Messages

791

FAQs / Re: Losing steps or something?

« on: October 01, 2010, 03:42:51 PM »

Hmm... Don't know. The voltage should pull low - effectively 0V. Practically you'd measure something like 0.1V or lower.

I will give it a thought, but hopefully someone will chime in with an idea...

Dan

792

FAQs / Re: Losing steps or something?

« on: October 01, 2010, 03:10:27 PM »

Don't know, Don, sounds like insufficient current. You will see it when you do the measuring. If the voltage drops noticeably when it is connected to the Gecko (probably to 2V or something) then you'll know the current is insufficient.

Dan 

793

VB and the development of wizards / Re: Macro M6 safety

« on: October 01, 2010, 02:14:00 PM »

Ah... then it's easy. Just put an 'If' statement at the top of your M6start macro. Something like this:

If (Input12) Then

'Put your macro here

Else

Message "Tool is stuck in the spindle. Unable to complete tool change"

End If

Dan

794

VB and the development of wizards / Re: Macro M6 safety

« on: October 01, 2010, 10:55:33 AM »

Now I lost you Peter. You said you had the sensors connected to pin 12 of the PP and you were not getting any signals from them... ?

Dan

795

FAQs / Re: Losing steps or something?

« on: October 01, 2010, 08:33:52 AM »

Don,

It is normal - when starting Mach it takes over the PP and pulls low all the pins. What is not normal is that you don't see the direction pin changing state when moving the axis in different directions. This is strange. You didn't have anything connected to that pin when doing the measuring, did you? I don't know why that would happen...

Where did the D-sub 25 connector go in? How did you plug into the PP DB25? Can you measure the voltage of say the direction pin while it is not connected to the Gecko and compare it to the voltage when it is connected to the Gecko?

Dan

796

VB and the development of wizards / Re: Macro M6 safety

« on: October 01, 2010, 01:30:34 AM »

Hi Peter,

You need to check your sensors to see why you're not getting signals out of them.

Dan

797

FAQs / Re: Losing steps or something?

« on: September 29, 2010, 07:48:34 AM »

Hi Don,

What keeps confusing me is that you're seeing the problem only when there is motion on two or more axes, but never when it's a single axis move.

Would be still interesting to eliminate the breakout board from the equation. I know you tested with two different ones, but anyway. When you tried running the Geckos directly from the PP did you do it with both computers and they both had insufficient voltage going out from the PP? Can you find another PC with a PP that would output 5VDC signals, or find a PP card with 5VDC to install in your current PC?

Dan

798

General Mach Discussion / Re: Running my first program

« on: September 26, 2010, 03:49:48 PM »

Kevin,

Most of the wizards have the option to select Metric or Inch units.

Are you meaning the tool table? Don't see why you'd want to reconfigure it... the values there are in the units defined in Mach. You can put a G20 in the beginning of a program and Mach will treat the length units as inches.

There are lots of CAM packages and the pricing differs a lot. Don't know what are the cheaper ones. There has been a lot of discussions on this over on the Mach Yahoo group, but I wasn't really following them.

Dan

799

General Mach Discussion / Re: Running my first program

« on: September 26, 2010, 02:19:36 PM »

Yes, start with the wizards.

You can use LazyCAM to produce Gcode from DXFs created by Autocad. Note that the free version of LazyCAM doesn't support some features like pocketing.

Dan

800

General Mach Discussion / Re: Running my first program

« on: September 26, 2010, 12:11:33 PM »

Hi Kevin,

You don't set a tool diameter for the roadrunner or any other program in Mach. There are two ways to produce Gcode - take the tool  diameter into account and plan the moves considering it, or use G41/G42 tool offsetting and then just write the gcode as if the tool had zero diameter (Mach would automatically offset the tool).

I have never run the roadrunner code myself. Probably it was assuming a particular tool diameter, probably not. See its size and select a tool that would give most details.

Dan