Messages

71

VB and the development of wizards / Re: VB and RS232

« on: November 17, 2006, 04:32:00 AM »

I have used it before - best place to look at the moment is down in the downloads section under macros of the forum. CJmerlin has used it to control a microcontroller, based on my experiments.

Cheers

Dave

72

Macros / Re: Using the serial port for a toolchanger macro

« on: November 17, 2006, 04:17:54 AM »

Hi John

Good to see i'm some use 

How are you finding the toolchanger? What have you done for the drive motor and motor controller? Oh and did you just pop 5V instead of 12V through the optos?

I've only briefly looked through the code - but am I right in saying you have a fixed 'job done' code from the mircocontroller. I used a different code for each tool - e.g. T3D - pick tool 3  and T3S - tool 3 selected so that any error or miscommunication would be caught before Mach started running again.

The toolchanger I was working on has ground to a halt - the guy I was doing it for is busy working on his lathe and has yet to put his toolchanger back together after stripping it to clean.

Cheers

Dave

73

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

« on: October 16, 2006, 03:41:52 AM »

Wow - that looks very professional!  Quick question - how did you form the roll-over top?  I have a friend who's in the middle of an Orac conversion and is at the stage of making a new enclosure for it - now he's seen your pics he's green! - but fancies doing something similar.  Any tips would be great

74

General Mach Discussion / Re: Mach Threading

« on: October 03, 2006, 03:26:15 AM »

Hi Brian

Sorry but not quite the answer I was looking for. Can threading be done without spindle speed control but with feedback?

Cheers

Dave

75

General Mach Discussion / Mach Threading

« on: October 02, 2006, 04:13:30 PM »

Hi

I just wnated to confofm something. I am retrofitting (well rebuilding) an old lathe. As part of the control, the spindle motor had to be turned on manually and the speed set manually. However the machine is equipped with a spindle speed sensor (both a single pulse per rev and multiple pulses per rev). Hence I'm assuming this machine worked by matching the feedrate to the spindle speed. Does Mach work in this way?

I.e. can I thread without having speed control from the PC - but I have got a spindle pulse going into the PC?

Cheers

Dave

76

Tangent Corner / Re: Denford Orac problem

« on: September 21, 2006, 02:58:34 AM »

Hi John

Good to hear that you've got it sorted. It's an interesting problem as you must have been somewhere in a 'grey' zone where you didn't lose steps but were running below optimal. With the Kernel speed I think Art suggests not to run it any faster than you need.

Cheers and well done

Dave

77

Tangent Corner / Re: Denford Orac problem

« on: September 07, 2006, 04:48:24 AM »

John - as a thought, have you tried reducing the lookahead buffer size? I'm not sure whether this will make a difference but may be worth a try!

Cheers

Dave

78

Tangent Corner / Re: Denford Orac problem

« on: September 07, 2006, 03:56:03 AM »

Hmmm - sounds like you've got the problem narrowed down. Probably worth running this past Art and see what he says.

Cheers

Dave

79

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

« on: September 06, 2006, 09:14:03 AM »

Hi

Take an example - Cycle start is Alt-r, or scan code 2130 what I would like is next to the scan code a display showing the key combination,i.e. 'alt-r'

The reason - When setting up a pendant using keygrabber I need to know what keys relate to the buttons so I can map the pendant keys to Mach. If I want to do this for a screen set I haven't produced, I have to enter the screen editor, find the code, then work back to find out the keystrokes required. I did this the other day for about 40 Keys and it took ages!!

I enclose a picture showing the type of mod.

Cheers

Dave

80

Tangent Corner / Re: Denford Orac problem

« on: September 06, 2006, 06:33:03 AM »

Hi John

That was my suspicion but it can be difficult to narrow things down - I showed the video to a friend and he made the following comments :-

"Clearly it starts to chatter when the feed/spindle speed is reducing suggesting
that it chatters when the tool load is reducing.

I would suggest he uses a tip with a smaller tip radius. What tip style is he
using? Bear in mind that some tips are designed to be set over or under centre
and will cause chatter when set ON centre.

What spindle speed is he using? It looks to me like 20mm diameter so I would
suggest a small lathe with a tipped tool would need to be run at 600 - 700 rpm.

Is the bed of the machine level and tightened to a beafy bedplate? My
Colchester used to chatter like hell until I carefully levelled it up.

A few ideas at least."

With regards to computers, my mill runs on a 1.9Ghz machine with backlash and the only delay is when the backlash is taken up as would be expected, apart from this it barely stops in 'dead stop' mode.

What version of Mach are you running? Have you checked the Pulse frequency and the 'time in int' values in the diagnostics?

Cheers

Dave