Messages

231

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: hybrid servo motor, Pockeys57cnc and mach4

« on: February 15, 2019, 10:06:20 AM »

Awesome. Those are basic Step and Direction drives so wiring is simple.

In Mach 4 you will assign a PoKeys output pin to the step and direction pins for each axis. Write those down since your wiring will need to match.  Lets say the X axis step is pin 1 and X axis direction is pin 2. You need to wire pin 1 to the PUL+ terminal on your X axis driver and pin 2 to the DIR+ terminal. The PUL- and DIR- should be tied to DC common (0V). This configuration uses your PoKeys57 outputs as SOURCING outputs (think of it as current flowing out of the pin to the drive).

If you are using the enable signal from Mach to energize your motors (lets assume you set that up as pin 3) then pin 3 would be wired to the ENA+ and ENA- would be tied to DC common.

The drive also features an alarm output would I would recommend you tie back into a PoKeys57 input. This would be done by putting 5V on
ALM+ and wiring ALM- to the input pin on your PoKeys57.

NOTE: Your drive inputs appear to be optoisolated which could protect the PoKeys57 in the event of an equipment malfunction. This is good!

IMPORTANT. Your DC power supply to the drives and the DC power supply powering the PoKeys57 MUST have their DC common (0V) lines tied together. You could damage your equipment if this is not the case.

NOTE: My wiring suggestion differs from the diagram in the manual slightly. Theirs shows SINKING outputs where it looks like the PoKeys57 has SOURCING outputs.

232

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: hybrid servo motor, Pockeys57cnc and mach4

« on: February 15, 2019, 08:49:59 AM »

Can you share the specifics of what hybrid servo system you are using? I'll happily take a look at the manuals and see if we can figure out your wiring.

233

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach 4 crashes within 3-5 minutes of starting a Gcode program

« on: February 14, 2019, 02:56:48 PM »

Oh wow! You guys work fast! Do you release beta builds or change logs for the public to test? That might be an obvious question but I didn't see anything out there.

234

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach 4 crashes within 3-5 minutes of starting a Gcode program

« on: February 14, 2019, 08:26:47 AM »

Smurph, Thanks for the info! Still seeing the crash in 3804 which I think is the latest? Can't click the Cycle Start button again because the whole program locks up. Anyways, Everything is looking good and I am buying a license. Thanks for all the help everyone.

235

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach4 SRO

« on: February 13, 2019, 12:12:38 PM »

Kenneth,

Do you have a spindle index sensor or encoder input? If not, your true RPM will read 0. If you want to have it show the programmed RPM, I think you'll have to change the DRO binding in the screen editor.

236

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach4 LED's

« on: February 12, 2019, 11:00:04 AM »

Thinking out loud without knowledge of how easy it is to implement...

Could you use a variable text display where the LED would be? When on, display a period or asterisk in a large font (this would just look like a solid colored square) and when the signal is off display nothing? This would be very minimalist and go along with your flat look of the display.

Mike

237

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach 4 crashes within 3-5 minutes of starting a Gcode program

« on: February 12, 2019, 09:14:31 AM »

I am a prospective customer of Newfangled Solutions, evaluating their software. In no way am I expecting to receive their software for free, nor am I complaining about their terms of the demonstration version of their software. In all honesty I am very impressed by how much you are allowed to do with the demo version. As part of my evaluation I was testing to make sure that my computer and controls were sufficient to run Mach 4. I ran into behavior which made me question whether or not the system was operating correctly.

Pre-sales support from Newfangled Solutions was able to confirm that the behavior that I am seeing is in fact the demo timeout. They went on to mention that at some point in Mach 4 development, a pop up message was no longer displayed indicating a demo timeout. This has led to confusion of more people than just myself.

The other thread calls for suggestions and requests. I made a suggestion that a more complete documentation set would compliment this product. NFS is under no obligation to take action on any suggestions made here in this forum. I merely made a small suggestion as one voice of many here on this forum. No where did I "demand even freer Demo terms". As stated above I am very happy with the functionality of their software as well as the capabilities enabled through the demo. I simply ran into an issue that I was concerned was caused by something other than the demo timeout. This has been resolved.

At this point I am convinced that Mach 4 is going to meet my control requirements and I am purchasing a license. If any other prospective Mach 4 customers find this post, it was confirmed to me by Newfangled Solutions that the end of the demo period will not generate a pop up message informing you of this, and rather the program will just hang.

238

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach 4 Feature Request

« on: February 11, 2019, 01:12:12 PM »

I second the comment by striplar. A more complete set of documents, especially on customization capabilities of Mach 4 would be a vital resource and would certainly ease of on the repetitious posts asking for screen editing and LUA functionality.

A very involved and knowledgeable forum community is an amazing way to help share knowledge of a product, but should not replace documentation as the backbone of product support. *my opinion Everyone here is great!

239

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach 4 crashes within 3-5 minutes of starting a Gcode program

« on: February 11, 2019, 01:03:17 PM »

Craig,

That is my plan, but to play devil's advocate here... the demo is available to make sure Mach 4 can run your machine. What happens if I do buy a license and can't get the program to run without crashing?

In all fairness it very well might be related to the demo version. I am going to try an older release of mach to see if that fixes anything first.

Just was wondering if others have had similar issues.

Mike

240

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach 4 crashes within 3-5 minutes of starting a Gcode program

« on: February 11, 2019, 09:18:41 AM »

I should add that the installation of the Ethernet Smoothstepper is correct and proper industry accepted practice for grounding and bonding were followed throughout the electrical cabinet. I do not believe this is related to DC power quality (verified by an oscilloscope) or electrical noise. I saw another similar post to this on mach support so I wanted to clear this up ahead of time.

Mach 3 was able to run a 2 hour and 20 minute program on this same hardware without issues. So far my troubleshooting is pointing to Mach 4.