Hello Guest it is March 28, 2024, 03:54:28 PM

Show Posts

This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.


Messages - Cbyrdtopper

681
Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Is Mach4 really Hobby Material?
« on: January 18, 2018, 10:13:22 AM »
A Lot has been said since yesterday. 
 
I think Craig and Chaoticone have struck a huge chord; users who EXPECT Mach4 to behave a certain way will get frustrated and leave.  I personally think certain aspects of Mach4 should behave in a certain way, but I understand they don't and I find a work around.  Some hobbyist just won't put the time in to fix a button or two.

The first machine we used Mach4 on was a Profile Knife Grinder, it took a long time to figure out LUA and Mach4 to get it working how we wanted it to, and to be honest it was a lot of bells and whistles over just getting it to work. However, the next machine I used Mach4 on a retrofit it took 1/8 of that time.   I made a folder with all the custom code and button scripts to aid future retrofits.  For us this is beneficial, but how many hobbyists will have 6 CNC Machines (and counting) to set up.

Chaoticone,
I find myself in Group 1 and Group 2.
We are not hobbyists when it comes to Mach4, we are a machine shop that make wood cutting tools, so we dig in and make Mach4 listen to us and has proved to be very worth while.
We just bought a Haas VF4 to up our capacity and some of the features on the Haas are incredible.  What I love about Mach4 is the fact that I can take the features from the Haas control (which is awesome IMHO) and integrate them into future retrofits.

But getting back on topic.  Is Mach4 really hobby material?   
I agree that NFS could update the API more frequently to aid other users,  I think certain configuration settings should be improved to be more plug and play (external buttons, scripts, etc), and the folder that has example macros and scripts should be updated more often. 
The example folder can be filled with examples from this forum.  If I had such a comprehensive source of information (a more extensive example folder) Most of my questions starting out would have been answered.  I think Mach4 has great hobby potential, I just needs to be a little more streamlined.

682
Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Is Mach4 really Hobby Material?
« on: January 17, 2018, 03:19:06 PM »
IMHO, I would and do use this forum as a first option.  Growing this forum grows everyone's knowledge who utilizes it.  I have reached out to Mach Support for issues that pertained to glitches in the screen editor, and have referenced that talk in the post on this forum to keep the thread up to date.

683
Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Is Mach4 really Hobby Material?
« on: January 17, 2018, 12:49:22 PM »
We are using Mach4 lathe in a production shop.  It is working far better than Mach3.  We are about finished with another Mach4 lathe retrofit.  One thing that is great about Mach4 is the Modbus, a year ago I knew nothing about modbus, it was relatively easy to learn and now we have 3 going on 4 machines using a PLC to handle most of our I/O communicating with Mach4. 
To be honest, I did look into Centroid, but the fact that we can customize screens and scripts is a huge advantage to us.  We have retrofitted OD Grinders that have completely customized screens, we are using Macro Programming to make our grinding more efficient with In Process Gauging.  We couldn't do that with Mach3 and we wouldn't have the flexibility with other software like Centroid to accomplish our end goal, which is basically a conversational grinding operation.

684
Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Is Mach4 really Hobby Material?
« on: January 17, 2018, 08:09:30 AM »
For us, we have a lot of special equipment.  When we used/use Mach3, we wrote a lot of macros to carry out programs, with that, we had several very custom screen sets. Mach4 took some time to learn (and still learning), but it is a far better product and it has been well worth the time we've taken to learn it.  Mach4 would work in its most basic form for us in some applications, but when you can customize something to do pretty much anything you want, it's hard not to make modifications to suit your needs.  
I Can see why others, especially hobbyist, don't want to use Mach4 if they don't intend to take a little time to learn the program, but IMHO if someone were to take just a little bit of time to figure out the software and LUA they would be very happy they did.  I do think there are some things that NFS could make standard to make it easier to set up but I also understand that it is currently working and they have better things to adjust and improve before making it more plug and play.
Mach3 isn't even an option to us anymore, Mach4 is just so much better.

685
General Mach Discussion / Re: Mach3 for Large CNC Router Table - or Not?
« on: January 09, 2018, 08:34:09 PM »
Although, I'm pretty sure the Mach team suggest strictly running Mach and nothing else on the PC.   I also am guilty of running my cam, Fusion 360, along side Mach4.  It's like a built in wizard on the machine!  ;)

686
General Mach Discussion / Re: Cool CNC Features
« on: January 09, 2018, 08:31:53 PM »
Setting up a machine with Mach to compare to high dollar controls would be a very difficult task.   But as far as a windows based professional controller....  I was pretty sure Hurco uses a windows based control.   And Haas uses Linux as their base CPU.

687
HiCON Motion Controller / Re: Rigid Tapping
« on: January 09, 2018, 08:28:40 PM »
I've seen the tapmatic pretty cool and very fast.
  But implementing it on our ATCs will be no fun.   

688
General Mach Discussion / Re: Mach3 for Large CNC Router Table - or Not?
« on: January 09, 2018, 07:18:46 PM »
I agree.   I would fully recommend Mach4.  It may take more time to configure than Mach3, but it is well worth it in the end.

689
HiCON Motion Controller / Re: Rigid Tapping
« on: January 09, 2018, 03:29:02 PM »
Yes.  I've got an encoder hooked up to the Differential encoder on a lathe here in the shop.  It gives us a true RPM and works very well. 
But for the mill, I'm asking how to implement the rigid tapping.  How do I get the Z and the Spindle to sync.

690
General Mach Discussion / Re: Cool CNC Features
« on: January 09, 2018, 01:50:46 PM »
Yep.  It was in need of a totally makeover; control and axis needed changing.  But it is a good and accurate machine. 
If you end up going with Mach4, you can do quite a lot with LUA.  You can integrate any idea you have with the Screen, GUI.