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Messages - joeaverage

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511
Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Serial-rtu Modbus baudrate up to 1000000kbps!
« on: September 28, 2022, 05:01:44 PM »
Hi,
does the MODBUS device to which you are connecting go that fast? The fastest setting I've ever seen on a MODBUS device is 115.2kbps no matter how fast the serial
link is.

Craig

512
Hi,

Quote
The ESS can read a fast pulsed digital signal; it reads spindle speed/position triggers, rotary encoders, etc all the time. So it should be possible to read the current "speed" (in pulses per second, or pulses per time window if it is being polled at a known interval) and, knowing the PWM frequency, do a little math to convert that into a 0-100% value.

No ADC required.

Good trick if you can pull it off. Remember that and ESS encoder or MPG input measures input pulse frequency, not duty cycle. Its not clear to me how you would contort the ESS
to measure duty cycle.

I had another idea as a workaround....an ESS can very happily produce an analogue voltage from a PWM input from Mach. If that voltage is in a closed loop
with an external comparator you could get a low bandwidth ( sub 1Hz) approximation of the Clearpath analog voltage.

Even if either of these techniques could be used to 'push' an ESS to a quasi analog input capability....is it really worth it? A PoKeys 57E is about 60GBP, if you want analog inputs
that would be cost effective, and so so much easier. Note that the 57E is the plain 'vanilla' PoKeys data input board and the 57CNC is an extension of the core 57E.

Quote
Well in this case, because ClearPath is clever and encodes the left/right load into the single PWM signal, most of the time it should be at 50% PWM with blips towards either 0 or 100 depending on if the load is left/right.

Well spotted, you are correct, the voltage will be 50% normally and only deviate from that at times of peak load. My Delta servo drives have two (programmable) analog outputs.
As a matter of interest I hooked a simple moving coil voltmeter to each output just to monitor servo load. It was as boring as hell, the servos operate at near 0% load for 99.99% of the time
and only occasionally blip up to a few %. I came to the conclusion that it was a wasted effort, I was not learning anything particularly useful about my machine. It was for this reason that
I suggested OP try hooking a simple voltmeter and filter to the Clearpath out just to see what happens. He may well come to the conclusion I did, ie that its just not that bloody
interesting.

It might be if you had a large highspeed production machine where you might expect moderately high and near continuous servo load would such metering be useful. With my hobby machine
my 750W servos operate at 50W or less, on average, for hours at a time.

That is not to say however that I could not or would not be interested in extending my machine to have several analog inputs. Monitoring spindle load, especially my high torque/low speed spindle I
use for steel and stainless, I can draw 1kW to 1.5kW for long periods of time, and that's with a servo based spindle motor rated at 1.8kW.
Another place I would like to monitor motor load would be my coolant pump. If the load drops really low, that would suggest the coolant is running low and the pump is cavitating and a high
load indicates that the coolant delivery pipe is getting blocked with micro-swarf. I seem to suffer both problem on a regular basis, and any system that would help me automate the response
would save me headaches. It would be quite nice to have a slider or two for FeedRate Override etc as well.

None of these reasons is compelling.....what I really want is another 750W Delta B2 servo for my fourth axis. The stepper with which it is equipped now works but is a slow as a wet
week. I want another servo...they kick arse. The problem is that while the servo kit is (or rather was....has the price gone up?) $438USD, plus DHL shipping, say $100USD for a total
of $540USD. The New Zealand dollar has slipped to just 57cents relative to the USD so the servo would cost me something like $950NZD, and then I should allow another 15%
for GST, the local NZ tax for a total of $1090.00NZD. I have the annual rates bill due in a couple of weeks......a man should probably pay the city rates bill BEFORE he spends money on his
hobby obsession!

Craig

513
Mach4 General Discussion / Re: m6 macro
« on: September 27, 2022, 11:46:12 PM »
Hi,
I don't see any glaring faults that would cause what you describe.

There was a time, a year or so ago when Mach4 adopted the 5.3 version of Lua whereas previously it had used the 5.2 version. There were just enough subtle differences
between 5.2 and 5.3 that some Lua code would not run on the latest Mach build. I've not heard that complaint for some time, but this could be an example of that thing.

What you need to do is run the m6 macro step by step with the ZeroBrane editor and observe the results. It will become obvious which instructions are failing....and that
will inform you as to the corrective solution.

Craig

514
Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach4 reverts to demo mode after every reboot
« on: September 27, 2022, 11:31:42 PM »
Hi,
I  think I would try and sort it, you are allowed something like seven license transactions in two years.....it would npot take long to blast through them if
you had to do so at each re-boot.

Craig

515
Hi,

Quote
I used an AC servo motor with good power of 3 kilowatts.
I thought it would allow for more precise control.

Yes, you do have a powerful motor and with excellent torque/speed control properties. This will make an excellent candidate for a threading spindle.
All you have to do is decide how you want to do it. If you use the servo in velocity mode, ie analogue input, and use the auxilliary encoder output
to feed the index pulse of the controller you'll have no difficulty using g76 threading moves.

If however you want to use position control you can do so and that does not require g76 moves.

Your choice, either will work just fine.

Craig

516
Hi,
the ESS does not have a, or in fact any, analogue inputs.

A 57CNC by PoKeys does however, about four analogue inputs.It is possible to have the ESS as your primary motion controller but use a second board like a PoKeys as a data input board.
In fact PoKeys made their name in data-input boards....and only later did they use then for CNC purposes.

Were you to use a PoKeys board it would be a secondary data input board, ie it would not be in realtime control of the axis motors. For example a home switch is and needs
to be hooked to the motion controller in realtime so it can respond instantly to a home event. The home switch must therefore be an ESS input because the axis motors
are controlled by the ESS. If you used a PoKeys input, PoKeys would detect the input, report back to Mach and then Mach would signal the ESS via the motion buffer to the axis motors.
The delays would be hundreds of milliseconds....way WAY WAY too slow to be a proper home switch.

Given that you just want a load monitor then using a PoKeys 57E for its ADC inputs would be worthwhile.

Craig

517
Hi,
the output from the Clearpath is a PWM signal, which if filtered (resistor/capacitor) would be an analogue voltage from 0 to 5V.
The problem is now to turn that into a value that Mach can use as an input. You are thinking of digital inputs, ie on or off or equivalently 0V or 5V.....
not some in between voltage. Thus you will need a device like A PLC or similar that can convert that analogue voltage into a number, and that number
be recorded in one of Machs registers, and then Mach can use the register to drive the bar gauge.

May I suggest that you just use a cheap analog voltmeter and a resistor/capacitor filter to monitor the output voltage corresponding to the servo load just as a temporary experiment.
You'll find that the voltage is nearly 0V all the time, and only once in a while will it jump up to anything like full output. I suspect you'll come to the same conclusion
I did.....that servos just loaf along doing virtually nothing for hours on end with just the occasional blip.....so who bloody cares? There are things to worry about
but servo load is not one of them. Does it make sense to spend time and money (on ADC's in a PLC) to monitor something which is of very minor use?

Craig

518
Hi,
g76 is the standard lathe single point threading cycle.

It does not require a position capable lathe spindle but does require a very stable spindle speed. For instance if you 'dial' up 500rpm for lathe threading, it does
not matter particularly if its 450 rpm or 550rpm, but whatever it is it should stay there. So lets say you spindle is doing 525rpm and then it starts cutting a thread.
The Z axis will advance exactly 1mm per rotation or 8.75mm/sec  for a 1mm pitch thread....so the spindle must rotate at its assumed speed irrespective of the cutting load.
If the spindle slows down to 490 rpm as a result of the load then the Z axis must also slow down to 8.166mm/sec to maintain the same pitch.

All g76 capable spindles are fitted with at least an index pulse (that is one pulse per revolution), and some controllers will accept an index pulse and/or an encoder pulses of many pulse
per revolution. Mach uses the index pulse to calculate exactly how fast the spindle is going and when to start the Z axis travel so that multiple passes are synchronised on top of each other.
Mach will adjust itself to small variations in spindle speed.....but not by much. If you want to have good and accurate pitch control you NEED a spindle with a very stable rpm under load.

Note that this technique is a very common lathe operation and many tens of thousands of users make nicely accurate threads every day....but does have that requirement...ie stable spindle speed.

The technique that Katz has proposed is to have a POSITION controlled spindle, ie Step/Dir, and then you can program a rotational move, ie the spindle with a linear move, ie the Z axis.
This is how I do rigid tapping with my vertical mill. My tapping spindle is a servo motor and is position controlled, and so I can program a Gcode move of:

g1 z-10 c 3600 f14400
g1 z0 c 0 f14400

and the machine will rotate 10 revolutions (3600 degrees) while the z axis descends 10mm for a pitch of 1mm per revolution in about 15secs, whereon it will back out out the hole
by 10 revolutions and the Z axis rise by 10mm, again in 15 secs.

You can see that I do not require a g76 move, I'm relying on Mach being able to calculate a coordinated trajectory between a rotating axis and a linear axis.

This technique works fine....but note that it requires a powerful spindle, otherwise the lag of the spindle will screw up the synchronisation with the linear axis. In fact BOTH
threading techniques require a superbly powerful and stable spindle or the result will be crap.

This is the take-away that 'threading requires a very stable spindle speed......if you are trying to do lathe threading with a sub-standard spindle you will come a cropper bigtime!'

Craig

519
Hi,
probing is a realtime operation, and Mach3 has ONE probing input only.
Mach4 has four probing inputs.

Craig

520
General Mach Discussion / Re: Y axis losing its bearings
« on: September 23, 2022, 07:23:04 PM »
Hi,

Quote
The one thing I did notice was that on the config, ports and pins the kernal speed is set to 100k.

Complete red herring, the 'kernel speed' refers to the internal clock rate of Machs parallel port, and very few if any PC parallel ports would ever run at 100khz,
25kHz is the default standard.

Note that Machs parallel port CAN ONLY be run on 32bit PCs of Windows7 or WindowsXP. That your machine is running....sort of.....on a Windows 10 PC means
that YOU CANNOT USE Mach's parallel port...end of story. Therefore you machine must have an external motion control board, most likely an RnR or BitSensor type,
both Chinese junk. If you persevere you might get it to go, but you would be advised to buy a US or European made external motion control board like an
Ethernet SmoothStepper ($190) by Warp9TD.

Craig

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