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Messages - joeaverage

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91
Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach4 Small Text
« on: April 25, 2023, 07:48:32 PM »
Hi,
you must name your modified screen set with a unique name. Otherwise when you update Mach4 to a later build your screen set will get overwritten. Its enough effort to go through it once
and modify it to your satisfaction.....but it another to have to do it a second time!

Craig

92
Hi,
I've been using an ESS for over eight years, and its not overheated anything. The ESS has CMOS outputs capable of 30mA tops....its not going to
overheat any device plugged into it.

Craig

93
General Mach Discussion / Re: need advice for updating my machine
« on: April 19, 2023, 05:48:52 PM »
Hi,
a USB connected SmoothStepper relieves the PC from having to generate pulse streams and therefore the PC is no longer restricted to
a 32 bit OS. Mach3 itself will run on any well configured PC, 32 bit OR 64 bit. It will run on Windows 10 perfectly happily.

I'd recommend one of the kids cast-off school laptops....that'll do fine.

Mach is not a power hungry application....my machine runs on a dual core Atom single board PC with only 3G RAM and no graphics card.
Other than being a bit slow to load a big file and draw the initial toolpath thereafter it works fine. What Mach needs is a PC that is not burdened
with other software or services.

As it was explained to me years ago 'when you hook a PC to a machine, it is no longer a PC (general purpose computing platform) but a machine controller that
just happens to use Windows as an OS.' It should not have ANY software on it that is not required to run your machine. That includes your CAD/CAM...that should
be on your regular day-to-day PC. Neither should it be hooked to the internet or even a network. Let it control your machine with absolutely no distractions.

Craig

94
Hi,
sorry....typo should be 4612.

Craig

95
Hi,
to be honest many of the latest Mach4 builds from 5000 inclusive have caused problems. Certain sections of code in 5000 onwards now run that fast that it creates a race condition in many of our
motion control boards. The motion controller manufacturers are scrambling to catch up including Andy at Warp9TD.

Unless there is a specific need to update...don't. I'm still running 6412. It does everything I need and there is nothing in the later builds that offer any advantage so why mess about?
I got paying work to do....that's more important to me.

Craig

96
Hi,
I'm going to make a couple of wild guesses about this problem.

If I understand from your CNCZone posts the <Limit Override> button does not work as we had imagined /hoped.

In the early days of Mach when everyone used a parallel port it was very much neccessary to economise on switches because there were so few
spare inputs. It was common to use a limit switch in double duty as a home switch. Many people still do that today despite having hardware that
means we no longer have to do this.

Mach would when homing treat limit switches as homes.

Does this not sound like what is happening to you? That is when you are homing, and expecting the axis to home to the hardstop it encounters a limit
switch, which in this mode of operation is considered a home switch. Mach then does what it normally does, is stop and then back up a wee bit.
While it is not your intention my guess and its is only a guess that this behaviour is because thats what Mach has always done.

That would suggest the the <Limit Override> button will not work.

There is however an API that will probably do what is required, not that I have used it...so its up to you to experiment with it:

Code: [Select]
LUA Syntax:
rc = mc.mcSignalEnable(
number hSig,
number enabled)

Description:
Enable or disable a signal mapping.


This, at least at first glance, allows you to enable a signal or disable it programmatically. I think that should do the trick.

Craig

97
Hi,
you can set the max velocity and accelerations with:

Code: [Select]
LUA Syntax:
rc = mc.mcMotorSetMaxAccel(
number mInst,
number motorId,
number maxAccel)

Description:
Set the maximum acceleration value for the given motor.


And:

Code: [Select]
LUA Syntax:
rc = mc.mcMotorSetMaxVel(
number mInst,
number motorId,
number maxVel)

Description:
Set the maximum velocity for the given motor.

I am very dubious about changing these back and forth, I rather suspect that you motion control plugin will baulk at varying parameters throught a session.
There is also the question of when those parameters are recorded to the .ini file.

I think an override such as Swifty has pointed out is better.

Craig

98
Hi,
why have limit switches?

At the moment you say that you Home to the hardstops? Is that correct?. If you have set up limits switches they will perforce be 'inside' the hardstops
or Home location. If you try to say 'go to machine Home', something like a G28 or G30, then you will hit the limit switches BEFORE you get to machine home.
That does not make sense to me.

I have my Limit switches set up about 2mm inside the hardstops, I have the SoftLimits programmed to be about 2mm inside the limit switches and the Home
switches about 2mm inside the SoftLimits. That means at any stage I can call G28 or G30 or <RefAll> and the machine will go to its Home location with violating
either the SoftLimits or the Limit switches or worse the hardstops. Because my machine Home is about 4mm inside the limit switches I have not had a Limit switch invoked
Estop for over a year. I still occassionaly have a SoftLimit event, where the machine just ignores the last move or jog I requested because it would violate the SoftLimits,
but that does not occasion any loss of reference, ie no Estop.

Craig

99
Hi,
I posted this on the CNCZone forum in response to your question:

Quote
the HLFB is usually used for signaling a fault to the controller, say an overload condition or a following error. If you want to use the HLFB for some other purpose the you would
lose the ability to signal a fault. Are you sure you want to do that?

You may have seen a button <Axis Limits Override>. May I suggest try using that, I believe it will disable the Limit switches and you will be able to use hardstops. Thereafter you'd
turn the Limits back on.

If that works then with a little scripting you could automate it.

Craig

100
Mach3 under Vista / Re: Asking for very basic guidance.
« on: April 07, 2023, 04:52:44 PM »
Hi,
those boards or ones very like them, some are green, some blue, some red...etc have been on the market for about ten years.

There must have been a clever Chinese engineer, or maybe a group of them, whom designed the first boards and wrote the plugin. The plugin is
.dll file that lives on the PC that adapts the numeric output of Mach3 to the motion board and provides the firmware for the board. At the time
it was quite the trick.....but it was never developed further. That engineer, or group of them, have long since departed the scene and now these boards
are made by half a dozen different Chinese companies all copying the original design.

The problem is they don't have a clue how they work. If they even have a copy of the plugin it is just the object file, not the source code.
If you asked the manufacturer of the board to fix a bug....they can't. They don't know how it works and they don't have the source code
to work out how it works, much less the talent to implement any changes.

Why would anyone bother investing all that time and effort into working out how something works and even improving it only to have the other
five Chinese companies rip it off? This is where the Chinese practice of pirating technology really comes crashing down......they have created an
environment where innovation and improvement cannot be re-paid, and therefore there IS NO innovation and improvement.

There are copies of the .dll file floating around and I have no doubt you'll find a working copy eventually. These boards miss on things like lathe threading, THC,
laser ops, backlash comp and even probing is handled in a non-standard manner and works only with modified pirate copies of Mach3.
There is no Mach4 plugin for these boards, and because of the piracy problem I mentioned above, neither will there ever be one.

You want the forum to share information....well there it is, I'm just not sure you will like it.

Craig

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