Messages

401

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: What can cause a Corrupter Mach 4 profile?

« on: November 13, 2019, 12:52:43 PM »

The reason is that Word and the other programs may not have their files used in the same manner as the Machine.ini file.  Even so, if you just modified a word document and shutdown uncleanly, that document has a high probability of getting corrupted.  I have seen it 1000s of times.  The issue is that while you might have saved the file, the OS may not have completely flushed the changes to the disk.  Thus the file is in an incomplete state.  Word will try and "repair" it or replace it with an earlier version if it detects a file as being corrupt.  We save earlier versions of the profile (Machine.ini) files in the profile directory's "Backup" directory for the same purposes.

A backup of the previous Machine.ini is saved in the Backup directory every time you exit Mach.  It is a circular buffer that overwrites the oldest backup with the newest with the default number of backups set at 20.  The number of backups kept can be changed with the BackupProfiles key in the Preferences section of the Machine.ini.  If the key is not in there, you have to add it.  e.g:

[Preferences]
BackupProfiles=25

These backups can be restored with the "Restore Backup" button on the Mach4 Loader profile selection dialog.

Steve

402

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach4 and kingstar

« on: November 13, 2019, 12:33:26 PM »

I should probably add that a good PC is required.  With a good quality Ethernet card as well.  IntervalZero/KingStar has a list of tested hardware.

Steve

403

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach4 and kingstar

« on: November 13, 2019, 11:56:04 AM »

Craig, you were close!    However, that is not my Matsuura, but one just like it at the shop in Maine.  And yes, it is running on KingStar EtherCAT.  We are pretty excited about having an EtherCAT solution and it is working very well.  That machine has an EtherCAT spindle drive (TDE MACNO) but the spindle can be controlled with analog outputs as well.  It is using Yaskawa Sigma 7 servo drives with ABS encoders and an Omron I/O "brick"  None of that was cheap!  Probing is handled on the servo modules as the servo drives have a bit of I/O on them for such uses.  ABS encoders means no homing required!  It is a slick setup.

You don't have to run EVERYTHING on the machine with EtherCAT.  You can use I/O to run just about anything in the traditional manner.  So the main EtherCAT devices would be the servo drives and some I/O modules.  The spindle can optionally be controlled via EtherCAT, but as I said, an analog control method is also provided with plans to accept encoder input (via an encoder input I/O module) for rigid tapping/threading capability (not there yet but coming soon). 

Maybe we can do a video of the Matsuura showing it's control cabinets and running it through some paces.  I do love those old Matsuura machines.  Good iron.  Super rigid.  They are old school machines with box ways and 5K spindles so they are not really setup for the high speed machining stuff.  But you can use a hog cutter end mill and remove amazing amounts of material per pass.  That is IF you can clamp the part well enough. 

BTW, I also have some Leadshine EtherCAT stepper drives that are fixing to run my desktop test machine.  Talk about OVERKILL!!!  EtherCAT running NEMA 17s.  LOL!

Steve

404

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Bigger text size for wx.wxMessageBox

« on: November 13, 2019, 11:32:13 AM »

You may be able to use display scaling to make the font size bigger.  Right click on your desktop and choose "Display Settings".  Then look under the "Scale and Layout" section. 

Otherwise, there are no hints other than the wxWidgets documentation for wxWidgets.  And to make matters worse, that is C++ documentation.  So you must also understand how wxWidgets is bound to LUA (wxLua) as the function signatures differ between C++ and LUA pretty drastically.  Here is a link to the wxLua page: http://wxlua.sourceforge.net/.  At the bottom of that page, there is a "Getting Started" section. 

Think of wxLua as a superset of just plain LUA.  Regular LUA has no GUI components built into it.  So you need to learn about the LUA language first, then learn about how wxWidgets is used with it.  People use wxFormBuilder to build dialogs and output the wxLua code.  But that code then needs to be integrated into Mach at some point and that would usually entail some knowledge about LUA modules, how to create them, and how to use them.  It isn't rocket science, but it will take time to learn it.

People always seem to complain about the "need to be a programmer" to use Mach 4.  But Mach 4 will run a machine "out of the box" without one bit of programming.  It isn't until people need something special or something that is unique to their machine (tool changers, etc..) that they even need to think about modifying or programing anything custom.  But at least we give you a way to make these customizations.  And to me, I like learning new things.  The day we quit learning is a sad day, IMHO. 

Steve

405

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: What can cause a Corrupter Mach 4 profile?

« on: November 13, 2019, 10:56:07 AM »

I will address the OP question of what can cause a corrupt profile. 

1.  Turning the power off without shutting down Windows.
2.  Turning the power off without shutting down Windows.
3.  Turning the power off without shutting down Windows.
4.  Maybe a hard disk issue. 
5.  Turning the power off without shutting down Windows.

 

In all seriousness, that is about it! 

Skipster67, you don't have a corrupt profile.  I would check your machine for a virus.  Freezing and dropping off, as you say, are indicative of a poorly running PC. 

Steve

406

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Bigger text size for wx.wxMessageBox

« on: November 09, 2019, 10:28:14 PM »

No.  But you can write your own message box dialog and do anything you want.  However, it will take an investment in time to learn wxLUA/wxWidgets. 

Steve

407

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Mach4 Hobby Screen Editor

« on: November 09, 2019, 10:25:59 PM »

It isn't the profile.  He is running wxMach.exe instead of Mach4GUI.exe.  There should be more icons to run the Mach4 loader. 

Steve

408

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: VFD in box or not

« on: October 30, 2019, 12:14:05 AM »

Most manufactured machines from "back in the day", like my Matsuura MC500V, had two cabinets on them.  One for the control/drives and one for the VFD (and other less sensitive wiring).

Steve

409

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Why for sanity sake isn't their an "undo" on the screen editor!

« on: October 30, 2019, 12:09:44 AM »

No undo button.  You can, however, exit the screen editor without saving the screen, then reload the screen (or restart Mach).

Steve

410

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: New mach4 ERROR's after install

« on: October 30, 2019, 12:05:43 AM »

We are testing a new way to make thinker lines in the tool path.  This is what you get with development versions.   

Steve