features of a laptop alter the CPU speed in such a manner that means Mach's parallel port doesn't work too well. Some people have reported good success with a parallel port
but many others have reported failures.

Machs parallel port is a poor name really, it doesn't describe the real situation. Machs Pulse Engine is code that runs at kernel level on the PC's CPU. Amogst other things it does is an interuput driven timer,
and it is  the timer that generates the pulse stream which are communicated by the parallel printer port. Any USB to parallel adapter screws up the timing and so cannot be used with Mach. Having Mach's
Pulse Engine run smoothly and consistently is a considerable challenge. Any software or service running on the CPU can break the pulse stream and therefore wreck your CNC job.
Additionally Mach's parallel port will only run on 32 bit OS's Windows7 or earlier.

The parallel port has been around for a long time, its free and works OK. There are quirks though, for some reason one PC will not do as well as another, and I don't mean powerful PC's either. Some of the slowest
least grunty XP PC's do a better job than a multicore PC with muscles on its muscles...you just can't tell.

In more recent years external motion controllers have been developed. These controllers take over the roll of generating the pulse streams and relieve the CPU of the PC the constraints imposed by running
Machs Pulse engine. The Ethernet SmoothStepper by Warp9 and the UC100 by CNCDrive are good examples. The UC100 is very popular, it costs about $120. Don't get ripped, there are a ton of Chinese counterfeits
out there, buy direct or from the manufacturers nominated distributor. It is plugged into the PC by USB and has a parallel port output, you might even say an adaptor, its not, it has  FPGA inside and is way too clever
just to be called an adaptor.

Another advantage of external controllers like the UC100 is that you are free of the constraints of the Pulse Engine, ie you can use laptops and any 64 bit Windows OS.

If you wish to consider an external controller, and I do recommend you consider it, I had a parallel port setup for several years before buying a SmoothStepper and the external controller is very very good
indeed, be wary of Chinese made stuff. If you do any reading on the forum you will find that some don't work at all, some not well and in most cases they wont help. Even if you do get one to work often
they wont do certain things like probing or lathe threading. Cheap prices attract a lot of buyers but poor quality and lack of support put them off just as quickly.

Craig

4729

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Jerky dual axis movement

« on: April 24, 2018, 04:15:15 PM »

Hi,
I have a servo as a spindle motor and was signaling single ended at 150kHz and I hooked up a my scope and was surprised to see how rounded the signal envelope had become.

I had about 4m of cable, shielded twisted pair and the output of the BoB is regular LS TTL. It did signal the drive ok but I was suprised at the signal degradadtion.
I rearranged the electronic gearing to reduce the signal rate to just under 50kHz and shortened the cable to 1.5m and now the signals look good.

Craig

4730

Tangent Corner / Re: Tight on space.

« on: April 24, 2018, 04:05:01 PM »

Hi,
as a youngster in the town I lived there was an old retired bachelor, real nice guy, absolute HAM radio nut.....he had a satellite dish in the front yard which was about 30 feet in diameter, and this was in
the late sixties when such things were exceptionally rare.

In his house, if you could call it that, there was a great big long table, about 30 foot long. At one end there were car parts and other heavy/dirty bits, progressing through lighter/cleaner electronic stuff to
the far end which would have clothing then last of all was the butter, the loaf of bread, the cold roast of lamb. When he said something 'was on the table' he meant it, it seemed like all his worldly possessions
were on that table.

Myself and a couple of friends used to spend quite a bit of time there, he was a fascinating character. We would crank the Alt-Az gearboxes for the dish while he was trying to bounce 1296Mhz siganls of the moon, aka
EME. We would do this on and off for a month before getting more than a few contacts!

Craig