Topics

11

Brains Development / How to activate output a few seconds after Mach starts?

« on: April 07, 2018, 11:52:39 AM »

How do I activate an output a few seconds after Mach starts, and then stay on for the duration of the session?  I prefer to use a brain, and know how to add the delay before driving the output, I just don't know what to use for the first box in the brain?

I don't want to waste and input.

Thanks,

12

PoKeys / Can't get motion Control Hardware Plugin sensed dialog to appear

« on: January 02, 2018, 03:06:48 PM »

I recently added a Pokeys 57E to provide addition I/O capability to my Mach3 setup. I now want to try using the Pokeys stepper driver signals. Try as I might I can't get the Motion Control Hardware Plugin sensed" dialog to appear, so I can select the Pokeys motion control.

I have tried the following:

1) Selecting Function Cfgs|Reset Device selection....... this invokes a message box stating that "You will be asked on next startup what device to use...", however on subsequent startups, the dialog does not appear.
2) I tried deleting PoKeysmachConfig.xml.......same result
3) Completely uninstalled Mach3 as well as Pokeys, deleted all the registry entries and then reinstalled ..... same result
4) Tried using an older version of the Pokeys mach.dll.....same result

Anyone encounter this?

13

Brains Development / Brain command to open jog tab?????????????????????????????????????????????

« on: December 10, 2017, 01:19:11 PM »

I'm trying to configure my homebrew pendant to open the jog tab (display) when ever I hit a jog related key on the pendant. I don't have the ability to send a "Tab" key so I need to do this from within a brain. I did find button command 232 described as tab screen on/off, however this does not work, it just seems to blank the entire display until you toggle it again.

Surely there must be a way???

14

General Mach Discussion / Mach3 MPG - Alt-A Crashes mach every time.

« on: October 23, 2017, 07:24:25 AM »

Like the title says, after pulling up the jog mode display with TAB. If I click on the Jog mode button twice so MPG is selected (MPG is lit up with yellow background) and ('X' LED adjacent to MPG Axis is lit up with green background). If I then click on the Alt-A  button I expect the green X led to go off and the Y LED to turn on, however every time I click on the Alt-A button Mach crashes about 2-3 seconds after I press the button, for the first second or two nothing happens and then the mouse cursor changes to a spinning spiral as if mach is busy thinking and never recovers.

What am I doing wrong?

My assumption is that if I have one MPG connected, that I can route the MPG to whatever axis I want to move by pressing Alt-A.

15

PoKeys / Pokeys57 shared data

« on: October 16, 2017, 05:29:46 PM »

Hopefully someone can help me out with this....

I would like to send data to and from a Pokeys 57E and mach3 from within PoBlocks. I'm finding the information regarding shared data minimalist and lacking to say the least. I think I know how to do this on the Pokeys side, I don't understand how to do it on the mach3 side. I'm guessing I would need to do this in a brain, but if it can be done in the I/O configuration that might work as well.

1)  From Pokeys to Mach, lets say I have assigned input5 (as in input 5 of the Pokeys board) to the first shared slot (S0), how do I make use of that bit in Mach3?

2) From Mach3 to PoBlock, lets say I have a bit in Mach3 (for example the Jog on/off button or Jog on/off LED) and I want to use that in PoBlocks, how do I get that data into the shared slot on the mach3 side?

16

Mach Screens / Custom LED with a unused code ???

« on: October 12, 2017, 11:08:37 AM »

I want to add a few LED's to an existing screen. I will have a brain drive the LED's. However the function of the LED is not a standard OEM type, I want it to be custom. My brain has output to OEMLED: 1001 etc.

How do I create a custom LED on an existing Mach3 screen that will turned on/off via my brain using for example OEMLED: 1000, 1001 etc???

Using MachScreen, when I select an LED, It seems like I can only select from the provided list of standard LED's that already exist on the mach3 screens.

17

Brains Development / Brains - Creating a button that sequences through various modes when pushed ?

« on: October 10, 2017, 12:33:57 PM »

I would imagine this is trivial for those that are familiar with creating brains (I'm not, complete newbie)

I'm making a hard button panel (see below), I'm using a Pokeys 57E to capture the key presses. This is working fine, I can jog, etc via the panel.  Setting this up using the pokeys configuration software (Mach3 plug-in) is straight forward, just map one of the 55 input pins to the desired button in mach3 and it works.

Some of the buttons on my panel need to cycle through various modes (bottom left button) for example the SS-CON-MPG. I have this mapped to button call 245 and it works fine, HOWEVER I would like a 4th press of the button to disable jogging, and then if I press again it starts at SS.

Similar situation for the right most blue button, first push MPG is set to Jog speed, 2nd push the MPG controls feed speed and then 3rd push disables the MPG.

Can someone describe how I can create a brain to provide this functionality?

18

General Mach Discussion / Best way to get data back and forth from Mach3 to a custom button/LED board?

« on: October 01, 2017, 11:33:26 AM »

Newbie here, longish post with numerous questions.

I'm in the process of adding steppers to an old LC30A mill. I now have the X and Y axis working, and will add the Z axis shortly.

I'm comfortable with electronic design and plan to make a PCB that will replace the name plate on my mill with a bunch of buttons and LED's for the often used controls. I realize there are lots of OTS pendants available, however making "stuff" is half the fun for me.

Image below is first pass at what I'm thinking of making, please feel free to critique as I have next to no experience using Mach3 (just a few hours of playing with it to test the steppers I installed, and make a couple of simple parts).

So basically:
  - about 15-20 momentary switch contacts
  - perhaps 20 or so LED's
  - Rotary encoder will be hard wired as MPG
  - I already have the spindle controls working as shown (hard wired to VFD), so this could be as is, or flow through Mach3, I need to think about this one, comments?

Mach seems very flexible so there appears to be numerous ways to get the data back and forth to this PCB. Some of the obvious:

1) Hard wire to inputs and outputs
   + Good response time
   - Not enough I/O for all the buttons and LED's I would like to implement

2) Keyboard encoder, I took apart an old keyboard and inside I found a small PCB (1" x 2") that decodes the keyboard matrix, so I could simply map the matrix pins to my new tactile switches
   + Pretty simple and cheap
   -  I will need to add an IC or two to activate the Ctrl and Alt buttons at the same time as the "J" etc. for the multi-key commands (not a big deal but does need to be done), or can I change the commands to single key commands to get around the need for simultaneous key presses? (perhaps through some sort of configuration file in Mach 3?)
   -  I still need to get LED data from Mach 3 to my board

3) PIC type circuit
   + Most flexible if I want to tweak something in the future
   ? I'm not sure (yet) how best to get data back and forth, I'm inclined to use the serial port if that's easy to do from a Mach side perspective. I'm not sure if there is way to send and receive simple commands via the serial port? (my preference) or if I need to use something more elaborate i.e. a mod bus driver on the PIC side?
   ?

4) I/O Multiplexer
    * I'm surprised these are not plentiful in the after market considering the input signal limitations of the parallel port, I did find the (PMDX-126), however it does not have enough I/O
   - I don't think Mach 3 offers a plug-in that would say allow mapping of 5 input signals to 32 inputs and or 8 output signals to 256 outputs, assuming this is not available, would be great enhancement to Mach. The H/W at the BOB side is really trivial.

5) Other options?  If there are other methods, please elaborate.


 

19

General Mach Discussion / More inputs or can I configure Mach3 to use one MPG for X, Y and Z axis?

« on: September 20, 2017, 10:43:37 AM »

Newbie here with a couple of questions......

I'm adding CNC capability to an old Long Chang mill, so far I have added 1200 oz-in steppers on the X and Y axis , and I'm driving these with 2060AC micro stepper drivers via Mach3. I also added magnetic scales for DRO capability. Everything seems peachy-keen so far, other than some motor resonance at medium speeds. I will Add Z axis capability next.

I'm using a dedicated mini-ATX PC board that has two parallel ports.

I also want to hookup a rotary pot (MPG) to make jogging easier. At first glance it looks like Mach3 is designed to work with separate MPG encoders for each axis, I would prefer to have one rotary encoder and a rotary switch to assign the encoder to the desired axis. Is there a way to get Mach3 to change the axis a single MPG will be used for?, ie. a command would be ideal.  If not I will need 2 inputs for each MPG! I'm quickly running out of inputs:
  1 for E-Stop
  2 for X axis DRO
  2 for Y axis DRO
  2 for Z axis DRO

So if I can mutiplex 3 MPG's to just 2 inputs (I'm okay for now), if not I will need at least 3 more inputs.
  2 for X axis DRO
  2 for X axis DRO
  2 for X axis DRO

How does one get more usable inputs?