Messages

931

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach 4 - Changing "Machine State"?

« on: January 03, 2022, 11:28:21 PM »

Hi,
jogging an axis and stopping on a Limit switch event is likely to fail.

Any event, like a Limit or Home switch, will be reported back to Mach but depending on your motion control board, and when the event
happened in its cycle the it may take 20-40 milliseconds to get back to Mach. By then the machine will have crashed.

Ordinarily Home, Limit and Probe events are handled by the motion controller because the motion controller can act on the event immediately, also
called realtime. In your case you have to wait for the motion control board to signal Mach....with some milliseconds delay, whereas what you want or
need is Mach to respond within a few microseconds...and that's just not going to happen.

For example the default cycle rate for an Ethernet SmoothStepper is 40Hz, or 25ms between data packets. Lets say your Limit switch activates at a time
t₀, and your ESS is 1/2 way through its cycle, then it will report to Mach at t₀ +12.5 ms.......and by then its probably to late.

Recall also that Mach issues trajectory data into a motion buffer. The default buffer length of the ESS is 180ms. Thus if you expect Mach to do something
quick you are going to be disappointed.

I have heard of people with good and modern PCs upping the cycle rate to 200Hz, and reducing the motion buffer to 20ms, but that still ends up with
delays of 0.5ms an 20ms respectively.

The only way for you to get this to work with any sort of accuracy is to have a REALLY SLOW JOG. Then it will not overrun too much before Mach gets to
hear about the Limit event and issue zero move trajectory data.

What is it that you are trying to do? Sounds like part way through a Gcode job you want to stop....jog to a Limit.....why?

Craig.

932

General Mach Discussion / Re: Mach Support Video "Probing Outside Corner Part 2 in probing"

« on: January 03, 2022, 04:30:22 PM »

Hi,

How do you all fix the Mach4 probe bug?
Please tell me the solution.

To my knowledge you can't....its not a Mach4 fault but is the way that the ESS interacts with Mach4.

NFS claim its an ESS problem, and Warp9 claim that its a Mach4 problem and until one or the other company see an appreciate
the fault and start talking to the other company about it I don't believe there is a solution.

I just write my own probing code if I need something specific.

You could try Andy at Warp9, he is usually pretty responsive to claimed bugs.

Craig

933

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Can someone tell me why Z wont go to work zero and why Axis 3 ERROR??

« on: January 02, 2022, 12:58:52 AM »

Hi,

I have tried to put A on its own axis but Mach will not allow me to reverse the motor for some reason. I am still learning and will get there at some point but its a terribly frustrating road

Do you have a rotating fourth axis??? NO....then you have NO A AXIS.....fullstop. An A axis is rotary, whereas what you are calling your A axis
is in fact a linear axis motor slaved to it's Y axis master.

Once you have assigned a motor, say motor 3 per my previous example, then go to the Motor Tuning tab, select Motor 3 and set the Steps Per, max velocity
and acceleration exactly as the same as the master, Motor 1, per my example.

On the Ports & Pins tab of your motion controller plugin you will have to assign a Step pin and a Dir pin for the new motor, Motor 3.
If you need to reverse the direction of the motor  reverse the Dir pin, from active high to active low or vice-versa.

If your steppers never missed any steps then the two motors, Motor 1, the master, and Motor 2, the slave would always remain in step and te gantry would
never get out of square.

May I suggest in the first instance that you have just one active Home switch, normally on the master motor side of the gantry. When you home
or reference the axis both the master and slave will drive together until they hit the Home switch. At which point Mach will back both motors back a little until
the Home switch deactivates and zero's the machine coordinates for that axis. With any sort of luck you won't have to jiggle one motor until
the gantry is square, it should already be square and stay like that for months at a time. If it gets out of square you should try and find out why.
There are some gantry squaring procedures but start with the obvious and easy one....it may well be enough.

Craig

934

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Can someone tell me why Z wont go to work zero and why Axis 3 ERROR??

« on: January 01, 2022, 04:54:46 PM »

Hi,
 sorry I posted that you can have four slave motors to each master, you can have five slaves!

Craig

935

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Can someone tell me why Z wont go to work zero and why Axis 3 ERROR??

« on: January 01, 2022, 04:53:31 PM »

Hi,
no coding required to have a master and up to four slaves.

I you wish to get tricky about homing individual motors and squaring the gantry then yes some coding will be required,
but for regular homing to one home switch per axis....no coding is required.

See the attached pic being the Control plugin Axis Mapping Tab. You can see that Motor1  is assigned to the Y axis.
In the second pic I have assigned motor3 to be the slave to motor1, the master. Easy.

Craig

936

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Can someone tell me why Z wont go to work zero and why Axis 3 ERROR??

« on: January 01, 2022, 04:08:34 PM »

Hi,
in Mach4 you don't use an A axis as a slave to the Y axis.

Every axis in Mach4 has one master and up to 4 slave motors. Naturally all the slaves have to be tuned the same as the master, that is, velocity, acceleration and steps per,
but you can reverse the direction of the slave relative to the master by using the reversing the DIR pin.

So redo your y axis to have one master and one slave, say motors 1 and 2.

If you require it you can programmatically separate the master and slave so you can jiggle the slave back and forth to square the gantry and then programmatically link
it back to the master. Light years ahead of Mach3.... in fact its so far ahead your previous knowledge of Mach3 is almost a disadvantage, you'll be tempted to try to do things
the Mach3 way when there is a new method that far FAR FAR exceeds it in Mach4.

Code: [Select]

LUA Syntax:
rc = mc.mcAxisMapMotor(
number mInst,
number axisId,
number motorId)

Description:
Map a motor to an axis.


Code: [Select]

LUA Syntax:
rc = mc.mcAxisUnmapMotor(
number mInst,
number axisId,
number motor)

Description:
Unmap the motor from the axis.


Craig

937

General Mach Discussion / Re: Mach Support Video "Probing Outside Corner Part 2 in probing"

« on: January 01, 2022, 12:33:53 AM »

Hi,
I don't think there is any fault with that line.

What happens is that the machine advances but does not encounter a probe event. The ESS regards this as a fault and hangs up.
My ESS does a similar thing. If the machine encounters a probe event before the end of the 20mm move then it works fine.

Its just how the ESS handles the exception. Plenty of other people have had the same issue. Have a look on the Mach4 board and you will find
plenty.

938

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Maho Heidenhain Indramat Mach4 retrofit.

« on: December 31, 2021, 01:33:28 PM »

Hi,
OK, the top name plate, the spindle , looks to be an asynchronous (induction) motor of 5.5kW, quite a substantial motor.
It would need a 230VAC three phase input VFD. Looks like the speed range is 1500 to 8000 rpm. It would make sense to reuse this
if its in working order. Is there a VFD/driver built in for this motor?. If there is and its working then by all means retain it.

The bottom name plate is less clear.

Maybe some German readers are following this thread and can help.
Md.konst =0.44Nm            motor constant 0.44Nm/A
Dauer 2.2                        guessing this is rated torque 2.2Nm
Dauerstorm 5.0                 translates to constant current 5.0A
n_max 4000       rated rpm 4000

This suggests a power of (4000/60)x 2PI x 2.2 =921W and is consistent with the size of the servo.
Given that the servos are not direct coupled suggests that fitting metric motor would be possible if a little fiddly.
It would require you make a new plate to take the new servo, but should be able to screw the plate to the existing threaded holes.
If I were you I would be looking for some 750W servos, or if you want a little more then 1kW servos. I think 750W would be more
than enough, and as they are a common size can be had very competitively priced.

If you don't want load sensing servos then 750W Delta B2s are perfectly fine and cheapest being Deltas entry level.
If you want load sensing, either immediately or for the future, then 750W Delta A2 series.

B2 for $438USD:
https://www.fasttobuy.com/flange-80mm-239nm-ac-motor-driver-kits-with-3m-cable-220v-075kw-cnc-servo-motor-for-cnc-router_p28084.html

A2 for $634USD:
https://www.fasttobuy.com/ecmac10807rsasda20721f-delta-220v-750w-239nm-3000rmin-80mm-dmcnet-ac-servo-motor-drive-kits-with-3m-cable_p27766.html

Note that I have seen advertised elsewhere these A2 servo kits for only $50 more the the B2 kits....it may pay to do a little more searching,
although I have faith in this supplier.

Note this same company has their own brand of servos, ToAuto, which are very well priced. I have no reason to doubt
their quality or performance but they wont have load sensing and they don't have set-up and tuning software.

If you are new to servos then having good (free) set-up and tuning software is to my mind essential. This forum and CNCZone is littered with posts
about people who've bought el-cheapo Chinese servos and then struggle to get them to work. Its not that they won't work, but if you've never
set up a servo from scratch before it is a challenge. I would not recommend you start your learning curve there, buy either DMM (Canadian brand, made
in China) or Delta (Taiwanese brand, made in China), both are good quality, good backup and most importantly set-up and tuning software.

Craig

939

General Mach Discussion / Re: Mach Support Video "Probing Outside Corner Part 2 in probing"

« on: December 31, 2021, 04:51:44 AM »

Hi,
I keep telling you its the way the ESS handles the exception, its not a Mach4 fault. You can complain as much as yu like but Artsoft
cannot fix it.....its just the way the ESS works.

You could try Andy at Warp9.

Craig

940

General Mach Discussion / Re: I want a proper Mach3 licence instead of the Chinese issued version.

« on: December 30, 2021, 09:32:30 PM »

Hi,
my breakout board files.

Craig