Messages

11

General Mach Discussion / Homing Problem

« on: January 02, 2009, 01:52:11 PM »

Happy New Everybody!

Slowly but surely getting to where I want to be with my machine. Its maiden voyage went great and the issue with the backlash seems to have been corrected with adjustment of the shuttle.

I have have another issue that I am am trying to figure out. 99% of the time, referencing to home works great. On occasion it seems to act up and I cannot see what I am doing wrong. I am playing with setting a couple different table offsets and auto squaring of the dual-drive gantry. When double checking that the machine will do what I want it to do, I will jog the machine away from home and again select "reference all home". Sometimes the machine will properly home to the neg, hit the proxy, stop, and trigger an e-stop. (The machine has to proxies on the X and one on the Y)

Under most circumstances I will click RESET and everything is fine. 1% of the time though when I click on RESET I get that box that says that there is an external influence preventing the machine from re-engaging. looking at the diagnostic screen shows that there are no inputs active. The option of "fix this for me" does not work. In order to get around it I must shut Mach down and restart.

I have tried a few different things such as selecting "Home Sw. Safety" on and off (not sure what it does) and have tried various levels of debounce. Neither of these have provided a remedy.

Another "sometimes" issue is that if I have the limits enabled in port and pins (home switches and limits are the same proxies) I will get an e-stop when referencing all to home. Turning off the limits stops it but I would rather not have them disabled if at all possible.

I have posted a copy of my XML if anybody can see what I am doing wrong.

12

General Mach Discussion / Re: Neep help with Auto-Zero touch plate

« on: January 01, 2009, 01:08:32 AM »

RC,

You did not fudge anything up! Your prior post gave me much to go on and a boatload more of understanding! I am starting to understand what all of this has in common.

What I am trying to do now (but has nothing to do with the machine's maiden voyage) is make a couple brains that will turn an air solenoid off when the Z is above zero or even .2500", possibly even pulse/cycle the solenoid for certain amounts of time. I am also trying to make a brain that will turn off/cycle the router when the Z goes a certain height above zero, and restart the router just prior to when it starts to cut.

If anybody could help with the direction of making these brains it would be greatly appreciated. While the making of the brain itself does not look that difficult I need to play with the inputs/outputs/commands, etc. (all of which I am not familiar with yet)

I am off to the Brains department!  (looking to see if mom held out on me  )

Bugs

13

General Mach Discussion / Re: Neep help with Auto-Zero touch plate

« on: December 31, 2008, 11:22:38 PM »

That was it!! The "Probe" input. Thank you!!

If I can ask a couple more questions (in the effort to learn more about scripting)...............

I see in the macro where is calls for the Probe but the Brain I see Input #4 instead of Probe. The auto-zero works with the Probe input enabled and Input #4 disabled. It also does work with Input #4 enabled, as long as Probe is enabled. Should Input #4 be enabled for the safety features that Brain brings to actually work? Not that I am going to do it, is there a way to write the macro to look for Input #4 instead of the Probe?

Again, Thank You!!!!!

Bugs

14

General Mach Discussion / Neep help with Auto-Zero touch plate

« on: December 31, 2008, 07:16:48 PM »

I definitely have to be overlooking something. I have tried setting up the touch off plate using the attached macros and brain (originally from here). In ports and pins I originally had the input set to Input #1 and saw that the brain was looking for #4. I made the input and the brain match, and could see that the brain saw the input. For whatever reason, the script does not see when the plate/wire makes contact. (I actually am using just a wire and directly touching the signal ground, both of which the brain and diagnostic page see as active on contact)

This is the last thing that I have to configure before I get to start making noise and mess (other than cursing and throwing things  )

A safe and Happy New Year to everyone!

15

General Mach Discussion / Re: Anti-backlash acting crazy when jogging - Updated

« on: December 30, 2008, 10:42:28 AM »

It seems, but not 100% sure that with CV (and anti-backlash) turned on I am able to smoothly jog the X and Y (the backlash pause and hesitations do not bother me) but I still have not determined what caused the original problem with anti-backlash on where the X and A (slave) would reverse at half-power etc.

I will post the XML when I return in a few hours.

16

General Mach Discussion / Re: Anti-backlash acting crazy when jogging - Updated

« on: December 30, 2008, 09:31:04 AM »

I have all the axis set to "linear" on the config page.

What is driving me nuts is that I do not understand what would cause the motors to jog great in one direction and 1/2 speed in the opposite (only when anti-backlash is enabled) and why the machine would try and rack when jogging the X & Y at the same time (again only with anti-backlash enabled).

17

General Mach Discussion / Anti-backlash acting crazy when jogging - Updated

« on: December 29, 2008, 10:51:16 AM »

Hello Guys!

Just finished building a new machine with a rack and pinion, with an A-axis slaved to the X-axis. Right now I am in the process of configuring Mach. The default screen set is different than the Mach 2 I was familiar with but so far everything seems to work with the exception of the anti-backlash.

When Anti-Backlash is enabled I can get the gantry to move properly in one direction. The motors sound good with no vibration/resonance, missing, etc. If I switch directions to move in the opposite the motors seem to run at half-power, grumble and growl, miss steps and then to add the icing on the cake after a bit of travel one the motors will reverse direction and cause the gantry to rack. I believe it is definitely related to the anti-backlash because of it gets disabled the motors will jog back and forth all day long without any issues. Making things a little crazier is that I can reactivate the anti-backlash after disabling and jogging all while in the same session and it seems to function properly.

Knowing that they do not always get along I have CV disabled. I have tried anti-backlash speeds of 20, 100, and 200 percent. What am I missing?

UPDATE:

To further add to my mystery I have found that if I try and jog more than 1 axis at a time (as in X and Y) the Y-axis will only move at half speed moving in the opposite direction and when it does do this the X motors (X and A) go out of sync and cause the gantry to rack. Again, doing nothing else but turning off the anti-backlash causes everything to operate smoothly. I have searched the forum and have not found any solution. Anybody have any ideas about why the anti-backlash makes the machine act crazy?

18

G-Code, CAD, and CAM discussions / Re: Editing/Customizing Post Processor

« on: May 13, 2008, 01:53:01 PM »

Please bare with me, as I am new to this. I also noticed that "settings" in Mach has a tool change location/coordinates. Is that where the M6 sends the machine to? Would I be further ahead to just substitute the M0 with M6?

19

G-Code, CAD, and CAM discussions / Editing/Customizing Post Processor

« on: May 13, 2008, 10:16:52 AM »

I have the PP for ArtCam that allows for the TC (manual of course). It uses M0 instead of M6 (not sure what the final difference is). What I am trying to do is get the machine to return to "home" for the tool change, and then pickup where it left off. I think that I understand that the G28 and G30 will return the machine to home. The reason I want to go to home is to ensue that I get the same tool height (a couple of the bits are longer than the others)

The questions are...Where would I add the line in the PP? Will G28 or G30 achieve what I want? I have included the PP just in case it makes it any easier.

A big Thanks in advance.

20

G-Code, CAD, and CAM discussions / Re: Newbie Can't Get Files into Mach

« on: September 09, 2007, 02:17:08 PM »

Please accept my apologies for taking so long to reply.

I have attached the DXF, and even the TAP. This file seems to be complex, but i still get the same issue with simple files, and even if I were to break this up into individual part files.

I truly believe that is a user-error issue. The procedure that I have been following is as follows:

- Make file in Corel
- Export file to DXF (2000 and earlier)
- Import DXF into LC
- Set zed depth (using equal depth for all layers until I become more proficient)
- Export/Post G-code (TAP file)
- Open Mach and open TAP file

The people that I know with CNC machines are only familiar with the commercial software and commercial machines. This makes them very reluctant to offer any kind of advise, but I would would much rather cut my teeth on this homebuilt machine than spend many thousands on a commercial unit. Bobo (me) just can't seem to get it.

Also, maybe off topic, what is a "post processor"?

Thank you in advance for all you help.