Messages

291

Tangent Corner / Re: Materials suggestion......

« on: February 25, 2008, 04:59:26 PM »

Wood? Pretty robust and cheap. Wood plus concrete would be nice and stable.

292

General Mach Discussion / Writing macros, OEM inputs and outputs

« on: February 11, 2008, 10:07:32 AM »

Hello all

Is there a good tutorial or other thread on here which can give me a good overview of writing macros?

Also, how can I configure the OEM inputs and outputs (including renaming them if possible). I've looked though the manual but can't find either ... might just have missed it, do refer me back to the right page if that is the case.

Thanks

293

General Mach Discussion / Re: Changing the Sensitivity of Limit Switches?

« on: February 10, 2008, 09:34:33 AM »

Good going, some very clear thinking going on there. Well done that man

294

General Mach Discussion / Re: Changing the Sensitivity of Limit Switches?

« on: February 09, 2008, 05:12:07 PM »

Wood! excellent. but how do you maintain tolerances when the weather changes? Or doesn't  it matter too much?

295

General Mach Discussion / Re: Changing the Sensitivity of Limit Switches?

« on: February 08, 2008, 04:12:23 AM »

Solder or clamp those connections! If they use blade terminals you could use corresponding crimp connectors, that would work well.

The other thing is, your machine sounds fairly new so this probably won't be an issue but large old machines like mine often suffer from earth leakage from old wires, splashy coolant etc. I've got all my limits relayed to counteract this - they need a good current of 30mA or so to operate. It takes very little current to drag a port pin down to logic 0, earth leakage or fortuitous contact with earthed parts will easily do this.

296

General Mach Discussion / Re: Placing the Encoder - On ballscrew vs On motor

« on: February 05, 2008, 07:11:08 PM »

^^  What he said. I've seen timing belts routinely used on high-end military antenna positioners for their effectiveness alone... trust me, the price doesn't come into it. The better ones have steel strands to prevent stretching.

297

General Mach Discussion / Re: Manual limit override

« on: February 05, 2008, 07:06:30 PM »

this happens to me when a limit is actually hit - have you checked with Diagnostics to make sure that your limit switches are set up and operating correctly?

298

General Mach Discussion / Re: PCI port card addressing woes

« on: February 05, 2008, 04:06:57 PM »

No Iomegaware here, I fitted the box up from a bare disk. The new port card works fine anyway, and since i saw sense enough to put all the limits on one pin and the homes on another it's got an awful lot of spare capacity. I've got to re-do the interface board since the one i have is completely the wrong shape now, this way I can leave a block of spare outputs for a couple of extra steppers for future improvements, rotary table etc.

My new card uses IRQ sharing and this doesn't seen to raise any gremlins - it's an Abit motherboard btw, if that helps.

299

General Mach Discussion / Re: PCI port card addressing woes

« on: February 04, 2008, 06:58:01 AM »

Q? Did you hook up your lp2 card to a device first?

A - No, just fitted it and installed the drivers.

Q. Is your enable plug and play device checked on?

A - Yes.

Q.  Did you manually set your card to lpt2? mine comes up as lpt3, but i change it.

A - mine came up as LPT2 anyway, but this can be changed - I don't think this matters as mach3 cannot be ordered to look for an LPT number, just a hex address..

Q.  My lowest hexidecimal address is in the programs, acc, sys tool, sys info, hardware, i/O area: And it is E080-E08f. but in device manager it says ec00. Is my card not compatible??

A - Try both. The address Device manager gave me worked first time. I tested the card out by setting mach3 to autodetect a signal for X++ (ports& pins - inputs - automatically detect inputs) which is lazy but effective as it will pick up anything it sees changing. Or, to eliminate hardware gripes, pop a 300 ohm resistor between pin 10 and pin 25 with autodetect on - this should give you a result.

Q. Have you tried the   other cards you purchased? ty for the help.

A - np yes, tried them, they are identical to the one i tried last week and they work perfectly.

Good luck with this one - Whether or not the card is good, let us know and tell us what chipset it uses so we can get it on record. photos if possible

300

General Mach Discussion / Re: 2nd parallel port pin (2-9) as inputs

« on: February 02, 2008, 08:39:24 PM »

What card, with which chipset are you using?