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11

General Mach Discussion / program skipping commands (not steps)

« on: March 27, 2015, 11:07:22 PM »

I was running a fairly simple program today and the machine appears to have skipped over two G1 commands. The reason I say skipped commands instead of skipped steps is that when I checked the machine location after the program ran, it was off by exactly .5" in X. The program was taking .25" steps in X, so this would be consistent with skipping over two G1 commands. This has happened once or twice before in the past couple of months. It is not repeatable, and it is not an error in the program, since I can run the program again and get a correct cut (as well as run it in OpenSCAM and get a correct visualization).

Any thoughts on how to prevent this in the future, or at least confirm this is the problem?

I'm running Mach3 on a Core 2 Duo Windows 7 machine, talking to the router via a USB controller board.

12

General Mach Discussion / Spindle requires two inputs for control

« on: October 14, 2014, 06:09:39 PM »

The inverter controlling my spindle requires two inputs - one switches the spindle (actually the inverter) on/off. The other controls direction. The vendor configured the machine so that CW and CCW both trigger Output#1, which is wired to the on/off inverter input, so at least the spindle turns, but it's always CW (better than the alternative). How do I get the spindle commands (M3, M4, M5) to trigger TWO outputs? One output must respond to spindle direction -these is easily accomplished form the spindle config screen. It's the other one I can't figure out. I need an output to respond to any command turning the spindle on or off. How do I do this?
Thanks.