Messages

21

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Configuring Keys In Key Board Inputs Configuration Table

« on: January 31, 2019, 05:10:44 PM »

Thanks Chad, what i was reading last night kind of makes sense now. I was browsing the the manual for the various mach lua jog commands and from what I was reading, it appeared to me that when you wanted to change the jog rate it was axis dependent and not like a global command that would just apply to all four axis universally. So, I was looking for how they implemented the slider and dro function so that it controlled all four the same way but wasn't really finding anything. I will try this later today and let you know how it works. I am attempting to get the hand held controller that was configured for Mach 3 originally to work with mach 4 and being able to set the jog rate without having to walk back to the computer each time will make it much more user friendly.

22

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Configuring Keys In Key Board Inputs Configuration Table

« on: January 31, 2019, 12:36:34 PM »

Chad--I duplicated your example for spindle speed with the code in the screen load script and signal library and it works just as you describe. I then attempted to modify it to do the same, using inputs 1 and 2 to increase and decrease jog rate. There were only a few options such as JogRateAccel, JogRateVelocity and maybe another one that I thought should return a the value from the JogRate% DRO but I don't think any of those actually capture or read what is reflected in the Jog Rate % DRO value. I also attempted to see if I could create a register to capture the JogRate% DRO value and then get it from the register but that didn't work either. What I am trying to figure out is what is the right function call to get the current Jog Rate and the which is the correct one to call to increase or decrease it. I believe the slider and DRO represent the percentage of the motors 0 to full open feed rate. If you or anyone else has any suggestions or directions on which are the correct functions to call for the get and execute commands I would appreciate it. NOTE: Lua is new to me and my programming experience was in basic and VB.
Thanks for the advice and help. 

23

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Configuring Keys In Key Board Inputs Configuration Table

« on: January 29, 2019, 11:05:12 AM »

Thanks for the info and help on that. I figured it would take a little bit of script in order to do that, wish I was a little handier at writing it. I think I can figure out from the example how to create the jog% function to input from a keyboard key.
Thanks again for the help and advice.

24

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Configuring Keys In Key Board Inputs Configuration Table

« on: January 28, 2019, 11:37:57 PM »

Ok got the easy functions like e-stop and such figured out on how to map them to a key but I am a little lost on how you would map the keys to feed rate or jog rate. Is there a keyboard plugin that actually has all of the functions in mach 4 that you could just select from a drop? Basically I am lost on how you tell the input or write the a script to increase a DRO like Jog% to increase or decrease from button functions.

25

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Configuring Keys In Key Board Inputs Configuration Table

« on: January 27, 2019, 06:16:08 PM »

Thanks again for the help on that. I copied that code and noticed when I opened the screen load script that the first line was already there so all i had to do was add the other two lines with the end statement and the button initiates the e-stop now.

26

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Configuring Keys In Key Board Inputs Configuration Table

« on: January 27, 2019, 04:48:36 PM »

More specifically I assigned the ~ button to input 0. How do I give input 0 the function of e-stopping the machine when activated?
Thanks again for the help

27

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Configuring Keys In Key Board Inputs Configuration Table

« on: January 27, 2019, 04:45:31 PM »

Thanks Daz for that tip.....I can and have mapped keys to inputs but my question is, how do you assign the input to a function. For example, I have the e-stop push button on my controller/vfd assigned to the emergency or e-stop input so that works as designed but how do I  assign the e-stop function to the keyboard key that I want to use also for the e-stop function?
Thanks again for the tip

28

Mach4 General Discussion / Configuring Keys In Key Board Inputs Configuration Table

« on: January 27, 2019, 01:46:01 PM »

I have been attempting to assign the key board keys to certain functions under the Key Board configuration menu. I have been able to to assign the jog functions for each axis but I cannot create any for such things as e-stop, Jog rate %, spindle on/off and so on. The issue I have is in the function column on the Key Board configuration table does not have the functions like e-stop and the others listed so although I can fill in the other columns on the table as desired but the function column lacks, from what I see, most functions other than axis movement functions.
Is there a way to add functions to the column of that table so they can be assigned to a key?
Thanks for reading....

29

Third party software and hardware support forums. / PMDX-414 motion coms error

« on: January 22, 2019, 11:10:56 AM »

Last winter I upgraded my cnc with a PMDX 414 and 407 board so I could run the mach 4 on my Chinese made cnc mill. The only issue I have is that it will give me the error message "PMDX: Could not disable the PMDX-SmartBOB-USB, error 'Cannot communicate with device'". It will do it randomly while running some times and other times just when I start the machine via the cycle run or select basically one of the commands on the screen to initiate a command to the cnc from a stopped or non-running state. For a while I assumed it may be a noise issue as it would occasionally occur when I started my pump for my coolant but it doesn't always. I have checked and swapped out USB cords and I never had this issue with the original OEM Chinese motion controller and mach 3.
The computer is a Dell Optiplex with windows 7 and I have to unplug the cord and restart mach 4 to clear the error.
Anyway I wanted to post this question to see if anyone else may have had or has this same issue and/or if anyone has a solution.
Thanks for reading.
Shawn

30

G-Code, CAD, and CAM discussions / Re: Recommended CAM Software

« on: November 23, 2018, 12:17:25 PM »

Thanks ger21 for the reply. I kind of figured what you said may be the consensus.

When I first got my mill last winter I came across what appears to be some older beta version of freeware that was called CNC-toolkit that runs as a max script under an older version of gmax. It was somewhat cumbersome to learn and appears to not have been totally finished by whoever originally created it but it does run all 4 axis simultaneously, meaning that does generate gcode for all four axis and you the machine of course actually will run all four at the same time when called in the code. I have used it quite a bit as that is all I really could find but as I stated it is somewhat cumbersome to learn and navigate but it does work.

Meshcam was the other one I really looked in to and plan on trying out the trial version when I have some time next month as it only has a 15 day trial and I want to be able to make sure I have the time with no interruptions to test it out.