Messages

6511

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: probing problems

« on: September 29, 2017, 02:30:44 PM »

Hi,
when I looked at the status messages I guessed that this probing operation must involve a couple of moves, am I correct?
Looks like the probe travels to the right say to find one inside edge, which it does successfully and then travels to the left to find the other edge at that
fails. If this is indeed the case I suspect that the 'wizard' which is generating the movement codes is crook rather than the probe itself.

Craig

6512

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: System Requirements for Mach4

« on: September 29, 2017, 02:22:05 PM »

Hi,
I use a little dual core Atom miniITX board for my machine controller. Win 7 Embedded. It has on chip graphics and smurph describes them as 'awful'.
It works fine with Mach3 for which I bought it but also Mach4 which I now use. The only time I have any real issues with it is when I load a large file
for a PCB for example. It takes a long time to load and draw the toolplath but if your patient is does load and thereafter works fine. Just goes
to show that Mach4 will run on a very modest PC. I would buy something with a bit more grunt if buying again but see little point in going past i3 spec.

Craig

6513

General Mach Discussion / Re: Alternat way to setup tool probe mach3

« on: September 29, 2017, 09:12:47 AM »

Hi,
I see in the advertising for the Sain Smart board you get a free tee-shirt when you buy...can't be all bad!

Craig

6514

Mach3 under Vista / Re: Mach3 under win10

« on: September 29, 2017, 09:04:03 AM »

Hi Gerry,
kool the last time I looked, about a week ago, I don't recall seeing the Mach4 plugin for the UC300.

Do we have any report from users regarding functionality, ease of use etc?

Many Mach3 users won't offer assistance, as they've spent hours trying to help people, only to find out in the end, that the issue is with the chinese board.

I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that I should do the same, ie say nothing when someone starts asking about Chinese made boards.
Hard to work out who is being more stupid here, the Chinese companies who knowingly are supplying sub standard gear or idiot buyers who can be sold
on a few lines of bull********* advertising and price.

Craig

6515

Mach3 under Vista / Re: Mach3 under win10

« on: September 29, 2017, 03:07:53 AM »

Hi consaka,
I could put a list together of over 500 posts  on this forum alone from people who cant get their Chinese made gear to work.

I don't care what the Chinese think they are doing but when hundreds....of users are struggling then they can damn well take the criticism.

Craig

6516

Mach3 under Vista / Re: Mach3 under win10

« on: September 29, 2017, 03:00:32 AM »

Hi omiadhi,
your welcome, people answered all sorts of questions for me when I started...seems like the right thing to do to help someone else.

Sounds like your dead set on Windows 10 and therefore need an external controller. I don't recommend Chinese ones, any quick scan of the posts
in the forum will tell you most really really struggle to get them to work.

The cheapest and simplest are the UC100 and its look-a-like competitors the PMDX-411 and PoKeys 57CNCd25 are all good and the respective manufacturers
are very good about support but they only have 'one ports worth' of IO. They  very conveniently have a db25 output plug which is pinned indentically to Machs
parallel port and plugs straight into any number of BoBs or drivers. The downside is that they have only one port, so 12 output pins and 5 input pins.
You don't need a very sophisticated machine and  you will run out of input/output pins.

For this reason I recommend you consider the ESS by Warp9, the PMDX-426 or the PoKeys E57 or U57. The ESS has three ports, the PMDX  has two and the
PoKeys boards have 55 IO pins, a bit more than three equivalent ports. They are more expensive but not hugely so and when you need the extra capacity
it'll be there. You may note that I didn't include the U300 and 400 devices by CNCDrive, its not that they're not good, they are, and plenty of ports too, but
they don't have a Mach4 plugin yet. ger21 has informed me that CNCDrive has Mach4 plugins but they're not on their website yet.

This hobby is expensive enuf without buying stuff that doesn't work as well as it should or you have to buy bigger a bit later on....

Craig

6517

General Mach Discussion / Re: Reference not stopping

« on: September 29, 2017, 02:13:05 AM »

Hi Christoph,
how did you get on? We're all wanting to know. There are lots of these controllers out there and even more people struggling to get them
to work. If you have any success I'm sure there's lots of interest.

Craig

6518

General Mach Discussion / Re: Unexplained estop triggers and other issues on new build

« on: September 29, 2017, 02:06:28 AM »

Hi,
did you try tweakies suggestion? Did it work?

USB cables are quite susceptible to electrical noise. Ethernet cables and termination circuits are very much more tolerant, if you have a choice
to make at some date in the future consider Ethernet for its 'robustness'.

As tweakie suggested putting a ferrite at each end will help. It is often a good idea to put one somewhere near the centre. A ferrite has the
effect of breaking the circuit at least as far as RF is concerned. A long antenna (aka your USB cable) receives more RF energy than a short one,
in fact more than several short ones end on end. Putting a ferrite or even more than one at lengths along the cable breaks your antenna into shorter ones
which is desirable.

Craig

6519

General Mach Discussion / Re: Alternat way to setup tool probe mach3

« on: September 29, 2017, 01:55:12 AM »

Hi,
probing is a feature which in large measure is enacted by the motion controller and its plugin. I'm sorry but I don't think your controller
has the facility.

A G31 probe command operates something like this: Read G31 command G31 Z-1,for instance, Mach issues a move to the controller move to Z=-1 inch at
the current X Y co-ords, the controller issues pulses such that the Z axis drives downwards, the controller detects a probe strike and aborts the remainder
of the move, the controller reports back to Mach its current X Y and Z co-ords. The reported Z co-ord is the probe result.

If you used some other means the machine will try to complete the current move (Z goes down to -1) before it will detect or act on a probe strike signal and
drive the probe into the workpiece. Even if you could devise some way of having a probe strike signal issue a feedhold type command the latency of Mach
would cause the probe to continue downward sufficiently, to if not break it, certainly to far to be called accurate.

If you can't persuade the manufacturer of your board to invest in updating the plugin then buy another board from someone who has, there are some very
good suppliers who have sophisticated plugins and  are almost continuously updated.

Craig

6520

Mach3 under Vista / Re: Mach3 under win10

« on: September 28, 2017, 11:16:00 PM »

Hi,
even worse, as this guy found looks like it upsets maybe a registry entry now he can't even install Mach fresh
http://www.machsupport.com/forum/index.php/topic,35683.0.html

Craig