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Offline RossF

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Misplaced Table Display
« on: January 04, 2010, 11:12:34 PM »
Hi,
I am still in the process of retrofitting an Extron milling machine and have it up and running with Mach3 and a Kanalog/Kflop board.
It's working well but I am having difficulties with the table display.
I have watched the video tutorials, numerous times, and my table display is a dotted outline, rather than the solid brown of the video, and the crosshairs are magenta instead of yellow. Is this an upgrade to Mach3 since the video was done or a problem with my setup?

The machine Homes with the table running left, in the X axis, and away from the column in the Y axis, and up in the Z axis.
These are all in the positive direction.
So, by my reckoning, the Home position is the back righthand corner of my table. But that is not how the video tutorial shows it.

To back out of the Home position I have to press the lefthand (-) arrow, on the Jog control screen.

But the table display, when I load G-code, appears in the upper right section of the screen with the drawing in the lower left.
The table is 965mm in the X axis and 460 in the Y axis.
Using a clockface as an analogy, loading the Roadrunner file puts it as a speck down at about 8 o'clock with the table display up in the 12 - 3 o'clock sector.

I need some help to reduce my confusion here :)

Any suggestions??

Offline Hood

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Re: Misplaced Table Display
« Reply #1 on: January 05, 2010, 03:16:25 AM »
Dotted and colour changes are nothing to worry about as you probably suspected.

Table running left, forward and up will mean that the cutter is fully positive in all directions, so on Homing and limits page you will need to have a Home Off value set for X and Y axis. The value of that will be the amount of travel you have.
You will then set X and Y min as Zero
X and Y Max as whatever your travel is
Z Min as the amount of Z travel but as a negative
Z Max as zero.


Doing that should make things work for you, what will happen is when you home the machine coords will be set to your Home Off values on X and Y and Zero on Z, this will let Mach know that you are at full extent of travel in the positive direction.
You will also need to set up a slow zone for each axis, this will be dependant on your axis speed and acceleration so you will just have to mess around to find what works for you. How to do that is set a slow zone of say 20mm or 0.75 inch (depending if you are metric or imperial setup) Make sure you have softlimits turned on  then jog away and then back at full rapid and see if the axis slows and stops just before it hits the limits, if it does then fine, if its too fa away when it starts to slow then reduce the slow zone, if it hits the limits increase the slow zone.

Hood

Offline RossF

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Re: Misplaced Table Display
« Reply #2 on: January 06, 2010, 04:48:30 AM »
Thanks for that Hood. You covered the problem well and your reply was excellent and I followed it without any difficulty, or so I thought.
But the problem is still there and I must be missing something.
I have duplicated it on my home computer, with Mach3 without being connected to anything, and I still get the table in the wrong quarter.
With the machine it doesn't actually effect the execution of the g-code and I could run the mill okay but it really does bug me that it doesn't appear correctly on the screen.
I didn't need to set up the slow zone as the Homing is handled by the Kanalog board and it works well. It runs into the Home switches and then backs of gently until they go high again.
I would post a screenshot of my homing/limits settings but I have not yet figured how to do that in this forum.

Offline Hood

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Re: Misplaced Table Display
« Reply #3 on: January 06, 2010, 04:53:27 AM »
Use the additional options to attach images.
Hood

Offline RossF

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Re: Misplaced Table Display
« Reply #4 on: January 06, 2010, 12:46:03 PM »
Thanks Hood. I have included the screenshot of the Home/Limits setup and a view of the table display.
You will note that I have the DRO reading showing Machine Coords to indicate where the centre of the job is in relation to the table.
Ross

Offline Hood

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Re: Misplaced Table Display
« Reply #5 on: January 06, 2010, 01:54:55 PM »
Ok but if you jog to the centre of the table and then zero the X Y  coords, regen the toolpath is it still way off?
Hood

Offline RossF

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Re: Misplaced Table Display
« Reply #6 on: January 06, 2010, 04:26:59 PM »
Still way off.
To get it to show up on the table, in the display, I would have to jog in a positive direction and that would run the table out through the wall :)
I have decided, at this stage, to treat it like an ashtray in the back seat of a car, where you don't use the back seat, and you don't smoke, so the ashtray is of no use to you, but as it's there it would be nice to have it working properly.
I am just going to turn table display off.

Ross

Offline Hood

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Re: Misplaced Table Display
« Reply #7 on: January 06, 2010, 04:30:15 PM »
Can you attach the code and your xml and I will see if I can work out where the problem is. It is really a benefit to get this working as it will allow you to set the softlimits and will mean that you have an added safety feature and will leave the real limits as just a secondary failsafe.
Hood

Offline RossF

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Re: Misplaced Table Display
« Reply #8 on: January 06, 2010, 06:29:50 PM »
I must admit that a "Machine out of Limits for Soft Limit activation" error does come up if I press the Soft Limits button.

Offline Hood

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Re: Misplaced Table Display
« Reply #9 on: January 06, 2010, 06:39:03 PM »
Think thats the wrong xml as there are no motor set up in it.
What do the DROs read in machine coords when you home?
Hood