Messages

5631

General Mach Discussion / Re: UC400ETH

« on: December 25, 2017, 08:04:19 PM »

Hi,
yeah it works but is it optimal?

When homing Mach has to ignore the limit switches because they are being used as home switches at the moment. When do you suppose you are most
likely to have some sort of issue for which limit switches provide protection? Exactly a run away axis is more likely to ocurr when homing just when Mach
has no limit switches.

I would recommend that the home switches be separate then the limits switches will always be limit switches and be recognized by Mach as such and provide
the protection that is otherwise absent when homing.

Craig

5632

General Mach Discussion / Re: UC400ETH

« on: December 25, 2017, 05:34:15 PM »

Hi,
a new external motion controller for Christmas, kool....

The 400ETH has two ports. It is pretty much mandatory that pins 2-9 of port 1 are outputs, for your motors. However you can with port 2 change pins
2-9 from outputs to inputs. Note you can assign them as inputs OR outputs, not half and half. All those extra inputs will give you a lot of options.

Many CNCers have limit and home switches combined. A hangover from the parallel port days when there were so few inputs. You don't have to do that now.
You can have separate home and limit switches which 1) saves on confusion and 2) means that Mach does not have to ignore a limit switch while homing
with benefits to reliability of limit switch operation. You can also have a separate probe input, in fact with Mach4 you could have up to four probe inputs.

Craig

5633

General Mach Discussion / Re: mach3

« on: December 25, 2017, 05:12:04 PM »

Hi,
fine, post the details.

Craig

5634

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: When (and how often) will the next Mach4 update occur?

« on: December 25, 2017, 07:10:47 AM »

Hi,

How about if you jog into a Soft Limit, it bumps all three axiis by a few thousands - hit it a few times and pretty soon you are way off.

Does it?. My machine doesn't?

When you set the Home position with physical limit switches, and you set Soft Limits below/beyond the physical limit switches, then after you "Home" the machine, you always have to jog inside the Soft Limits before you can enable the Soft Limits.  As a suggestion, if one or more axiis are outside the Soft Limits, Mach4 should warn you about it then hold the "enable request" in stasis (like flashing) until all axiis are within the Soft Limits, allowing you to move (either jogging or moving programmatically). And then when all axiis are within the Soft Limits they are automatically enabled.  Thus ensuring they are not left disabled unintentionally.

If you are outside the Softlimits the machine is supposed to stop. Are you saying that your home switches and/or home offsets are such that when you reference your
machine that you are already outside the softlimits? Of course you can program it to have whatever behavior you want including your suggestion.

Craig

5635

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: When (and how often) will the next Mach4 update occur?

« on: December 25, 2017, 06:57:36 AM »

Hi,

The Backlash Compensation is totally broken.

Mach4 does not do backlash compensation that is enacted by the motion controller.

Craig

5636

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Setting to millimeters

« on: December 25, 2017, 06:29:10 AM »

Hi,
I haven't encountered that bug.

When Mach4 shuts down all its current settings are flushed to the profile file. On starting Mach the profile is read. There are a number of circumstances
where Mach4 will update the profile during a sessiom but the surest way to do so is to shut down and then restart Mach.

Craig

5637

General Mach Discussion / Re: mach3

« on: December 25, 2017, 06:20:39 AM »

Hi,
I rather suspect that I was the member who appeared to dump efforts to help OP.

He has posted before and on each occasion he has tried to get assistance to get a Chinese knockoff USB to parallel board to work. I didn't
recognize the board from the picture that  he posted but Tweakie did.

I have swapped a couple of PMs with him since and told him that I was perfectly happy to help him get setup but I wouldn't be bothered to do so unless
and until he bought a suitable board, my suggestion was either US or European made, CNCdrive, PMDX, Warp9 or PoKeys being the standout players.
He has never replied. I can only presume that he wishes tp persevere with the Chinese made board he already has. I wish him the best of luck.

Craig

5638

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: When (and how often) will the next Mach4 update occur?

« on: December 23, 2017, 02:11:33 AM »

Hi,
conversations I've had in the recent past suggest that NFS has to few staff to commit the resources necessary to update Mach4s documentation.
NFS is trying to develop Mach particularly for the OEM market as a means of financial survival and documentation just doesn't have that priority.

The forum is the best bet for 'live documentation'.

What sort of anomalies have you encountered?

Craig

5639

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Axis directions

« on: December 22, 2017, 12:11:57 AM »

Hi,
it is common practice to have the top of the Z travel to have machine coordinate of z=0. Therefore any Z axis move has machine coordinates of less than zero, ie negative.

A lot of new users baulk at such a thing. Under normal circumstances you have the machine set to display work coordinates. Thus the top of your material would be z=0,
above and free of the material positive z and bleow the surface, ie cut depth is negative z. But these are WORK coordinates, they are easy to understand and visualize.
MACHINE coordinates are a little different and especially so when all normal working z machine coordinates are negative.

With the Z axis at the very top of travel machine coordinate z=0. If you jog downwards 105mm say, to the top of your workpiece the machine coordinate would be z=-105.
If you were doing a 1mm cut the machine coordinate would be z=-106mm. It may look a little strange at first but it will make sense in the end. Mach tracks and operates
in machine coordinates its only us humans who need help with conveniences like work coordinates. Negative z machine coordinates are just fine for Mach and once you and
I get used to seeing negative z machine coordinates we too can derive good understanding of our machine.

Craig

5640

General Mach Discussion / Re: Mach3 on Parallel Vs UC100

« on: December 21, 2017, 08:52:17 PM »

Hi,
with an external motion controller you don't set the frequency.

You set the 'Steps Per', 'Velocity' and 'Acceleration' and the plugin takes care of the rest. Unless you have a really high precision (count) encoder running at high spoeed
the external controller will put out pulse no troubles.

Craig