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Messages - joeaverage

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6341
Mach4 General Discussion / Re: How do I get to the center of 2 edges?
« on: October 11, 2017, 09:59:24 PM »
Hi,
with the DRO calculator active place the cursor over the Xaxis DRO and click, advanced calculator screen hover over
Y axis and click. I was trying to get it to work last night...and thats what I found.

Craig

6342
General Mach Discussion / Re: problems with machining holes and Z axis
« on: October 11, 2017, 03:41:54 PM »
Hi,
Quote
There seems to be an issue, albeit minor, on all axis.
Minor? This just about buggers the machine
to do anything.

Craig

6343
General Mach Discussion / Re: mach 3
« on: October 11, 2017, 03:39:59 PM »
Hi dwa60,
laptops are generally unsuitable as platforms for Machs parallel port. All the powesaving features of laptops interferes
with the smooth and continuous operation of the CPU which the parallel port requires. The laptop would be very
suitable for Mach with an external controller such as I've already mentioned.

Craig

6344
Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Strange occurence in Mach 4
« on: October 11, 2017, 03:47:58 AM »
Hi native34,
have you had a chance to experiment?

Craig

6345
Mach4 General Discussion / Re: G-code execution from screen button.
« on: October 11, 2017, 03:37:19 AM »
Hi,
I think you may need to give some more consideration to error trapping and handling. Exception handling is one of the most difficult
areas of programming to get right and yet has a major bearing on the useful life of the software.

Craig

PS Its good night here!

6346
General Mach Discussion / Re: First startup motors not running
« on: October 11, 2017, 03:31:13 AM »
Hi John,
are you making any progress.

I'm not sure but I think the question mark alongside the driver icon is to do with User Account Control in Windows 7.
You may already have noted that you have to run Mach  as Administrator to get the required privilege. I encountered the
same thing some years ago when I set up my little Atom board PC with Windows7 and parallel port. I can't remember just
how I worked around that but there is a way in Windows7 for a particular program, Mach for instance, to always be run at
Administrator privilege when you open it. I will try to find the process, I did post it on the forum when I did it but it would be
about four years ago now.

The important point is that question mark or not I don't think is the issue with your machine.

May I suggest disconnect all motors but one, the X say. Its so easy to get confused when you've got multiple axes...when if you can figure
one out, and that would be a step up, then the others are usually easy.

Now you need to get busy with your scope. First can you see the DIR pin of the BoB change state as you jog backwards and forwards?
Is that signal being applied to the right pin of the driver? Is there a hardwired setting or jumper on the driver board that sets Step/Dir
or CW/CCW ? With the motor output shaft disconnected from the screw issue a long slow movement to the driver and probe the Step signal.
eg G1 X 5000 F5, should take hour to complete and you can probe without time pressure.

Craig

6347
General Mach Discussion / Re: MPG Deceleration issue
« on: October 11, 2017, 03:06:49 AM »
Hi,
I don't know about the Galil controller and my pendant is a P1A from the same manufacturer.

I've found that it is very easy to spin the MPG fast enuf that the machine can't keep up and therefore carries on after you've stopped to catch up
with all the pulses you issued. It can be a bit frightening when you realise that you are much closer to the work/vice/clamp than you thought.

I have my most aggressive/fastest setting at 1mm per click. It is easily possible for me to overdo it and have the machine run on after. I do not
usually find it excessive provided I keep my head screwed on. If I want to be a dickhead and spin the thing like mad then Mach is not going to
save me! At less aggressive settings like 0.1 and 0.01 mm per click I never have a problem.

You can reduce the overrun tendency by setting Mach to run at high even maximum speed when jogging, it is very likely to be able to keep
up with the MPG pulses without lagging to far behind thereby minimising the overrun. It is common to have jogging speeds set fairly low so that you may
sneak up to a feature without crashing into it. If you then subsequently start spinning the thing to travel some considerable distance with the jogging speed
still at a low setting you have the makings of a crash happening. It might be possible to have a Brain or a macro which causes the jogging speed to be
automatically increased when using fast step settings and again reduce them when using fine step settings for touching off. I can certainly see how I
might go about coding that in Mach4 but Mach3 is less flexible and not sure how it could be done.

In my situation I have found a reasonably fast jog speed and intelligent use of the pendant to be quite adequate. I haven't crashed into anything because
of overrun for ages.

It may be worth experimenting with some of the motion modes, if I recall there is one mode where if you spin the MPG slowly the machine advances
the normal step per click but beyond a certain user settable MPG speed the machine advances at maximum jog speed. Maybe a better or at least safer
mode for your customer. In the final analysis if your customer is going to show poor judgement or concentration can you really help them?

Craig

6348
General Mach Discussion / Re: mach 3
« on: October 11, 2017, 02:34:14 AM »
Hi dwa60,
what computer have you got running your machine?. If its an older XP machine then using a parallel port is a perfectly acceptable
alternative to shelling out yet more bucks particularly if they're in short supply!

A good rule to stick to is to use the computer that controls your machine to do just that and NOTHING else. Someone on the forum described
it: 'When a computer is hooked to and controlling a machine tool it is NO LONGER a personal computer....it is a machine controller that just happens
to use Windows as an operating system'.

Its not unreasonable then to have a computer just for your machine. You may ask around the family and friends to see whether anyone has an
old computer that might fill the bill. A PC doesn't need to be a 'whizz bang' unit, in fact the earlier less powerful PCs seem to do a better job.

Craig

6349
Hi,
at one stage of the piece I was having some bother crashing Mach4 and I found it necessary to reset the machine several times in one session.
I can't recall what I was doing wrong but any way I was restarting, homing and then running the same Gcode that I'd been running
prior to  crashing Mach. I had done this three or four times before I made a mistake, I reset the machine and started the Gcode running BEFORE
I'd referenced the machine. Of course disaster struck and I drove the spindle into the workpiece.

As a result of this I've coded my machine to ignore any jogging, MDIing or <cycle start> until I reference the machine. I do have a button to override
this behaviour if I wish or need but it means I can't accidentally due to brain fade do anything UNTIL the vital referencing after a reset or start.

I know a few experienced CNCers don't bother with home switches. I did operate like that for a while but found that it was very easy for me to
confuse zeroing my work co-ords and zeroing my machine co-ords. Also I found that because of that confusion soft limits not to be useful, they only
work well when the machine co-ords are referenced to a known and repeatable place.

The quality and repeatability of my work has gone up a great deal and the number of mistakes reduced a great deal since I fitted good home switches.

Craig

6350
Hi,
if you have home switches it doesn't matter where you shut down so long as you reference your machine at start up it will always be in the right
place.

I can shut Mach down, come back the next day, fire up and reference and re-start the PCB job still in the vice from yesterday. The referencing I've
found to be as good as 0.02mm and that's just with microswitches and would be better again with index homing. So easy....I like you tried all sorts
of ways to get around this...and wasted my time doing all of them UNTIL I put in good home switches.

Craig

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