Messages

951

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

« on: December 26, 2021, 05:58:46 PM »

Hi,
an ethernet connected external motion controller is a substantial improvement. Ethernet is very much less subject to noise and its increased speed
results in faster motion buffer updates.

I use an Ethernet SmoothStepper ($180) and Mach4, and have done for seven years. I used Mach3 prior to that but Mach4 is light years ahead IMHO.
The SmoothStepper has both a Mach3 plugin AND a Mach4 plugin....so you can use either. If however you are planning on buying a license then I would
recommend Mach4, it's only an extra $25.00 and is so much better. Note that all development on Mach3 ceased seven years ago which makes it a dubious proposition
for a new installation.

The SmoothStepper has, arguably, the best and most complete Mach4 plugin, certainly at the 'value' end of the market. The Hicon Integra is also good but costs $600
without any special activations....and goes up from there.

The UC100 (don't under any circumstances get a Chinese ripoff from Ebay/Amazon) is well priced but has one port only (17 IOs) and is USB connected.
The UC300 and UC400 are ethernet connected, have plenty of IO and work well with Mach3 and Mach4, although they miss on some of the realtime supports that the SmoothStepper has.
The PoKeys 57CNC is ethernet connected, plenty of IO, good plugins with both Mach3 and Mach4, although the SmoothStepper still marginally outshines the PoKeys for realtime supports in Mach4.
The CSMIO is good with Mach3 but has a buggy Mach4 plugin and hard to recommend at 600Euro.
Avoid Chinese junk, rubbish support and often only work with pirate copies of Mach3. There is one company (XHC) selling a Mach4 motuion controller, avoid like the plague, it doesn't work with Mach4's GUI.

Craig

952

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mill: General question about limit switches

« on: December 22, 2021, 03:04:32 PM »

Hi,
you've got swags of inputs why do you not have separate Home switches?

The PoKeys, much like my ESS, allows a switch to do double duty, ie a Limit and a Home switch.....but why?? To save an extra
switch per axis....a little bit of wiring....don't be so lazy. Why have Mach be potentially confused as to whether it should
reference an axis or cause an Estop?

Craig

953

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mill: General question about limit switches

« on: December 22, 2021, 02:59:25 PM »

Hi,

If soft limit is the way then what is the point having 2 individual switches on each axis?

Because Soft Limits should prevent you or the Gcode from going out of bounds, and Mach will not execute any instruction which attempts to do so.
If however Soft Limits fail or get confused, or are not enabled....That's when the Limit switches are the last line of defence.

I have my limit switches set up to be 2mm inside the physical stop of the ballscrew, ie when the damage occurs. The Soft Limits are set up 2mm inside the Limit switches,
which means 4mm inside the physical/damaging limits.

do I need to hit the "On\Off Soft Limits" button then home every time I open Mach4?

Yes you do. Mach by default when it powers up does not have Soft Limits enabled. ONCE you have Referenced/Homed your machine THEN enable Soft Limits.
This is the critical point, the machine MUST, ABSOLUTELY MUST be Referenced/Homed before Soft Limits are enabled. Soft Limits only make sense once
the machine coordinates for the Home loaction are established.

You can program Mach to operate that way automatically at start up if you wish. At one time I had mach such that I could not jog, run Gcode (all the buttons were disabled) or do ANYTIHNG UNTIL
I had Referenced/Homed the machine. You could easily include <Enable Soft Limits>  at the end of your Homing procedure. If you don't Home your machine properly then what's the point of Soft Limits....
they will never work anyway.

Craig

954

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mill: General question about limit switches

« on: December 22, 2021, 02:23:25 PM »

Hi,

When soft limit is disabled,

Yes, enable Soft Limits, that's exactly what they are supposed to do. If you turn them off then the only over-travel protection the machine has is the Limit switches.
As you say having a Limit switch event happen is a PITA it that the machine loses Reference with an Estop, that's why Soft Limits are much preferred.

Craig

955

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Rotary Axis Setup/Mapping in Mach4

« on: December 19, 2021, 05:41:31 PM »

Hi,

the X axis moves back and forth instead of rotating the A axs (the job is aligned along the Y axis).

That technique is well and truly dead....it was at best a workaround to be able to have slave axes in Mach3.

In Mach4 however there is a much MUCH better way. Any Mach4 axis, lets say axis 0, which is commonly the X axis, can have up to four slave motors. No need to shag about calling an A axis an X axis slave
or any of that rubbish.

Secondly ANY Mach axis can be either linear4 OR rotary, as posted by rhtuttle, but whats more they can be programmatically manipulated on-the-fly throughout a Mach session
using APIs like:

Code: [Select]

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

Description:
Map a motor to an axis.

Craig

956

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

« on: December 19, 2021, 05:01:09 PM »

Hi,
I'm not at all sure that what you want to do is possible.

Machs Gcode interpreter/trajectory planner can only have one master at a time. When you are running a Gcode job then you CANNOT jog, because
the trajectory planner is already assigned to the Gcode job. The only way you can do that is not just to PAUSE the Gcode job, but STOP the Gcode
job, thereafter the trajectory planner can be reassigned to Jogging.

Maybe this post will answer your question in mor detail:

https://www.machsupport.com/forum/index.php?topic=45605.msg289932#msg289932

The machine state reflects where Mach is and what its doing, you can't change it except by doing something that causes Machs internal status to change, a <Stop> for instance.

Craig

957

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach 4 new PC ID and License

« on: December 19, 2021, 04:50:17 PM »

Hi,
then surely you have saved the wrong license file. Download a fresh copy and try again.

Craig

958

General Mach Discussion / Re: PCI-E Express Card LPT Converter Adapter for the AX99100 microcontroller.

« on: December 19, 2021, 04:48:41 PM »

Hi,

Has anyone tried such an adapter on a computer without a built-in LPT port.

PMDX stocks and sells LPT cards that are known to work with Mach3's parallel port driver, and they have been selling them for years.

Craig

959

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Stupid LUA question

« on: December 14, 2021, 09:50:33 PM »

Hi,
 and remember PanelFeedHoldSwitch is still not the handle....you still have to get the handle....and agin it must be done within the scope of the function.

Craig

960

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Stupid LUA question

« on: December 14, 2021, 09:48:19 PM »

Hi,

Sure it does - it lets me set up a little table where I assign inputs to meaningful variable names at the start of the script, and don’t have to worry about hunting input numbers if the wiring changes.

Ok...if you think thats important but each assignment has to be made within the same scope, so they are going to be scattered around in your code because they'll get garbage collected otherwise.

Craig