Messages

21

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach4 Homing Incredibly Slow Problem

« on: May 25, 2019, 01:13:29 AM »

Absolutely brilliant Craig …. a fantastic explanation … and very much appreciated!

I don't know why Vital Systems and/or Artsoft can't put explanatory details like this in their manuals? But perhaps the manuals would get convoluted.
Though, to be fair to Artsoft, they have provided this forum (which compliments the manual nicely).


Anyway, that's great Craig - thank you. I think I now understand why you would use purpose-specific/dedicated switches; and what type of switch is best for homing and for limmiting. And that it is probably not best (if you can avoid it) to use same switches for multiple purposes.


So if I understand correctly, I need to get 6 inductive proximity switches, and fit them onto my machine at each extent of travel - right?
Then I should wire them into 6 individual empty input terminals on my Hicon controller - e.g. P11/Input3,4,5,6,7,8.
Then configure the input signals (in Mach4) e.g....
P11/Input3 = Motor0--
P11/Input4 = Motor0++
P11/Input5 = Motor1--
P11/Input6 = Motor1++
P11/Input3 = Motor2--
P11/Input4 = Motor2++

.... and this will give Mach4 clearly defined limits on each axis, past which it must not travel the machine ?

22

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach4 Homing Incredibly Slow Problem

« on: May 23, 2019, 02:58:21 PM »

Wow!!
Straight to it Overloaded!

That has sorted my problem right out ... and I really do appreciate your help ... thank you very much indeed.


I had no idea there was a back-off speed in the Hicon plug-in.
It was set at 0.4.
So, I tried a few numbers, and settled on 25 - which seems fine.


Now I need to set my work area limits.

Can I use the homing switches as limit switches?
Is there a 'best way' to set-up the limits on a machine like mine?
Please tell me if I need to open a new post with different topic?

23

Mach4 General Discussion / Mach4 Homing Incredibly Slow Problem

« on: May 22, 2019, 05:02:04 PM »

Hi Everybody … first time posting on here and I really hope someone can help?

After lot's of Internet searching, I cannot find anything that resembles the problem I have.

- My machine is a CNC router with X and Y and Z axis.
- My machine has stepper motors (sanyo denki 1.
- My motion controller is a Hycon Integra 7866
- I am running Mach4 Hobby version
- Machine has 3 mechanical homing switches (one on each axis)

I managed to configure Mach4 so that I can jog each axis in the correct directions, at what seems to be a sensible speed.
When I click on the 'Home' button, each axis homes at what I consider to be a normal speed.

THE PROBLEM

However, when the axis hits the home switch, it goes past by about 5mm then very, very, very slowly ticks/counts down to zero before displaying 'referencing complete'.

The Y axis takes the longest (about 6 minutes)??
Z takes about a minute
X takes about 4 minutes

.... so that's 11 minutes in total to home all axes!
 Surely that is not right?

Can someone please try to explain or suggest what I might have configured incorrectly?