Topics

21

Mach3 and G-Rex / G100 jog problems-ART

« on: September 18, 2006, 12:17:25 PM »

Hi Art, I have been having problems with jogging on my knee mill.

I have ac servos and the machine is tuned down to about 150 ipm. When I am slow jogging say 10% things are fine. If I shift- jog things are fine.
If I slow JOG then immediately do a Shift jog my table will lunge a little and fault the servo drive. Happens on all axis.

What I think is happening in on the fast transition from a slow jog to a Shift jog mach is not using the acceleration. It is like the grex is emptying the buffer from the slow jog then going from zero to 150 ipm. 

If I wait for the machine to come to a complete halt after a slow jog then do a rapid jog everything is fine. I don't think it is a servo tuning thing because I have never had this problem while running gcode and I have had the machine jogging just fine (but scary) around at 300 ipm.

BTW i have been following the g100 just stop problem. I have had it happen several times. At the time I was using a laptop wirelessly to control the mill (Iknow not a good idea) I have sense built a dedicated mach computer and haven't seen the problem but i have not done much cutting. I am going to be doing a bunch of work on it this week and I will let you know.

Chad

22

Newfangled Solutions Mach3 Wizards / Surfacing wizzard- just not getting it. Brian?

« on: September 17, 2006, 01:03:27 AM »

Hey Brian, I am about to purchase the wizard set. I have found the free wizard is a little buggy.

Any how I am now confused. And probably missing something but i need to find a better way to prep stock. It is taking me longer to make my stock blocks than it does to cut a complicated 6 sided part.

Here is what I am doing now.  I know it is NOT the correct way but I don' t know a better way.

1. Using my miter box with a non Ferris cutting blade roughing the cube to +- .1 . This makes a pretty square -+ .02 or so block.

2. put it in the mill vice and and do a manual face with the jog keys to get a flat surface.

3. flip the part and do the same thing again.

4. jog the tool out of the way try to get in with calipers to measure the top of the stock to the bottom of the vice.

5. set the z dro to whatever is the measured value, mdi to the desired value and do another manual jog to face the final thickness.

6 Repeat this 2 more times for the other sides.  Yuck.

I only have a cheap 1.25 inch fly cutter that cuts like crap so i have been using a nice 3/4 roughing end mill for the surfacing.

So i was thinking about it tonight and it occurred to me that i could use a 2" gauge block to set the tool height.  This would give me an absolute reference height above the vice bottom, of witch the stock block is resting on. So i went to demo the surfacing wizard and entered 2" for the material surface and 1.85 for the depth. No deal. The wizard generated a preview that if i were able to post code to would surely have been the destruction of something.  I guess i don't understand why there is an option of entering a stock height. I would assume that this was always going to be 0. and the depth would be a -number.

I guess what i can't get my head around is what is your reference to the tool height, be it table top, mill vice bottom, parallels  or is it just whatever you are measuring.

I guess the way i would like it to work is:

1. Use a gauge block and set the tool height above the vice bottom, say 2"

2. now that I have an absolute reference above a surface go into the surfacing wizard and enter 2" for the stock height and 1.85 for the depth.  set the cut depth Etc..

3 Press cycle start.

4. Profit !

I know the danger with this is a goto 0. That could cause all kinds of catastrophe. But no more risky than using a machine that you aren't turning wheels on.

What am I not getting?

Plz Help!

Chad

23

General Mach Discussion / Total NOOB Quick start guide. ?

« on: August 26, 2006, 04:39:21 AM »

HI all,

I read almost every email on both this and the yahoo forum every day. I see lots of the same noob questions pop up frequently. 99% of these are explained in the manual , wiki's  and other posts.
This got me thinking why the basics aren't coming across to the 'total new user'. Then it dawned on me, laziness and intimidation.

First laziness:
I have a feeling that people have a shiny new toy and just want to jump in with both feat and start making things happen and can't be bothered with the minucia of reading the manuals, searching the wiki's, searching posts. People just want it to work, and right now. And just to set the record straight, I was, and still am 100% the exact same way, I much prefer to just load and go, figure it out along the way. I think most techie / tinkerer ( <--i don't think that is a word ) types are the same way .

Intimidation:
When I first installed mach and the screen popped up with the blinking e-stop button I was like " Holy crap what the hell is all of this !?! And it just got worse flipping to the mdi, and other screens. At this point I know what most of the stuff is for, and as my machine design advances so does my understanding of the mystery buttons and functions.
I can easily understand (and relate) to the shock and awe of the total new user. 

Given this maybe we should alter our approach to the 'subsonic' new user. Compounding the problem is the fact there are new people with widely varying levels of experience. Some just get it, and well some, um, just don't.  This isn't a bad thing, it just is what it is. Some times people just get out of their tech comfort zone, and get frustrated, and need some help to get past the first hurdle (e-stop).

OK, so here is my idea. What if all of us 'experts' ( In my case I use the term VERY loosely) Get together and compile a 3 or 4 page Quick Start Guide to mach3? It could cover things like:

*Ports and pins, step and dir output for newbies
*Motor tuning 101
*Blinking,Blink, *^@& ,e-stop-stop, blink!
*Backlash makes my machine do goofy things with steppers (that one would have saved me a week)
*I am using chain-link fence wire for the conductors to my home and limit switches and my machine stops sometimes during a cut,no,like really! I was just sitting there and it stopped!
*The de-bounce blues.
*I am trying to run mach on my IMSI 8080 and it ain't working too good.
*I got a usb to mach-port parallel thingies = no bueno.
*I keep changing the motor tuning stuff and it is always the same when i go back, wazzup with that !?!
*up,down,over,under,left,right,north,south,east,west,+,- what way is plus again?
*IJ wasn't he that guy who was driving around in big cicrles in the white bronco? (obscure ref)
*My screen is too big, My screen is too small, My screen is chopping off stuff.
*I got a licence file and art told me so shove it somewhere, but i don't know where.
*eXtensible Markup Language?
*I am using the freebie version and my 55k g-code file won't run, program must be broke.

I am sure there are others. The idea is just a quick and dirty simple guide to get past a lot of the initial noob gotchas.
For in depth details on any of the above we can point them to the excellent manual, awesome videos, great wikis and knowledgeable folk on the helpful forums.

At this point in my mach experience, ~1 year I have learned tons and still have lots to learn and have zero problem helping others if I have an answer. If you print out the mach manual it is over 1/2 inch that's 12.7 mm for those who understand such things, that is a lot to absorb for a noob just trying to get the motors to spin. 

Well enough of my ramblings, what do 'yall think?

Chad
 

24

General Mach Discussion / g-rex spindle analog

« on: August 18, 2006, 08:02:18 PM »

Hi All,

I can't fingure out how to enable the analog out of the g rex.  I have the scope hooked up to analog 4 and have tried everything I can think of to get it to work with no luck. Can anyone give me a quick 1,2,3, on how to get it working??

Chad
 

25

General Mach Discussion / Need some more advice- R8 quick change tooling

« on: July 25, 2006, 12:50:54 AM »

Been looking and and found a bunch of different stuff. Anyone have stuff they like? And hopefully at a decent price?    Has any one used the tormach stuff?

Chad

26

General Mach Discussion / Probe for part touch off

« on: July 22, 2006, 11:42:02 AM »

HI all does anyone know of any probes  that are in the $1000 dollar range?

The one I found for hobby says it is accurate to + or - a couple of thou and i was hoping for one that is a little higher resolution.

Some of the super dooper ones are good to 1um , i am sure are a fortune and WAY beyond my machine and my wallet. 
Anyone know of anything in-between?

And brian I would need some help with a part touch off macro until art gets his plug in working.

Thanks

Chad

27

General Mach Discussion / ART! Can i buy a licence for mach 4?

« on: July 07, 2006, 06:05:43 PM »

I know 4 is going to disappear soon but until then I need to go over 1000 lines for a project that has to get done before next weekend. I have the grex built into my knee mill and it would be a pain in the butt to retro it to Mach3.

Chad

28

Mach3 and G-Rex / Mach 3 Grex plugin

« on: June 15, 2006, 01:14:21 PM »

( Hi all, Art didn't cross post the latest info on the Mach 3 grex plugin here so I will do it for him. If you have a rex please post any comments for him. )

Hi All G100 owners.

Verison 1.90.051 is online as is the first Test PlugIn for the G100.

To test your G100 functionallity in terms of IO, just copy the G100.dll to the plugins folder in your Mach3 installation. You must be using .051 version to test the G100.

Id be interested in any feedback on how easy it is , or how difficult it is to get running, I have puposfully
made no instructions on installing or getting this plugin running. The program should guide you sufficiently.

Remember, to configure any plugin, including a G100, you select operator/Config plugins..

That knowledge shoudl be all thats required. You wont get movement on this plugin of any type, but all IO
is functional, and connection to the G100 should be immediate, and with no errors unless your G100's
address is wrong. The program will prompt you if this is the case and allow you to correct the trouble. It will also recognise if the firmware in the G100 is not running. Eventually, it will be able to start the firmware in the G100 on its own.

Anyone who feels they can understand the C++ code for this plugin,or are devloping their own External device just send me a letter offline, and I will send you a copy of the plugin project. It is open source as of now. Eventually, Ill post it on the support website.

The new plugin release is on the downloads page directly under the 1.90.051 download.

Good luck, let me know what bugs you find in its operation, it seems to be very stable so far, but Im sure someone out there can find what Ive missed, you guys are good at that. .

Next functional add-in to this code will be Jogging. Hopefully by next week, then GCode movement. Then homing and probing and we're pretty much done till the next firmware is offcially released. Soem recoding will then be necessary.

Thanks,
Art
www.artofcnc.ca

29

Mach3 and G-Rex / Mach4 Homing and limits.

« on: June 06, 2006, 03:28:00 PM »

Hey Brian/art

 Just got my knee retro going last night and WOW!!

I have already noticed some funkyness with the grex and mach 4. I understand it is still in alpha and am looking forward to the new plug arcatcure and the g100 rewrite.

My plan for today is to get the limits and home switch wiring up and running and was wondering if it is even supported in the current release. With the speeds and power i have going i really want some kind of safety on this machine. If they arn't going on the grex side then i will probably wire them directly to the servo controllers as a "STOP"  just for a little protection from a runaway grex.

Art: so far thing are looking Great!! keep up the good work. I would be happy to ship you a case of beer if that that would help the plug in work go a little faster!
Another question, do the encoder inputs to the grex work yet? If so what pins should i use? My drives have encoder outputs and I would like to hook them up for a dro in manual mode..

Brian: I basically did what you did to your mill. I am using Baldor microflex drives and 1.1 kw ac servos. WOW. I guess the old adage is true. You get what you pay for.

chad

 

30

Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) / Chads new machine

« on: May 05, 2006, 12:34:52 AM »

AAAH The lighter font color is much better!! thanks! Now if you guys could do a X,Y,Z,B,C verson for my little project all would be right in the universe

Benny: I know i could change it in screen 4 but what can i say, i am lazy

Here is a pic of it on my mach machine ( in progress) with MachBlueLight

chad