Messages

481

General Mach Discussion / Re: Mach 3 homing

« on: October 16, 2022, 03:24:02 PM »

Hi,
you have a problem......the machine is not Homing. If it were it would travel to the home switch, activate it and then back-off. It will back-off until
the switch de-activates. If it does not that means the machine is treating the switch as a Limit rather than a Home.

Try (in Ports and Pins) disabling that switch as a Limit and double check that it is assigned as Home.

Craig

482

General Mach Discussion / Re: Spindle wont start with G-code

« on: October 16, 2022, 03:19:58 PM »

Hi,

The only problem now is that Fusion 360 is generating the wrong g-code.  It sends M5 as the spindle start g-code rather than M3.  Yeesh, if its not one thing its another.

Fusion usually/often puts in an m5 so the spindle is stopped. This is in anticipation that any job will begin with an m6 toolchange. If Fusion is not producing
an m3/m4 then you have a fault with your post settings.....I use Fusion and it does produce m3/m4.

Craig

483

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Need Help with Smoothstepper Configuration

« on: October 14, 2022, 07:01:38 PM »

Hi,
I would suggest posting on the Warp9TD forum about ESS setups ona new installation.

I had a bit of a battle eight years ago when I set up my ESS with Mach4.....but after eight years I've forgotten all the steps I took.
The basic problem was that I had not taken the correct procedure that allowed Mach4Hobby to operate through the Firewall and AntiVirus software,
although that was not plain to me at the time.

Craig

484

Mach4 Toolbox / Re: Automatic gearbox with 20 speeds

« on: October 14, 2022, 04:52:35 PM »

Hi,

Once you select a given speed the dc motors run in the required direction sequentialy (e.g. motor 1, 2 turns cw and motor 3 ,1ccw)
As soon they touch the hall sensors the required times, they stop immediately, so there is no loading of the m

This is the critical point.

If a DC motor is powered....what stops it?

Does for instance, once the gear is selected, does it have a mechanical stop that prevents the motor from turning or otherwise overdriving?
If the motor stalls because its traveled as far as it can does it draw excessive current? How long could that situation be tolerated?

There is little point in trying to devise a control strategy until you know EXCATLY how the controlled parts, namely the DC motors operate.

Just to flesh out an idea......which may or may not be applicable depending on the answers to the questions:
Imagine the power supply to each motor being current limited, such that should the motor stall by virtue of it coming up against a mechanical stop
OR the gears not lining up internally such that the motor cannot complete the gear change without the spindle rotating a small amount to allow the gears to mesh,
then the current would be low enough that no damage be done, at least for 20 seconds or so.

Electric windows in cars work that way. If the window stalls, ie it has reached the end of travel OR some unfortunate has his arm stuck in the window the motor will
stall thereby drawing more current, which is measured by the driver circuit and turns off the supply to the motor. This saves the motor and wiring from damage
but also provides a measure of safety should someones arm be caught.

I imagine a control setup something like pictured. I have shown only one of the gear select motors. The selection/synchronisation can be handled programmatically
by Mach or by an Arduino.....whichever seems easiest.

Craig

485

Mach4 Toolbox / Re: Automatic gearbox with 20 speeds

« on: October 13, 2022, 09:55:13 PM »

Hi,
I have some ideas but it rather depends on the DC motors, and the characteristics of the gear movement.

Do the motors run until the gear is engaged and then stop?  Does the motor when stalled like this draw a great deal of current?

My idea is that using one of Machs outputs a motor would be driven CW say, until the gear engages and then stalls as its up against a stop. After a short period I
would assume the Hall sensor would detect that the gear has engaged and that signal would turn the current off to the motor. Thus the motor might have to withstand
say a second or two of stall current. Is this possible?

If that is the case then using six Mach outputs could control all three DC motors. Your controller would require six spare inputs to monitor all six Hall sensors.
Then the control of the gear select is all Lua code...easy.

Craig

486

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Why does mc.mcCtrlLoadGcodeString change the font size of the Gcode window to 32

« on: October 12, 2022, 03:22:18 PM »

Hi,
kool.

I was going to suggest that after making an edit of the window properties that you shut down Mach and then restart. A shutdown will flush any changes made in the Mach session
to the .ini file.

Craig

487

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Why does mc.mcCtrlLoadGcodeString change the font size of the Gcode window to 32

« on: October 11, 2022, 10:07:18 PM »

Hi,
I think the Gcode that results from reading a string is just a series of Ascii characters, they do not have a font size.
It is only when the string is displayed that those characters get fleshed out into screen readable symbols.....and the size of each symbol is a property
of the display Window, not the character string itself.

May I suggest you alter the properties of the Gcode window in Mach to have the font size of your choice.

Craig

488

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: mc.mc.JogIncstart always using metric

« on: October 11, 2022, 04:30:45 PM »

Hi,
when you say to have set the machine to inches....can you confirm that the 'native units' on Machs Control Defaults tab are inches.
Note there are two settings, the first is 'Machine Setup Units'. These are the units for motor tuning, Homing/SoftLimts etc.
The second setting is 'Units Mode'. This setting will determine which mode (g20/g21) the machine starts in, and most particularly will place
a g20 (or alternately a g21) in the Gcode setup string.

It is possible to have the Machine units in inches, say you have 0.2mm pitch leadscrews for instance, but have the machine in metric mode
because you make parts from metric based Gcode, ie a g21 is in effect, for a particular customer.

If you are of the opinion that the units mode is wrong then MDI a g20 (inch) or a g21 (metric), and try again.

Mach4Hobby is a US made product and while it should be unit agnostic, it in fact favours inch units. Try a g20.

Craig

489

Mach3 under Vista / Re: New 6040 machine, steppers energize but cant be controlled.

« on: October 10, 2022, 06:54:44 PM »

Hi,
a high proportion of posts on this board are about those RnR motion control boards or clones of them. They are rubbish, they may work if you
persevere....but then again they may not. Even if you do get it to work there are certain features that work only with pirate software....do you really
want to go there?

Buy yourself a US or European made motion controller like an Ethernet SmoothStepper  ($190 by Warp9TD), a UC300/UC400/UC100 (approx $150 by CNCDrive)
or a  57CNC (approx $150 by PoKeys). Don't be taken in by the dozens of UC100 Chinese fakes that abound on EBay and Amazon, get the genuine article or don't bother.

Craig

490

General Mach Discussion / Re: Total large screen mach3

« on: October 10, 2022, 04:22:13 PM »

Hi,

Craig I wanted to ask you if from mach3 to mach4 it is necessary to change the electronics?

That depends to a certain extent on what you have now. Just before I swapped to Mach4 I bought an Ethernet SmoothStepper (ESS). An ESS will work
equally well with either Mach3 or Mach4, so I did not have to change anything.

If you are using Mach's parallel port in Mach3, then its more likely you would have to change some of the electronics. Mach4 does have a parallel port
plugin called Darwin, a $25.00 license fee applies. Darwin was written by Art Fennerty, the same guy whom wrote Mach3's parallel port. Darwin has the same
limitations as Mach3's parallel port, namely 32 bit only, destktops only, Windows 7 or XP only. Art has made it plain that Darwin will NEVER have realtime supports like
lathe threading, Darwin was and is a simple and cheap way for someone to run a Mach4 machine but has restricted supports like lathe threading, THC, backlash comp etc.

Mach4 was always  intended to have an external motion controller like an ESS. To get the true advantage of Mach4 then you really need an ESS or similar external motion
board, there are about six manufacturers of Mach4 boards, so there are choices.

There is no 'upgrade path' from Mach3 to Mach4.....if you want Mach4Hobby then you pay $200....that you have Mach3 already changes nothing. Makes sense really,
Mach4 is a completely new product, not just a re-write or re-work of Mach3 but new from the ground up.

One of the things that people have found and don't like about Mach4 is that it looks and resembles Mach3...but its not......and people hate that what they used to do in Mach3 does not
work in Mach4. There is to my knowledge nothing that Mach3 can do that Mach4 cannot, but Mach4 has a different approach and style that throws people. There are quite a few features
of Mach4 that Mach3 will never do....

https://www.machsupport.com/forum/index.php?topic=42891.msg278176#msg278176

Craig