Messages

71

Show"N"Tell ( What you have made with your CNC machine.) / Re: Practice Part

« on: December 10, 2019, 09:12:18 PM »

Thanks 

72

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach 4 liniar automatic tool change

« on: December 10, 2019, 03:54:35 PM »

BTW, for anyone reading this, I count 11 axis including the live tooling motors, B axis, and C and C* axes for the spindle. What an incredible machine.
 

73

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach 4 liniar automatic tool change

« on: December 10, 2019, 03:52:15 PM »

OK,

Take my reply with a grain of salt as I have never attempted to convert a Swiss machine to Mach 4.

Mach 4 offers a single motion planner with up to 6 coordinated axes. There a also 6 out of band axes that can be used for uncoordinated motion (basic spindle, ATC, etc.)

Your swiss machine would require 2 motion planners, one for the front spindle and one for the rear since they act independently. Your spindles would also each consume a standard axis since they will be used as a C axis. The out of band axes would work great for live tooling spindles (unless you need rigid tapping, most motion controllers cannot support tapping).

So you have two options. You can forego the simultaneous front and back work and fit the machine into the capabilities/limitations of Mach 4. You might still be able to integrate the back spindle, but the front couldn't cut at the same time.

Second option would be to run 2 computers with two separate instances of Mach 4. One would control the main spindle and associated tools, and the other would control the back spindle and associated tools. Syncs would need to be realized with custom macros and likely hardware signals between the two copies of Mach 4 to handle the hand off. Hardware encoder signals could be passed between the two spindles to allow them to sync.

Either way, you have a complicated machine and a lot of work to get it under the control of Mach 4. There is no standard configuration that will work out of the box. I would prepare to get very intimate with LUA scripting to accomplish what you want. With all those disclaimers, I don't see any immediate reason you wouldn't be able to get this working. It would be an awesome project and there is a great community here to support you along the way. I think you will capture the respect of those in this community as you work your way through this.

Best of Luck,

Mike

74

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach 4 liniar automatic tool change

« on: December 10, 2019, 01:44:22 PM »

WOW! Never seen a Mach 4 user with a Swiss machine before. I'll have to think on the bast way to do this. Do you intend to run both spindles in simultaneous back work?

75

Show"N"Tell ( What you have made with your CNC machine.) / Re: Practice Part

« on: December 10, 2019, 09:03:51 AM »

Picture Attached

76

Show"N"Tell ( What you have made with your CNC machine.) / Re: Practice Part

« on: December 10, 2019, 09:01:56 AM »

Tweakie,

You're very observant Not sure what happened there. All of the other chamfers look great. My guess would be that the drilled hole is slightly off center. I did a small spot drill followed directly by a 1/2" drill. The spot drill may have never centered the bigger drill up.

It doesn't look quite as bad from other angles. You can sure count on your chamfers to tell you where you screwed up!

77

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Remove USB button

« on: December 10, 2019, 08:58:20 AM »

I know you can use a Mach 4 API to run a windows script file. I guess you could script the eject USB function into a windows script and then map the Mach 4 LUA script to call the windows script when the button is pressed.

It might be more effort than it is worth. The remove USB button doesn't do anything more than check if the drive is in use. As long as you aren't writing to it, removing the USB without ejecting wont cause problems.

78

Show"N"Tell ( What you have made with your CNC machine.) / Practice Part

« on: December 09, 2019, 02:36:41 PM »

2x4x2" PVC. 9 Tools 10 Operations. All tools preset in control.

Pictures Attached

79

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Making a connection through rs232 in Mach4

« on: November 30, 2019, 08:38:49 PM »

Tim,

It is no bother at all. I was actually having a blast working through your communications, so please keep posting if you have anything interesting!

Mike

80

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Making a connection through rs232 in Mach4

« on: November 26, 2019, 08:47:49 PM »

Glad it is working. Awesome job!

Sounds perfect. Something you might want to consider is adding a checksum to the end of each transmission. Something quick to calculate but unlikely to be generated by bad input data.

If you're controlling both ends of the transmission then this is great. My servo drives require this with their transmissions so I was forced to develop it. Here is that code which does some math to create a two character checksum to be appended onto the end of a string you want to transmit. On the receiving end, you take the received string, remove the last 3 characters (checksum plus carriage return), and run the same checksum code. If the string matches the string you received, then you know it is highly likely that the transmission came through correctly.

Code: [Select]


function AppendChecksum(str)
local ccSum = 0
local len = string.len(str)

for i=1,len,1 do
ccSum = ccSum + str:byte(i)
end

local output = string.format("%X", bit32.band(256-ccSum))
local checksum =  string.sub(output,-2,-1)

return str..checksum.."\r"
end


This is just one example of accomplishing this.

Feel free to keep asking questions and please share any tips that you come across for other who might want to try serial.

You've made it over the hill! Now is the fun part!