Mike:

  Youd think it would.. and Ive run many tests but I dont see huge differences. I wouldnt bother going above 50 or so, since Tempest is really queued on the blend speed calculations, the added lookahead seems to have diminishing returns after about 50 lines even in small segement code. It REALLY beats quantum in that small segment code will go almost as fast as Mach3 in many instances.

Art

Thanks Art - I have attached another, interesting, small part file that has loads of small segment code in it. I'll be interested to know if you can work out what it is. The code for all these moulds is done using EdgeCam and I am lucky enough to have been sponsored by them to the tune of one complete seat.

Mike

Hi Art,

I just tried air cutting the 'New Hub' file and at about line 25, my machine started making some loud thumping noises. I could not work out which axis it was coming from. The settings I tried were; 1000 for jerk and 1 for blend. I also tried a blend of 10 but this made no difference. I then tried jerk at 10000, 20000 and 50000, with blend at 10, but all settings produced the thumping. There is no way I can cut the mould with the present version of tempest.

Mike

Mike:

 Yup, just noticed that myself. Its the G2 arcs on line 26, change to G3 and its fine. Im tracking it down now as to where I screwed up on the G2's..

Art

Glad to be of assistance - good luck in tracking it down.

Mike

My bad...

 G2's have a reversed normal..

 Heres a fix..

Thx for that bug..

Art

Hi Art,
It just boggles the mind to see how quickly things get taken care of and fixed. I have no fear when it comes to anything mechanical and have always wanted to learn some programing but the time issue comes into play.

That said, will Tempest work with my DSPMC. I am game to try it out and see how it goes but would like to be sure it will even run before spending any time on it.
That is of course if my testing it out would be helpful in any way.

Mike

Mike:

  I believe it will work fine, it should work as well as the smoothstepper as they share the motion interface. Cant guarentee it, but they should both work.
You dont need to do much to try tempest anyway, just download and unzip to mach3 folder, and run mach3tempestsep29.exe instead of mach3.exe..

  Id love to hear if it actually works OK on the dsp...

Art

Thanks for the info,
I will let you know how it works out.
Mike

Hi Art,

My servos love Art Fennerty 

I did some more air cutting of the 'New Hub' file and it seems to be working just great. I ran the file a number of times and recorded the time it took to reach line 400. The standard Mach with acceleration set at 400 (the very safe limit for my machine) took 2 minutes and 15 seconds. I then switched to Tempest with settings of 1 for blend radius and 10000 for jerk, keeping the acceleration at 400. This time it took 2 minutes and 40 seconds. I then changed the motor acceleration to 1000, a setting that would continually trip the standard Mach. I was surprised that it only shaved 1 second off the time. I then tries acceleration at 2000 and 5000 and again the timing was pretty constant at 2 minutes 39 secs.

I then tried setting the acceleration on all axes to a paltry 50 just to get an idea of what was happening. This time it took 3 minutes and 16 seconds.

My conclusion seems to be that although Tempest will allow massive increases in acceleration, as did Quantum, there is a practical limit. I do not know if results would be any different with files without so much small segment code as the 'New Hub' has.

The major difference is how the machine sounds - it just purrs along even at high accelerations - my servos just love it. I am sure this will have a dramatic effect on servo life.

Most impressed,

Mike