Messages

61

General Mach Discussion / Re: Mach ? to control Starturn 5

« on: December 05, 2006, 03:24:23 PM »

Hi Max

So you're the guy with the Starturn 5 - we've just been discussing your lathe over on the denford forum (www.denfordata.com/bb). I've got a Starturn 4 converted to Mach at home, a mate of mine is converting an Orac, and I also use an Orac and Triac at work.

The basic working of the toolpost is quite simple. The toolpost should only rotate in one direction, and there is a ratchet that prevents it being pushed back. Basically the three optosensors shine light onto a BCD coded disc. So what you will get back is 3 lines giving you the tool number. When the correct tool number is detected, the toolpost motor is switched into reverse and the toolpost drives back against the ratchet.

So in theory only 4 wires are required. You will need to find the circuit that controls the toolpost motor and see how this is turned on and off. With regard to the signal lines these run at 12V which is a bit more inconvenient and will require you to make up some optoisolators. I started a project to do the electronics for my mates toolchanger - unfortunately a year later he still hasn't go his lathe going so i've only tested the electronics on the bench.

Basically I used an AVR microcontroller - I then wrote a program that read the an RS232 string - converted this to the toolnumber - activated the toolpost motor and then rotated the tool until the correct one was detected. It then sent an RS232 string back to Mach to tell it that the toolchange was complete. John Pearson has done something similar - see the VB code to drive the RS232 comms here -http://www.machsupport.com/forum/index.php?topic=1658.0

Hope thats some help

Cheers

Dave

62

JetCam screen designer / Re: Screen (5 ?) by JetCAM

« on: November 28, 2006, 03:35:33 AM »

Hi

I was just wondering how work was going on the use of Image Leds ? The reason is that I want to have a button which I want to skin with an outer border that changes colour depending on the button state.

I'm currently using Screen 4 but dying to move to your designer as the interface is so much better. Oh one other thing. When you  maximise the screen view, the whole screen is filled covering the menu. Is it possible to allow the menu to be attached to the main screen. Oh and another thing - I created a 1024*768 bitmap. I put this on a 1024*768 screen in the designer and the bitmap was bigger than the screen. Also how about adding scrolling.

Cheers

Dave

63

Mach Screens / Re: Screen Designer Quirks?

« on: November 28, 2006, 03:27:05 AM »

Hi Benny

By the way I love the videos you made - surely these should be on the main site - they are so useful!

Anyhow, at the moment I am using a single large picture with all the buttons. The idea I'm working to is to try and make the screens to flow naturally - text takes too long to read so I am working towards using different colours for different classes of buttons. So for example I have an orange button for the spindle.Therefore you know that orange buttons affect the output. So you know whether the ouput is on or off I add a border as an LED so the outer rim changes colour.

Any thought on why this strange clicking action?

Cheers

Dave

64

Mach Screens / Screen Designer Quirks?

« on: November 27, 2006, 02:13:03 PM »

Hi Guys

I've taken the plunge and started playing with Realdraw Pro and Screen 4 to make a new set of screen for turn 

Anyhow a couple of things. Firstly, I have a button in the jpg in the centre, this is surrounded by a transparent PNG. When you click the blank image button the outer border of the button changes colour via the png. I notice that if you put an 'empty' image button over the JPG it is totally transparent. Similalry the first state of the PNG is also transparent, but when you click the button, the bit of the png covered by the image button remains in the first state. Is there any way around this or do I have to live with a smaller button inside the frame?

Secondly I have setup the above button for the spindle. When I click it the first time the border goes green, second click back to orange, third click remains orange, fourth click to green, fifth click to orange etc.  Why do I always need to click twice in the orange state? I am using M3 to turn on the spindle and OEMcode 11 for the LED.

Cheers

Dave

65

Mach Screens / item depth

« on: November 26, 2006, 02:52:30 PM »

Hi Guys

Is there any way to change the display order of things on the screen using screen 4? I want to use a background picture, then have an LED on the layer above and then a 'skin' graphic to tidy up the LED.

Is this possible?

Cheers

Dave

66

Mach Screens / Maintaining position across screens

« on: November 26, 2006, 08:56:35 AM »

Right - I'm starting to work on my own screens for turn. One thing I want to do is have a set of buttons along the bottom that exist on most of the screens. So I create the buttons I want - and copy them to each page - but is there an easy way to ensure that the buttons are all in the same position on each page?

Cheers

Dave

67

Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) / Re: My Denford Starturn

« on: November 26, 2006, 06:47:19 AM »

Hi Graham

Mine's a Brown Pestell - the motor is a 1/2hp DC motor. I presume this for your 190VMC as I see you have a digispeed in there. I am lucky enough to have 3 connections on mine. On my mill I used an external plug pack to supply the +Ve - give Peter Homann a shout and he will tell you exactly how to do it. On my mill I had to supply 3.97V - this came from a 9V plugpack using the digispeeds onboard control voltage attenuator.

Cheers

Dave

68

Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) / My Denford Starturn

« on: November 26, 2006, 05:37:07 AM »

Hi Everyone

Thought I should add a couple of pics of my latest toy. It's a 1985 Denford Starturn originally controlled from a BBC. I stripped out the processor board and replaced it with a breakout board, digispeed and some boards I made to interface with the 12V stepper drivers. The orignal setup ran the 2.1A stepper motors at 1.8A for some reason so i have turned this up to 2A! It's performing very well so far - will easily take off 0.25mm at 550mm/min in brass and ali - haven't tried in anger on other materials! The monitor on the right has a touchscreen panel attached to the front as well (ebay bargain!) I've left the old stand on the monitor and stripped the plastics off - I will fold up a small tray which will then hold the keyboard.

The only physical difference you can see that the lathe has been modified is the extra switch and LEDs on the front panel for the digispeed. I've got to say this is on of the best tools I have ever had - I use it on a daily basis - much more than my CNC mill!

Cheers

Dave

69

VB and the development of wizards / Mach Feature - is this available?

« on: November 26, 2006, 05:25:27 AM »

Hi

Is it possible to have drop down menus in Mach? If so can this be
expanded to hierarchial levels of menus.

Why - well I have an idea (another one in my long list!) for a
threading wizard for Mach. The idea is that you have two drop down
menus. In the first you choose the type of thread, e.g. BA, BSF,
Metric, UNC etc etc. This then fills the second menu with a list of
common threads - e.g select BA in menu 1, menu 2 then has 2BA, 4BA,
6BA etc

You can then simply select the thread, enter the start point and
length and hit go. I imagine at this point that the thread data
would be stored in something like a CSV file so users can add
threads and build a thread library. You could also add the stock
dimension so it automatically turns to diameter and then asks for
the threading tool.

Well - thats the idea anyway!

Cheers

Dave

70

General Mach Discussion / Re: Spindle S true

« on: November 24, 2006, 10:48:57 AM »

Hi

Just trying to get my lathe sorted at the moment. What method are you using to control the spindle?

Cheers

Dave