Messages

31

General Mach Discussion / screen

« on: March 18, 2009, 09:58:42 PM »

hi all

i try to make a screen set that will better suits my needs, but it is getting very frustrating to work with screen4. when i click on a button, sometimes it does the button's action, sometimes it select the button for setting it up. some buttons on the screen can't be selected at all once they are configured. removing the bitmap doesn't seem to help. now my question is what format are these screens based on? can i use visual basic screen design tool for example to create my screens and then use screen tweak to assemble as a screenset?

thanks

32

General Mach Discussion / screen

« on: March 16, 2009, 09:59:04 PM »

can someone point me to the documentation for screen 4.

33

General Mach Discussion / Re: keygrabber

« on: March 15, 2009, 02:06:57 PM »

i connected a logiteck attack 3 and the keygrabber seems to work properly, but still nothing in mach 3. the joystick that i would like to use is a megatron oem usb. but it doens't seem to work properly with keygrabber. anyone out there using an industrial joystick with good results?

34

General Mach Discussion / keygrabber

« on: March 15, 2009, 01:35:28 PM »

hi,

i try to install a joystick on my lathe. i use mach 3 3.042.020 under xp with directx 9. i tried using the joystick plugin that instaled with mach3, nothing moving. i tried dowloading the available plugin in the dowload area, no moving. then i tried using keygrabber, but it seems that it is not working properly. when i try to set it up, i cannot stop it. it is always grabbing even when clicking stop grabbing. i can see my joystick is there and available, i can set up the buttons, but when i switch to the joystick tab, it is scanning the axis at high speed so i cannot set it up properly. then when i click open mach3, it opens up but nothing working. when in keygrabber, if i it the testing menu a small window opens and it freeze. i downloaded a new copy of keygrabber(4.0.0.11) and replaced in the mach folder with the same result.

any advise?

35

General Mach Discussion / Re: need help with steppers

« on: February 05, 2009, 10:20:22 PM »

you have a unipolar configuration. if you have a dmm, measure the resistance between each single wire and the common group, it should be similar. this will tell you if you have a burnt phase. if it is good then try the 6 different configurations on the motor cable. 1234, 1243, 1423, 1432, 1324, 1342. on each config try to run the motor very slowly like 50 rpm.

an other thing might be that the step and dir input on the board are not labaled properly and you send the pulse on the dir input and dir on the step input, this would cause the motor to heat because it is stalling at full current on a phase.

36

General Mach Discussion / Re: Stepper Motor Problem/Issue

« on: February 05, 2009, 09:42:47 PM »

if a stepper motor is driven with no load, it sometimes enter into resonnance. the same will happen if you try to drive it to fast. what happens is that the controler shift the phases too fast for shaft to follow so the shaft buzz between the phases. it is more frequent if using full or half step. if you increase the microstepping a little bit and check if the setup on this axis is not trying to drive the motor faster then rated.

37

General Mach Discussion / Re: smooth stepper

« on: February 04, 2009, 01:28:44 PM »

i forgot to mention that the smooth stpepper is powered by the usb power and not an external 5v supply

could it be the problem?

38

General Mach Discussion / smooth stepper

« on: February 04, 2009, 01:04:51 PM »

hi all

i received and installed yesterday a smooth stepper to use it on my lathe. i was surprised to see that everything installed and work exaclty like expected after following the instruction.  it control the x and z axis plus spindle speed thru a campbell breakout board. Even if everything works, i've noticed something strange. when the spindle is turning, the spindle dro is showing a 6 to 10 digit number that is always changing. it doesn't show the actual speed. when manualy feeding axis with the shuttle pro, the feed dro doesn't reflect the actual speed but is fixed at the same number it was when not moving the axis.

finnaly, after about an hour of using it without any problems and everything fonctional, mach3 crashed. it is now crashing every 5 minutes.

i'm using mach3 3.042.020 and ss driver 2.04.06 and PlugIn: SmoothStepper_Beta2_v015ogb.m3p

any ideas?

39

Mach Screens / screen set

« on: January 19, 2009, 08:45:30 PM »

i need to design a screen set for my specific needs, i would need to know the difference between flash screen and non flash screen.  i need touchscreen capability.

40

Mach Screens / Re: Haas Style screen?

« on: January 19, 2009, 08:06:21 PM »

these pic are probably from an older machine. i own a recent model vmc and the screens look a little better. the fonctionality of the haas interface is good but i don't think they would deserve a price for the disign. it looks like an old dos program.

with all the flexibility of mach3, i think someone could come with a much better interface than the haas. the good thing about the haas control is that you can do everything without the mouse.

my 2 cents