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Messages - joeaverage

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4901
General Mach Discussion / Re: Only X-axis motor is working
« on: March 30, 2018, 05:54:34 AM »
Hi,
having your steppers wired correctly is mandatory to get them to work properly. As you point out you need to get the best from them no matter what power supply you
use.

If you can find documentation...all well and good. If you can't then the trouble starts. There are two basic approaches you could take:
1) Using instrumentation including an oscilloscope, sinusoidal signal generator and resistance meter make measurements to work out the wiring
2) Write down all the possible combinations of wiring and using what instruments you have eliminate as many as you can and thereafter try each remaining combination to find the best
    performing combination.

Do you have electronic test gear or know someone who has and will help?

I bought a new old stock 5 phase Vexta stepper. It has 10 wires, 2 for each phase. They are electrically isolated from each other so determining the pairs of wires was easy.
There was documents that came with it and my measurements were confirmed. What the documents did not cover was the phase of each winding. I was able to determine
the phase by feeding one winding with a 1kHz sinusoid and then measuring the phase of the induced voltage in each of the other windings.

To do the same thing with a two phase stepper would be similar. Determine the 4 pairs of wires with a multimeter. Feed one winding with a sinusoid and measure the induced voltage
on each of the remaining windings. There will be one which is in tight phase (antiphase) of your input being the winding in the same slots or phase of the stepper. The remaining two windings
will be slightly less strongly coupled and will be the two windings associated with the the second phase of your two phase motor.

This process can be confusing and you will need a solid understanding of transformer action to decode the measurements you make. 'Character building'....mind you I don't have any character
and don't really want to start now!

Craig

4902
General Mach Discussion / Re: Only X-axis motor is working
« on: March 29, 2018, 10:31:06 PM »
Hi,
yes your steppers will work with 24V but they will be able to go a lot faster without losing steps with a higher voltage.

A linear supply uses a transformer to reduce 230V to 30V. Transformers of this power level are quite big, heavy and quality wound ones are expensive.
Switchmode supplies use electronics to generate AC at many kHz and can use a much smaller and cheaper transformer. At high power levels they are
cheaper than linear supplies but they are  not as reliable or forgiving. By all means use you switch mode supply but if you see smoke coming from it and/or
your stepper drivers you will know that it was a poor choice.

Craig

4903
Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Setting up Mach4
« on: March 29, 2018, 05:52:05 PM »
Hi,
when you start Mach4 a window opens to allow you to choose the profile you wish to use for this session. The window has 'Delete' and 'Copy' buttons.

If you want to see the profiles Mach4Hobby/Profiles.

Craig

4904
Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Setting up Mach4
« on: March 28, 2018, 10:03:37 PM »
Hi,
probably easier to delete it and start again.

To make a new profile especially as you are new to it is to create a uniquely named profile which is a copy of
of one of the standard profiles that ship with Mach4.

Craig

4905
Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach4 drip feed
« on: March 28, 2018, 07:53:48 PM »
Hi,
OK I understand now.

I believe that Mach/Lua is capable of supporting a TCP socket which could in turn feed textual Gcode
instructions from a remote file or server. The textual Gcode could be acted on:
mc.mcCntlGcodeExecute(inst,"[Gcode Textual Line]"), note I would not use the ExecuteWait() variant of the API,
you wish this to run as if it were a regular Gcode job.

I personally have no experience of setting up a Lua socket but there is a thread on the forum currently about such matters.
I think also that there is a example in the Mach4/Lua Examples folder.

Craig

4906
Hi,
most industrial machines are wired so that if a limit switch is triggered ALL the power supply contactors drop out.
In many countries workplace safety legislation effectively mandates that should be the case. There is no avoiding
it, you can't bypass it or override it...by employment law.

As hobbyists however many of our machines combine home and limit switches which preclude the dedicated de-powering
of the spindle and axis motors as required in industrial practice and  require limit overrides and specifically ignoring limit switches
when homing, a situation which carries a significant risk of a run-away axis. Just when you need limit protection the most
we disable it!

Craig


4907
Hi,
firstly, just because your home switches are somewhere in the middle of the table that does not prevent you from
placing your home point wherever you wish, thats what the 'Home Offset' setting is all about.

The ESS has 26 inputs without creative, and you need to economise???

Quote
In my situation I don't see a need to have separate switches for limits and homing.
Now you have the problem you describe....go to machine zero and your limit switches activate...as they are supposed to.

4908
Hi,
is there any reason not to have separate home and limit switches?. Combining them used to be important years ago
when no one had many spare inputs but with an ESS you have plenty. Why not take advantage of it and use them.

Failing that you'll have to use some sort of limit override.

Craig

4909
Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach4 drip feed
« on: March 27, 2018, 07:56:31 PM »
Hi,
what do you mean? Drip feeding data or code or what...saline solution?

Craig

4910
Hi,
just a note to help avoid confusion:
A parallel port is a motion controller, Machs Parallel Port Driver takes numerical data from Machs trajectory planner
and produces pulse streams which are communicated using the parallel port of the PC. The smart bit is the software
driver. The parallel port on its own is vunerable to abuse so a breakout board (BoB) is used, its really only an amplifier/buffer,
it doesn't do anything smart. Reasonable BoBs can be had for as little as $10 but better made ones maybe $50.

An external motion controller takes numerical data from Mach via USB or Ethernet and it generates the pulse streams.
They commonly need a BoB to buffer them to the external environment. These controllers have either microcontrollers,
FPGAs or DSP chips, ie they are smart. There are some cheap but crappy ones but good ones start around $120.

External controllers mean that you are not restricted to desktop 32bit machines as you would be with a parallel port solution.
They are also subject to very much less disruption by background software running on the machine which can limit parallel
port machines.

The 4 axis G540 combines a BoB and four stepper drivers in the same device. You would only need to use three.
Gecko have a very good reputation for reliability and backup.

Craig

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