Messages

541

Mach4 General Discussion / Mach4 - 3D Printer Mode ??

« on: November 02, 2015, 02:06:03 PM »

3D printer mode has appeared in the latest Mach4 version... what does it mean?

Does this mean that you can use Axis E and not have to remap E-Axis (extrusion) to A-Axis?

I'm not expert at 3d having not 3d printed, but curious as to what it means (I was considering buying a printhead for my setup and giving it a go)

.... is there a manual / description on what this mode will do?

Does it do something different to the Mach3 plugin here and Slic3r?

https://cnc2printer3d.wordpress.com/software/

Thanks,

Rob

542

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach4 and my Sherline Mill , can't get the motor settings right

« on: October 31, 2015, 05:41:24 PM »

Oh...

before I get shot down on the general statement of 8uSteps per full step...

It came from here (sort of) [4th paragraph down]: http://www.geckodrive.com/support/step-motor-basics/accuracy-and-resolution.html

Any microstep resolution beyond 10, such as 125, yields no additional accuracy, only empty resolution. By analogy, a voltmeter having a 6 digit display while having 1% accuracy would have meaningful information only in the first two digits. There are two exceptions justifying higher resolutions: The step motor is being run in a closed-loop application with a high-resolution encoder or the application requires smooth operation at very low speeds (below 5 full steps per second).

You could also use 10 u steps / full step (setting 2000 >>> ON-ON-OFF
which would be:
Metric: 2000 steps / mm
Imperial: 40 000 steps / inch (1574.803149606299 steps / mm .... same as DouglasDrew in his post above.. (almost... may have a little more inaccuracy though)).

The velocity and the acceleration really need tuning in my opinion, the acceleration is by far the more important factor given it will lead to lost steps as most of the time whilst the machine is under load it will be running at a lower velocity (feedrate) but the acceleration would remain the same....
If you are loosing steps, you may consider either lowering the acceleration, or retuning the machine to 8uStep / full step resolution ..... or increasing the supply voltage to the motors (check the drive limiting voltage!!!!! Including deceleration voltage generated or you'll kill the drive..... Toroid transformers tend to be  better than switched mode (mine sounded rough when I ran one but I was running at a faster pulse speed at full velocity though than yours would be running (not mill ... plasma).

Rob

543

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach4 and my Sherline Mill , can't get the motor settings right

« on: October 31, 2015, 05:26:57 PM »

Not that I know anything about sherline mills... but:
Are your leadscrews metric or imperial?

If metric, seems they are 1mm pitch / revolution
If Imperial, seems they are 20t per inch

Info shown here (first few cells of top table .... stating leadscrews)
http://www.sherline.com/dimen.htm


You've set the Leadshine 3660 for full step resolution (..... so it may sound a little rough.....) common settings (generally) 8uSteps per full steps

As this would give you a resolution of:
Metric 1mm/rev / 200 / 8 = 0.00625mm / Step (or 1600 steps / mm)
Imperial 1 / 20TPI / 200 / 8 = 0.00003125" per Step (or 32000 steps / inch) [ or 1259.842519685039 steps per mm]

I'd suggest setting the Leadshine 3660 controller with the "1600" steps setting as shown on page 12/22 (OFF-OFF-ON) http://www.leadshine.com/UploadFile/Down/MX3660hm_V1.0.pdf

Stepper motor info and wiring shown here: http://www.sherline.com/stepspec2.pdf

Not that I've ever done this before... but you may wish to use metric settings if you have a metric machine and imperial if you have an imperial machine, then prefix your Gcode with G20 or G21 .... there is a bit on it here.... so that way your machine is set up correctly and if you intend to design in inches and your machine is metric it will convert your gcode units its self by doing the multiplication with little rounding errors (which you can probably see from my imperial to metric leadscrew calc above of the steps / mm)
The only catch is dont forget to put the correct prefix in the code...
http://www.cnccookbook.com/CCCNCGCodeG20G21MetricImperialUnitConversion.htm

Rob

544

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: mcX360 Test Needed

« on: October 30, 2015, 03:15:00 PM »

Point taken, I guess because I have a happy m3 hobby system on an XP system and am dabbling with m4 hence why I put it on there, have an x360 controller (and shuttlexpress... Not m4 supportef) but wondering if pendants are more trouble than they are worth with m4 and if I would be better getting a hanwheel encoder and using an arduino micro to do keyboard emulation...

Thought the point of external motion controllers was to unload some of the load though... So newer faster probably not a vaild reason.

Then again Linux does not seem to suffer from some of the windows overhead seems to suffer from to keep chasing the gaming / graphics driven market (never been able to get my head round it in 20 years now... And my ESS won't work on it)

Funny thing thinking about mach4 (as l read somewhere artsoft had been at it 5 years now), its probably akin to what autodesk did with inventor and it was I believe a money sinker for them in development time and cost when they had other cash cows, hence I believe after that they bought every bit of software they wanted and did not start from the ground up)

Marketing for m4 needs to be more centrestage, following through to the forums too.  Believe art / Brian did some YouTube stuff on brains and other m3 code bits but that side is not being plugged by newfangled so much now.

Rob
Typing with a phone is not good...sorry

545

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: mcX360 Test Needed

« on: October 30, 2015, 12:52:12 PM »

I'm back at my machine sat or Sunday night and will give it a go regardless.

Sorry Gerry, you're in a small group on that one... Progress is progress, but buying something new without nessesity is pointless... For what Mach does I'm sorry I don't see the need... Some would just stick with m3 (oh that's what most seem to be doing... If it ain't broke don't fix it!)

Let's face it in a production environment you need to demonstrate how your new fangled whatever is going to improve the end product or cut down costs, if it's not doing either but increasing potential operating costs (new hardware, software, training and setup downtime and potential early user error downtime related issues) and your product is the same... Your business model needs looking at in a worldwide recession.

Artsoft and I guess us "early" users of m4 need to de showing what it can bring to the table easily... It should be given more prominent space on the forum... And even their own website for dedicated m4 plugins and lua script wiki etc (a muppets guide for people just like me!)

Daz is doing an amazing job, today most learn from YouTube, but artsoft should be doing their own pushing too

Rob

546

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: mcX360 Test Needed

« on: October 30, 2015, 12:21:57 PM »

As this plugin is using Xinput you will need the latest directX on your machine.

Does this mean that it won't work on XP machines? Seems like a lot of Mach4 users are trying to keep using XP.

+1 XP... Stand alone PC, one purpose in life stable, drivers all work, what's not to like about XP?  ....directx never crossed my mind as being useful to cnc

Rob

547

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: mcX360 Its Nearly Here

« on: October 28, 2015, 09:47:36 AM »

Daz, may I ask are you doing all this through lua script or via the SDK?

How long have you been doing lua?

Have you done programming before?

Either way, very impressed, hats off to you

Rob

548

General Mach Discussion / Re: Please help, Chinese eBay purchase!!

« on: October 26, 2015, 03:43:45 PM »

It would be so much easier setting up a Mach workshop in the Northwest (UK) as it would take minutes to get the basic setup sorted.

Sounds like you are talking yourself into a little project there Rob.  

Tweakie.

Haha, I'd be happy to help.

Don't think there's enough localish interest (maybe wrong though), I'm no expert but if my long painstaking hours can help someone else out I'm happy to help.

Rob

549

General Mach Discussion / Re: Please help, Chinese eBay purchase!!

« on: October 26, 2015, 06:19:15 AM »

The problem that I had starting off with the other gentleman was the limit switch plug on the rear, the pinout does not seem defined anywhere, and looking at his XML file, he had his e-stop defined as pin 10... Which was the same as his x++/x-- limit switch pins....

After giving him some advice and some mcodes to try to define the other pins (establish the other output pins other than 2,3(xaxis),4,5(xaxis), 6,7(zaxis)... And try to establish the input pins it transpired that he was getting no movement dispite dros moving etc....  Hence it was time to check that he had the right port address for the LPT port (which is an addin card as the PC came without an LPT port)

And that is where it has rested (since last week...)

It would be so much easier setting up a Mach workshop in the Northwest (UK) as it would take minutes to get the basic setup sorted.

Rob

550

General Mach Discussion / Re: Please help, Chinese eBay purchase!!

« on: October 25, 2015, 03:13:53 AM »

Paul,

Have you got a photo of your controller?

I am trying to help someone else and failing miserably (he can't seem to get the LPT port setup.  I'm on holiday at the moment but I can try to help.

The round disc with a crocodile clip sounds like a tool length offset setting tool

How far have you got?

There seems to be a few variants of the controllers about hence photo of the front and rear would be useful.

Rob