Messages

1031

General Mach Discussion / Re: spindle speed control

« on: November 28, 2007, 05:48:36 AM »

I am having to jump about a bit because I am not familiar with the boards you are talking about. I have looked at the KBIC boards and I assume that the spindle will turn - in other words, the board I have looked at has a pot you can turn and this controls the speed of the spindle. You say that the Mill is working OK, so I assume the board is working correctly and, like me you would like to go one step further and control the speed.

I notice that the board has an external input on pins P2(+) and F- (which I assume is 0v). This takes an isolated 0 to 9v signal to control the speed. The board I looked at does not appear to control the direction of the motor.

I notice also that the board is equiped with a pair of  "inhibit circuit" terminals (11 and 12). Are these jumpered. Do they only come into play when controlled externally.

I have the same problem with my Omron inverter. This has M3 and M4 inputs, and can have a pot to control the speed (although I use the digital panel on the front)
How are you proposing to control the speed. In other words, how are you going to generate the analogue voltage to put to the external inputs???

Mach3 will put out, on any of the designated output pins, signals for M3 (motor forward) M4 (motor reverse) and of course M5 (motor off) and I have these wired to drive relays via a Darlington array (four in all because I also did the coolant outputs at the same time)
These relays close contacts on my Omron motor driver to give forward and reverse.

You talk of hearing a relay click on the BOB - but what does this relay do - is it driven by the M3 output (which is an on/off output) and what is the relay connected to on your KBIC control board (if anything).

Does you KBIC driver board need any programming to change from internal to external control circuits - the Omron does.

We must assume you have done 90% of the job correctly if you have been using it for some time. If you send me a wiring diagram for the connections you have made for the spindle control - together with the Mach3 settings, I will try and help.

jimpinder@tiscali.co.uk  or just post on here.

1032

General Mach Discussion / Re: Motors work with R2xtune but nothing with Mach!

« on: November 28, 2007, 03:52:42 AM »

Fine - but to determine this is a problem with "jog" and not the motor drivers - can you move the motors at all ?

Can you enter a manual command - eg G0 X1 or similar on any axis and get any movement at all.

You will need some entry on the step and direction pulse timings, since a 0 means no pulse.

The only other thing is to try active low on the step pulses - what do your driver cards require ??

Do your drivers cards have a general enable pin that requires some signal on before they will activate ??

1033

General Mach Discussion / Re: Tool Height Macro Problem Help

« on: November 21, 2007, 12:02:53 PM »

Run the Macro into an edit page and try stepping through the macro line by line.

Either it will not run at all - in which case it should tell you which line of code is faulty, or it will run line by line until it comes to the faulty line.

Try that - if it will not work I will download it to my machine and see if it will run on this.

1034

General Mach Discussion / Re: Project IceMould. Manipulating M08/M09 command ?

« on: November 21, 2007, 11:48:25 AM »

To get a uniform application you really need the water pump to be variable rate. I would then tie this to the feedrate. If the feedrate slows, the pump slows, if it stops, it stops etc. It is clear from Mach3 that the feedrate is constantly calculated already - and is therefore probably readily available on a DRO.

You could easily output this to the control for the pump.

Such an application would also be applicable to the paint spraying problem.

Jim

1035

General Mach Discussion / Re: Pins 2-9 as Inputs

« on: November 21, 2007, 10:46:55 AM »

The LPT1 port on a PC (the printer port)  is actually three addresses on the computer. Two of these are outputs ONLY and one address is an input ONLY. They cannot be changed.

If you add a second port it is actually just  another connection to the computer at a differebt address. It all depends on the way the port has been built. If it is built like the original printer ports, it will also have two addresses as outputs and one  address as inputs. If it is built as a general purpose port, then you will be able to input or output on all the lines.

Check the spec before you buy !!!

Jim

1036

General Mach Discussion / Re: Please recommend driving board

« on: November 20, 2007, 07:52:50 AM »

Further to your post - 1/8 step means how far the motor turns per pulse on the "step" pin. The stepmaster boards can run 1/8, 1/4 1/2 or full.

So that means 8 pulses per step. What you will then need to find out is what angle the step is - e.g. 1.8 degree (which is fairly standard). So 8 pulses per step and 200 steps per rev. means 1,600 pulses to turn the motor one rev. If it is direct drive onto the axis, then all you need to know next is the pitch of the lead screw e.g. 10 revs per inch (again fairly standard) so you need 16,000 pulses per inch. Dont worry - mine are also geared down 3 to one, so I am on 48,000 pulses per inch - but both stepmaster and Mach3 can handle it.

Jim.

1037

General Mach Discussion / Re: Please recommend driving board

« on: November 20, 2007, 07:45:01 AM »

If you e-mail me at jimpinder@tiscali.co.uk I have the instruction sheets on hard disk - I can e-mail them back to you.

Jim

1038

General Mach Discussion / Re: Jogging two axis with one button

« on: November 15, 2007, 02:50:06 PM »

I take it you are still wanting to have buttons for each individual axis, but also have one button (or two - forward and reverse) to move two axis simultaneously.

You could certainly write a script to do this - I haven't experimented with brains enough to comment, but it should be possible.

1039

General Mach Discussion / Re: Really basic spindle question

« on: November 14, 2007, 08:59:19 AM »

If you are on this site, then you have access to the video tutorials. I would look at the downloading and setup, and the ports and pins ones, this will give you a lot of information as to how the system runs from a PC. It may be that you can figure out how your "pupil" has managed it.

I assume the Bridgeport was manual, and stepper motors have been added, and also some facility to start and stop the spindle motor. If the Bridgeport was CNC previously and all that has happened is that you have replaced the Bridgeport system with a PC running Mach, then it could be different - BUT
The standard method of running Mach3 is via the printer port cable (the 25 pin D output). The printer cable is run from three addresses inside the PC and these three adress run three sets of pins. 2 - 9 is a block of 8 output pins used for driving the stepper motors. pins 10 - 13 and 15 are a set of input pins from sensors on the machine. pins 1,14,16 and 17 are another set of output pins and these are usually used to control relays to run the spindle, coolant etc. pins 18 to 25 are signal ground connections.

It is likely he will have used some form of breakout board from the cable - (either a commercial one or homemade) and from there you should be able to identify the pin numbers. If you look on the configure/ports and pins menu on Mach3 it will tell you how it has all been set up. The answer to your problem may be that when installing the new software - which, I assume may be Mach3 - the pin that controls the relay to start the spindle is no longer assigned properly on the configure file.

You say the problems were intermittent - this could be due to all sorts, but the main thing is having a reliable signal return on your printer cable (there are 7 so you have enough to us one each from every application)

I don't know what else to say until I know more of the problem - so have a look at your set up and see if my ramblings get you any further.

To be fair to Art - Mach3 is extremely reliable, so if it is connected up properly - it tends to work very well.

1040

General Mach Discussion / Re: Really basic spindle question

« on: November 11, 2007, 02:29:05 PM »

As a matter of interest - how is your spindle controlled. Mine is by relays, closing switches on my Omron inverter.

My relays are run on the output pins on the printer port and are designated on the ports and pins page of Mach 3. If yours are the same - has the ports and pins page been altered when you were relading the program.