Messages

11

Mach4 General Discussion / How to prevent machine movement before machine is referenced

« on: July 18, 2018, 04:11:20 PM »

Is there an easy way to make all buttons except "Reference All Axes" disabled before the machine has been homed?
I use the Wx4 screenset. As of now if I have put a check in the M6 script to avoid a tool change if the machine is not referenced. However, it is still possible to jog the machine out of its limits and even run any g-code which could cause the machine to crash. Any ideas?

12

General Mach Discussion / Re: Configuring a light curtain for a CNC router

« on: July 16, 2018, 07:45:51 AM »

The thing with that directive is that it doesn't state any very specific requirements. It is up to the machine builder to decide what is safe for the user of the machine. However I found this document now with some guidelines. http://www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/wis22.pdf

But it is still interesting to hear what your experiences are when i comes to safety for the operator.

13

General Mach Discussion / Configuring a light curtain for a CNC router

« on: July 16, 2018, 04:55:40 AM »

I am setting up a CNC router, 2500x1800 mm, with a linear ATC running on a CSMIO IP-A controller. I will surround the machine with safety light curtains to make the machine safe to use according to EU Machinery Directive. However I am not sure what is the best way to implement such a safety feature.  What is best practice on this area?

Is it sufficient to let Mach4 go into feed hold and turn off spindle if the light curtain is triggered? Or should the machine go into E-stop mode and disable power to the servos and spindle?

My main concern is that I will need to be inside the curtains for setting up the work piece while jogging the machine with the hand wheel. Is this considered "unsafe" if I limit the max allowed rapid speeds while being inside the curtains?

Thankful for any input on this.

14

Feature Requests / Comment field in Fixture Offset Table Mach4

« on: July 14, 2018, 09:01:13 AM »

It would be helpful if you could add another column in the fixture table that allow the user to write a comment on what the fixture position is used for. As of now I regularly forget where I store the different fixture coordinates.

15

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: machine.ini file corrupted on mach4

« on: May 23, 2018, 11:14:25 AM »

Congrats to me. I didn't look in the backup folder. Found a good version of the file. All good and sorry for not doing my research properly before posting!

16

Mach4 General Discussion / machine.ini file corrupted on mach4

« on: May 23, 2018, 11:09:27 AM »

The machine.ini file is suddenly corrupted and I only have a very old backup of the file, so I hope someone can help me out recovering it.

I think the file got corrupted because a user of the machine shut down Mach4 during initialization of the program, probably just when mach4 read from the file. Do you know if it stored a backup somewhere, or does any of you know a way to restore the attached file (had to zip it to allow upload). File appears to be full of data, however not something I am able to read with notepad or notepad++.

17

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach 4 macro for setting current fixture offset to zero?

« on: May 01, 2018, 07:10:59 PM »

No need to go that route.. :-) I'm sorry I didn't read your first answer properly - you actually gave the solution to my problem. No I'dont really need to know which offset is active, I just needed to update the active offset - and your code certainly works like a charm for that! Thank you so much for your help Cbyrdtopper.

18

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach 4 macro for setting current fixture offset to zero?

« on: May 01, 2018, 02:33:55 PM »

Are some of the mach4 developers reading on this forum, or should I contact them elsewhere? There needs to be a way to solve this to make a proper fixture zero script. Or are there other ways to solve this?

19

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach 4 macro for setting current fixture offset to zero?

« on: May 01, 2018, 06:43:20 AM »

Hmm,
But there must be some way to update the z-position of the various fixture offsets, or at least current fixture offset, similarly to what happens when you hit the Zero Z button. How can I find out the code behind this button?

20

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach 4 macro for setting current fixture offset to zero?

« on: April 30, 2018, 03:55:54 PM »

Thanks. That helps me read which fixture offset is active. However, I still need to write to the Z entry in the fixture table to write the new Z position. Any input on that would be great.