Hi,
OK, I tried copying my current Mach4Hobby screen set (Mywx6Copy.set) into the screens folder of MachPro.
In MachPro's Veiw tab I can see and load the imported screen set, and the screen loads with errors, namely a lot of Lua scripts are missing.
The screen does load, and it looks to be identical to that same veiw in Mach4Hobby....BUT......many of the buttons and functions are greyed out,
so the screen set is not usable as is.
I seem to recall that there was something like an Export function in Mach4 that allowed you to export not only the screen set but also the Lua code snippets
that made it work, but do you think I can find it! If anyone can remember how that is done, I'd appreciate a reminder.
Moving on.......
I downloaded and opened a small Gcode file in MachPro, and tried to run it.
First thing that happened is that MachPro complained and errored out that the machine has violated SoftLimits. I tried turning SoftLimits off and still could not clear the error warning
and therfeore could not get the code to run. This rather suggests that SoftLimits MUST be enabled and set up otherwise you cannot run any code? Does this sound correct?
The I tried setting up SoftLimits, and because this is not hooked to my machine I wanted to manually jog to the SoftLimits locations and thus populate the SoftLimits table....but I cannot jog!!!!
I reverted to manually populating the SoftLimits table in the Control Plugin/Homing-SoftLimits tab, in the same mannere as I would in Mach4Hobby. Thus I eventually was able to get
SoftLimits to work and thus am able to run the Gcode file.
This brings me to the fact that I cannot manually jog. In Mach4Hobby there was a jog window with the familiar X+, X-, Y+ etc buttons. Pressing said buttons caused the machine to jog.
In that same window you could set jog speed, jog increment, jog mode (absolute/velocity) etc........but there is no such screen or window that I can find in MachPro standard three axis screen set.
Surely it must be possible to jog in MachPro from the screen or keyboard?
I thought then.......'I know, I'll read the manual'......always a last resort, but guess what the manual is the Mach4 manual, it has nothing about the new MachPro screen set.
WTF?
MachPro is a new version of otherwise familiar software, but the manual describes the PREVIOUS version........not much f******ing help!.
MachLabs need to, if not update but include, instructions for the screen set that they have created.
As far as I can tell ALL the documentation that is included IS the
same documentation from Mach4. In the sense that MachPro is an evolution of Mach4 that's OK, but what about documentation
describing those changes that occur in MachPro???
I have built a manual wired jog pendant and have been using it for several years on my Mach4Hobby machine. It is very much how I touch off and otherwise set the machine up. Each of the wires is hooked
via my breakout board/ESS combo to input signals to Mach4. Each Mach input has an entry in the Signal Library table, and each of those entries calls scripts in the ScreenLoad script that enact
the jogging. I presume there must be a similar functionality in MachPro.......but where is it? Where is the documentation describing it?
At the moment I cannot use MachPro. I need my machine to function, and I cannot get MachPro to even match the functionality that Mach4Hobby has.
Craig
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