Hi:

 Thx for the pics.

 I have to agree , photo #2 is the best cut. Even the verticals to the left look much better.

>>Unexpected event:WHen I played with jerk setting

  Yes, Feedhold ans reset can act funny. Its what I meant when I said its not fully attached..

>>Some questions:
>>WHen I use CV together with tempest, will tempest blend setting override CV settings? or how it is going to work?

   When CV is on, the blend radisu is used, when off it is zero. Same as exact stop but with Jerk limitation. Dont use zero.. Ill make it kill zero's in future.

The comments are pretty much bang on, Jerk will control the end time more than blend, specially in microsegment code. Blend will have a higher effect in longer segment code.
MicroCode is the hardest of all code to do high order planning with. The fact you get 25minutes vs 35 minutes doesnt surprise me at all, lesser differences woudl be seen in larger segment code.
Im pretty happy with results as posted so far. It allows me to digest and evealuate if indeed Tempest is worthwhile for people to have some day. Many will say its only for special circumstances, but since
Tempest can up the speed quite a bit and eliminate the knocks and jerks, Im thinking it has value for a larger number of peopel than I woudl have orignally though..

Thx
Testing continues.
Art

From the one test I did, it would seem to have a huge impact on regular 2.5D routing at high speeds, by eliminating the corner rounding.

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

Hi Art.
A couple of things,
1. I must pay attention to what Art actually types, it makes it go much easier.
2. When cutting large files like the sailboat hull, remember to have your license file in place. When I put the new computer in place, I forgot it. I was wondering why it kept stopping in the middle of the program.
3. It works with my DSPMC/IP and is working well. I am using version 028 with the 051 firmware and the matching plug in.
4. There is a very noticeable difference between Tempest and the traditional Mach 3 trajectory planner. The floor that the mill is on is not perfectly flat (I know, I know) and the machine when running the boat file would just shake and dance on the floor. With Tempest, the machine stays much more steady. I then jacked up the velocity to a point where it would cause servo encoder limit faults and to verify I ran it in Mach3 and sure enough it would fault out. Most likely because the accel was so bang bang it couldn't keep up.
I am now running tempest with the same setting and the machine is just as smooth as can be. I will cut some more air before I actually try a cut but so far so good.
5. Since I have the machine setup to run Keygrabber it doesn't work with tempest the way it is setup and since the velocity is set so high I can't jog anyway, I am not going to worry about it right now.
6. 6000 mm/min is 233 ipm, a lot faster than the machine normally cuts but it is going well at this time.
Keep up the good work.
7.It must be tough being retired and putting out something like this.

Mike

Hi Mike:

  Thx for the report, its nice to hear.

 Actually though, I suspect retirement is necessary to do this..lol ..

The code took a long time, and you had to go on faith that it woudl make a difference as I couldnt actually move a motor till now.
It does seem much smoother though..

 Anyway. Ill let people test for a couepl months before I continue on it, Ill work on lathe code till then while this project steeps a bit.
Though if problems develop Ill fix each reported error till we know what we have so far is bulletproofed..

Thx
Art

Please don't work on the lathe code, I won't have any more excuses for not finishing the lathe!!!!!!!!!

I will try to work Tempest into the rotation as I do more machining over the next few weeks.
Updates as needed.

Mike

Theres ALWAYS an excuse.!! 

Art

Art, has the Mach driver changed since 2.42?  I have a Tormach mill, and tried using Tempest with that version (Tormach's current version)--I got a brief error message saying something about version <3.00, machine wouldn't move, and I had to uninstall and reinstall the software (including driver).

I'm prepared to install 3.042.029 and migrate the Tormach profile over if that's what it takes to test-drive Tempest.  It sounds too promising, from reading this thread!

Thanks,

Randy

Hi Randy:

  Yes, its likely the driver has changed. Here's a post of the driver required if you wish to test Tempest.
Just rename your mach3.sys in the mach3 folder to .old , then copy this one in. Remove the driver from the control panel
device manager, and then run drivertest.exe and it will install this one.  Name th eold one back to .sys after deleting this one,
and repeat the proceedure to go back to you current Tormach version.

  Take note, this is only required to test Tempest if your using a version older than 1.26 or so, or a special build like Tormachs.


Good luck, Id love to hear how it runs on the Tormach.
Art

Art, thank you for the speedy reply, and the driver and instructions.  I'm running a 2.5D job right now (toolpaths carefully filleted so all is tangent ) but I will be able to test Tempest before the weekend on a small contouring job I ran last week, and thus is fresh in my memory.  I'll report my results then or early in the week.

Randy

Art, I ended up installing 3.042.029 and importing my Tormach XML file and screenset and macros.  (It looks like the only problem with the "Tempest" Mach3.exe is that the pulse width somehow changed from 5 to 2 without me noticing it in my troubleshooting, but I've done some playing and can go back and forth between the Tormach release and 3.042.029 with just a parallel port driver uninstall and reinstall and a couple of reboots in between...

Anyway, it might be a while before I test Tempest.  The CV performance of 3.042.029 is a night-and-day change itself from Tormach's 2.42 version.  I am going to need to play with that for a few days to get a decent baseline from which to test Tempest.  Wow!  So far, I've just been "air cutting" but will put endmill to acrylic in the morning.

Randy