Messages

501

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Soft Limit Problems

« on: October 03, 2022, 03:48:37 PM »

Hi,
your accelerations are very low, about 0.04g, and that is contributing to your problem.

The best toolpath following occurs at highest possible acceleration. Acceleration requires torque from your axis motors and given that the torque is limited so will your accelerations.
You should try increasing the acceleration until you start missing steps or stalling, then back off by 25% or so. Try to get the acceleration to 0.1g or better if you can.

I see also that you complain that above a certain speed the machine overruns the Soft Limit and hits the stops? Why don't you just reprogram the Soft Limits to be 1/2 inch
'inside' the stops....surely your machine will decelerate and stop BEFORE hitting the physical end stops.

Craig

502

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Not saving input config change

« on: October 03, 2022, 03:34:22 PM »

Hi,
the ESS plugin changes the Mach Control plugin.

For example if you assign an input port and pin in the ESS Pins Config tab, then associate that pin to one of Mach's inputs on the ESS Input Signals tab....then lo and behold
the Mach Control tab will also magically have that same input assigned on its Input Signals tab. In truth what has happened is that the ESS plugin  has made new assignments
(Port and Pin and Input Signal) and then modified the Mach Control plugin to match. That is to say the ESS plugin mastered the Control plugin. Note that not all ESS assignments
have that property....but many do.

Motor tuning and axis assignment are examples of data which is set/assigned in the Control plugin only.

I think the explanation for your problem is that the setting you are making (in the Control tab) is being overwritten by the ESS plugin. It is for this reason that Warp9
recommends if you need to change the sense (Active High to Active Low) of a pin then do so in the ESS Pins Config tab.

Craig

503

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Soft Limit Problems

« on: October 02, 2022, 10:55:29 PM »

Hi,
I think Kaatz is right, when you are jogging, say in the +X direction the controlled point is advancing 1001, 1002,1003 etc. But your Soft Limit is 1010 say....well Mach will
stop the jogging when it gets to 1010 alright....but it will take some time to decelerate to a stop.

SoftLimits works pretty well on my machine, but then it hs quite high (0.15g) acceleration so that even if the Soft Limit triggers the machine will stop almost instantly.
What machine accelerations do you have?. If they are pretty tepid then you can expect overrun.

May I suggest an experiment...try a MDI, something like g0x400, when in fact you know your X Sift Limit is only 300. I would Mach to say 'No, you bloody plonker, that exceeds
Soft Limits'. If it says this then I think Mach is doing what it is supposed to. Actually Mach does not say 'you bloody plonker'....but I feel it should .

Craig

504

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Editing loaded GCode???

« on: October 02, 2022, 10:41:51 PM »

Hi,

Edit: found it hidden away - very unintuative

It combined with the other Gcode File Operations......which seems logical to me. If you were doing it where would you put the button?
Of course Mach4 has an editable GUI so you can in fact put whatever button or gadget wherever you like, so have at it. I'm curious where you would
put it?

Craig

505

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Not saving input config change

« on: October 02, 2022, 10:32:22 PM »

Hi,
sometimes the only way to get a new setting to stick is to close Mach. When Mach closes it flushes all the setup data to the .ini file.
If I remember correctly there is a Lua function called 'Flush' which does the same sort of thing.

Code: [Select]

LUA Syntax:
rc = mc.mcProfileFlush(
number mInst)

Description:
Forces the core to commit any profile changes.

Craig

506

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Not saving input config change

« on: October 02, 2022, 07:30:20 PM »

Hi,
what motion controller? If its an ESS then the correct place to change the pin sense is the ESS plugin Pins Config tab, not the Mach4 Control Input Signals tab.

Craig

507

General Mach Discussion / Re: Mach3: Formula Axis Correction

« on: October 02, 2022, 06:53:22 PM »

Hi,
the formula correction is and always has been patchy. Sometimes mach correctly applies the formula but at other times it does not.
I was never able to get it to work consistently enough to use. Given that all Mach3 development ceased seven-eight years ago it will never be fixed.

Craig

508

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: (Screen editing) How to link a gauge widget to an INPUT?

« on: September 30, 2022, 05:19:52 PM »

Hi,

But as the motors can be reconfigured between different HLFB behaviours fairly trivially, and code is just code, there's no reason why I cannot program a "change HLFB behaviour" button in Mach, and select between "HLFB = ALARM" and "HLFB = Torque load" modes, especially when testing new feeds/speeds/cutters and my hand can be near the estop mushroom.

In order for Clearpath to make their devices as easy to understand as possible they have limited  themselves to just one single output, HLFB.
My Delta servos have six independent digital outputs, any and all of which can pe programmed to reflect a number of output conditions, including
over current, over voltage, overload, following error, zero error window etc. In addition to the digital (on/off) outputs there a two programmable analog (0-8V)
outputs for monitoring purposes, say motor current and/or motor temperature.

The Delta's have an encoder output as well. The native encoder is 160,000 count per rev but you can program the aux encoder output of the drive to have anywhere from
4 lines per rev to 40,000 lines per rev. This is great if you have a standalone DRO say.

Clearpath miss on all those features because they wanted/needed to simplify their device to sell to newcomers. Shame really.

Craig

509

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: (Screen editing) How to link a gauge widget to an INPUT?

« on: September 29, 2022, 09:49:05 PM »

Hi,
as far as I know Clearpath only have one output signal called HLFB. If that is the case are you using it to monitor servo load?

That I think is a mistake. One of the most important features of a servo is that it 'knows' if it gets to far behind its commanded position, called 'Following Error '.
If it does it will automatically shutdown.....but it needs to tell Mach that its done so so that Mach can Estop the machine so that all the servos stop. The last thing you want is
for the X axis to fault 'following error' and stop while the Y and Z axes carry on as if nothing happened.....CRASH!!!

Craig

510

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Serial-rtu Modbus baudrate up to 1000000kbps!

« on: September 29, 2022, 03:18:19 PM »

Hi,
MODBUS is quite a versatile communication protocol and has a huge established base......but it was never a blindingly fast protocol.
If you want really fast low latency comms then Ethernet or better, EtherCat, is the answer.

Craig