Messages

4861

General Mach Discussion / Re: Only X-axis motor is working

« on: April 07, 2018, 11:18:19 PM »

Hi,
this is a capable driver:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Leadshine-AM882-Stepper-Drive-with-Sensorless-Detection-Up-to-80VDC-8-2A/121235083471?hash=item1c3a2c90cf:g:Gd4AAMXQOT5Q~Sn9

Try one and see, you want a path to a solution, this is a path...

Craig

4862

General Mach Discussion / Re: Mach 3 - driving beyond soft limits ?

« on: April 07, 2018, 10:10:23 PM »

Hi,
a troubling problem to be sure.

If I follow the evidence you've posted it is as if the machine coordinates have shifted 170mm an 23mm from the physical location. I would not expect softlimits to be triggered in this
circumstance.

Imagine you have referenced your machine at the beginning of the session and at a given time through the job, while at machine coordinate  location 400,400 say, a fault ocurrs and the X
axis machine coordinate changes to 500. Mach believes the controlled point is at 500,400. If a move is called that returns the controlled point to machine zero, ie 0,0 the machine will
drive 500mm on the X axis when in fact its only 400mm from the X boundary by virtue of the previous fault and it will crash. Mach however believes its a legitimate move and within the boundaries
and will therefore not trigger a softlimit event. You are saved only by physical limit switches.

It is an unusual fault that Mach's machine coordinates should get out of whack with respect to its physical location unless it missing steps and missing 170mm should stick out like dogs balls!

Were you observing the machine while it was working?
Could it have suddenly stopped and only start again after the code had 'moved on' by 170mm?
Could the machine be losing steps incrementally but only show up when a move was called that moved out-of-bounds?

Craig

4863

General Mach Discussion / Re: Running 2 instances of Mach3 on same computer to control 2 machines

« on: April 07, 2018, 08:59:51 PM »

Hi,
a CNC system is a realtime control system. That is to say that the computer/controller must be able to respond instantly, or as near as instantly, a micro second or so, to an input and be able
to maintain output pulse streams to within a fraction of a microsecond accuracy.

If you had two instances of Mach running would would also require two instances of the parallel port driver running, leaving aside the fact that as written the driver can only be a single instance,
it would require Mach share the CPU, half each. Realtime control goes down the toilet, realtime means that it stays focused on one job and NEVER looks away.

Craig

4864

General Mach Discussion / Re: Only X-axis motor is working

« on: April 07, 2018, 08:47:18 PM »

Hi,
I strongly support what Roger proposes. By far and away the weakest link you have is the drivers. Replace those with good ones you may well find everything else
is good enough, and no matter what motors or powersupply you use is ever going to make up for poor drivers.

I use Vexta 5 phase steppers, 5 phase is somewhat esoteric but they have a few advantages. When I first got them I used a homemade, home design driver, quick and nasty. I was
somewhat disappointed at the motors particularly as I paid a real PREMIUM to get good quality. Eventually I bought the genuine Vexta Drivers that are specifically intended for these motors,
they have an open circuit voltage of 150V!. They are absolutely superb, they spin my motors at 2400rpm all day and have not missed a step in four years. Without those drivers the motors
are really very average.

Craig

4865

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Lua file operations

« on: April 07, 2018, 05:38:21 PM »

Hi Keith,

My problem has been that the methods in the lua docs sometimes don't work with Mach4 Lua

I haven't encountered that. Certainly Mach4 uses version 5.2 and there are differences between 5.1 and 5.3 which will trip you up, I had a problem because I was looking at 5.3 docs and took me a while
to figure out why nothing worked.

The other thing is that all of chapter 6 in the 5.2 docs is about Lua 'Standard Libraries'. So all the file functions you are experimenting with are a library, not core Lua. The Library is constructed as a table.
In this case the table is called 'io'.  io.open  and io.close  and io.flush are all entries of the table io, the entry is a function which is a very clever use of the principle of 'functions as a first class values'.
Given that a library is an addon its quite possible that certain features don't work as advertised although I haven't found any which don't comply to 5.2 docs.

Craig

4866

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Another Mach 4 issu not tool path display

« on: April 07, 2018, 05:24:16 PM »

Hi,
yes on a couple of occasions I've had similar things happen. In most cases it was because the scale was miles out and by zooming in  I found it. Never did work out why Mach had changed
scale to the extent the toolpath vanished. I found that if I selected the machine limits (boundaries) to be displayed then Mach would correctly scale the tooplath everytime.

Craig

4867

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: output on/off from same button

« on: April 07, 2018, 05:16:10 PM »

Hi,
you have a number of syntax errors:

hReg, rc = mc.mcIoGetHandle(inst, OSIG_OUTPUT0);

Should be:
hReg,rc=mc.mcSignalGetHandle(inst,mc.OSIG_OUTPUT0)

because OSIG_OUTPUT0 is a signal not an IO and mc.OSIG_OUTPUT0 correctly identifies the signal within Machs core.

BoolPointValue = mc.mcIoGetState(hReg);

Should be:
BoolPointValue=mc.mcSignalGetState(hReg)

if (OSIG_OUTPUT0 == 0) then  ---- SE è SPENTO

Should be:
if(BoolPointValue==0) then

Because OSIG_OUTPUT0 is only a human readable representation of a signal, its true identity during this instance of Mach is hReg and you have enquired
and got its state and copied it to a variable BoolPointValue.

One other point is that Machs Lua interpreter always reduces uppercase function names to lowercase and strips out leading zeros and spaces.
Thus your M101 is seen by Mach as m101.
M0101 would be seen as m101
M 101 would be seen as m101

In most cases Mach will correctly indentify and use the code you intended but it can go wrong sometimes. Do yourself a favour use lowercase without leading zeros or spaces,
you'll have fewer mistakes.

Look in Mach4Hobby/Docs for Mach4CoreAPI.chm and ScriptingManual.pdf, they will help a lot.

Craig

4868

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach 4 stops processing gcode

« on: April 06, 2018, 04:17:47 PM »

Hi,

https://www.intervalzero.com/products/rtos-platform-vision/

Craig

4869

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Lua file operations

« on: April 06, 2018, 03:57:56 PM »

Hi,
this is so helpful it lives on my desktop when coding:

https://www.lua.org/manual/5.2/

The section you want is 6.8

Craig

4870

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mapping F5 Key in mach 4

« on: April 06, 2018, 03:52:43 PM »

Hi,
just as a guess you can't use function keys because they are already assigned. They are used by the Lua Editor.

Craig