Messages

6521

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: probing problems

« on: September 28, 2017, 01:58:36 PM »

Hi,
does the probe LED on the diagnostics page come on when the probe actually strikes?

Craig

6522

General Mach Discussion / Re: Can not seem to carve out a simple box ?

« on: September 28, 2017, 01:54:14 PM »

Hi,
you might be more familiar with inch units say, but your machine is constructed with metric ball screws. You could still use inches as your native
units but the conversion will leave them with fractional parts which is confusing.

Do you know what the ballscrews are in your machine? 'No' is not an acceptable answer...find out or measure them until you know...and know for sure
100% otherwise you can kiss any sort of repeatable accuracy from your machine good bye. They will naturally fall into either inch or metric.
Common inch specs are 0.2 pitch or 0.25 pitch. If you measured them with metric calipers the numbers would be 5.08mm or 6.35mm per turn.
A common metric spec is 5mm pitch (ie per turn). You can see that you'll will need to measure accurately to establish whether your screw is
imperial or metric (5.08mm verses 5.00mm). Once you have established what the screws are doing the calculation to find the actual 'Steps Per'
is not too bad.

Craig

6523

General Mach Discussion / Re: Can not reinstall Mach3

« on: September 28, 2017, 01:34:03 PM »

Hi,
if there is a registry entry I have no idea what it is...sorry. How do Chinese manufacturers achieve such market dominance when they pull stunts
like this!

Craig

6524

General Mach Discussion / Re: Can not seem to carve out a simple box ?

« on: September 28, 2017, 01:18:34 PM »

Hi,
you could un-install and then re-install but I suspect that you'll end up in the same situation. You need to set your machine up in 'native' units
of your choice and then use G20/G21 to set the units for any given G code job. You should not, after the initial set up, of the machine ever have to
touch the motor tuning pages. That you are suggests confusion over units.

Config/Select Native Units should be set to your preference and thereafter left alone. The Steps per Unit setting on the motor tuning page is the
pulses required by the driver to move the controlled point one unit. You can either calculate it or measure it but it won't change unless you change
the gearing of an axis or microstepping of a driver. Likewise the Homing/Limits page is in native units.

Only when a job comes along which is drafted in different units do you use G20/G21.

Craig

6525

Mach3 under Vista / Re: another issue with possibly with Win7

« on: September 28, 2017, 06:19:51 AM »

Hi,
think the port address setting is the culprit. 0x378 is the address of  port #1, this is almost universally the address of the first port, if you ever find
another PC with a built in port it will 99.9% probable that 0x378 is its port address.

Open Device Manager and inspect the parallel ports available. There should be at least 1 listed if your PCIe card and driver have installed correctly.
Open the info screen about the port. Note the address. This address should be put in place of 0x378.

I use a Smoothstepper and its been a very long while since I've setup a parallel port. If memory serves there is probably two addresses mentioned in
the port info screen, two adjacent addresses, one address for the first byte, usually the output byte and a second address for the input byte. You may have
to try both until you find the right combination.

Craig

6526

Mach3 under Vista / Re: Mach3 under win10

« on: September 28, 2017, 02:31:16 AM »

Hi omiadhi,
if you decide you like the UC100, and thousands have, just beware that there is a whole bunch of cheap Chinese knock offs on Ebay
at the moment, best but direct from CNCDrive or their US distributor.

Craig

6527

Mach3 under Vista / Re: Mach3 under win10

« on: September 28, 2017, 02:27:56 AM »

Hi,
sorry page three (3) that is.

Craig

6528

Mach3 under Vista / Re: Mach3 under win10

« on: September 28, 2017, 02:27:14 AM »

Hi,
try page tree of this post.... there is a list...

Craig

6529

Mach3 under Vista / Re: Mach3 under win10

« on: September 28, 2017, 02:03:07 AM »

Hi omiadhi,
have a look at
http://www.machsupport.com/forum/index.php/topic,13761.0.html

Craig

6530

Mach3 under Vista / Re: Mach3 under win10

« on: September 28, 2017, 01:58:54 AM »

Hi omiadhi,
I don't think it will work, plenty of people have tried but none have succeeded to get Mach running a parallel port with ANY 64 bit OS including
Windows 10.

The device in the link will probably work with a printer but Machs 'parallel port' is much more than that. It is the code that runs on the CPU to generate
the pulse streams for the motors. The security features of 64 bit OS prevent the wrinkle that allowed the code to run on 32 bit systems.

The device is cheap enuf, try it...but don't be surprised if it doesn't work.

Craig