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Author Topic: USB and Mach  (Read 21580 times)

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Offline Hood

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Re: USB and Mach
« Reply #10 on: January 15, 2010, 02:35:38 AM »
The thing Jeff is referring towhen he says
Quote
unintended quirks of how the parallel port driver works (something about swapping Ports&Pins definitions while operating the machine.)
is SwapAxis. Its not an unintended quirk of the PP, it was intentional and is very handy and hopefully will be included in the SS at some point in time. What SwapAxis allows you to do is tell Mach to for instance swap the spindle axis to an A axis, this is extremely handy if you have a lathe or mill with a servo motor spindle as it means you can tell Mach that the spindle is now a true axis and do such things as rigid tapping.
 I think the quirk in the PP that Jeff is thinking about is that you can set the same pins for more than one axis and some people use this in a similar manner by enabling or disabling one of the axis, this holds the risk of you forgetting you have both axis enabled and getting both running at the same time so really its not a good idea and yo should be using SwapAxis instead. The SS will not allow you to set the same pins up for two axis which is in my opinion a very good idea.

Hood

Offline Jeff_Birt

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Re: USB and Mach
« Reply #11 on: January 15, 2010, 06:28:55 AM »
Yeah, that was it hood! It was the manually swapping Ports&Pins about whilst running the machine I thought was goofy; SwapAxis() is there for that. I know some folks can make use of SwapAxis and multiple assignments of the same output pins for different axis, but 99.9% don't.
Happy machining , Jeff Birt
 
Re: USB and Mach
« Reply #12 on: January 15, 2010, 03:31:52 PM »
As much as I like my Smoothstepper and will continue to use it, there are still a lot of "quirks" to the firmware.  I'm not trying to cast stones here, but it is simply not a complete product as far as the software goes.  I could give a toss about backlash comp, although that is currently not complete.  My main issue is things like when I hit STOP, even after hitting a FEED HOLD and letting the machine come to a stop, I get an awesome pop up that says the SS ran out of data during a move, and has to be restarted, saying that "hopefully this will be handled better in the future".  Mach now has to be restarted and I need to redo my offsets.  I'm sure there are other surprises to find out as well.
Again, I like mine, and I'll continue to use it. The developer still says it's in beta, so it's not like I feel mislead.  I just think that people who are considering it should understand that it isn't all roses just yet. 

Offline RICH

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Re: USB and Mach
« Reply #13 on: January 15, 2010, 03:56:01 PM »
I just noticed an add in Digital Machinist, by Eckler Software, usb to pp dongle to convert a PP cnc controller to
 a USB cnc controller. Know nothing about it or even looked into it.

RICH
Re: USB and Mach
« Reply #14 on: January 15, 2010, 04:09:16 PM »
I get an awesome pop up that says the SS ran out of data during a move, and has to be restarted, saying that "hopefully this will be handled better in the future".

There is a newer version on the warp9 site that does indeed handle it better.

I did make a forum post about it, you must have missed it.

Phil
The Good Thing About Mach3, Is It's very Configurable

The Bad Thing About Mach3, Is It's Too Configurable
Re: USB and Mach
« Reply #15 on: January 15, 2010, 04:24:23 PM »
I get an awesome pop up that says the SS ran out of data during a move, and has to be restarted, saying that "hopefully this will be handled better in the future".

There is a newer version on the warp9 site that does indeed handle it better.
I did make a forum post about it, you must have missed it.

Phil

I downloaded the latest release in November after it came out.  Although I see a note about OGX2 there now, I can't remember if I got it before or after that.
Even if that is fixed (and it sure would be nice, it's silly not to have a STOP option)  that doesn't change my point one bit.  The software is not complete, and people need to understand that.  If they expect this to perform completely reliably it isn't there yet. It's not insulting or derogatory in any way, just a statement of fact that may or may not be important to your individual use.  I look forward to the day it's out of beta, and I would, and will buy more of them for other projects. 

Offline ger21

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Re: USB and Mach
« Reply #16 on: January 15, 2010, 04:30:38 PM »
I just noticed an add in Digital Machinist, by Eckler Software, usb to pp dongle to convert a PP cnc controller to
 a USB cnc controller. Know nothing about it or even looked into it.

RICH

Just looked, and that's not what it does. It connects to a PC via USB, and has a parallel port for the motor connections. It must be used with their own software, based on EMC, but very stripped down. Appears to run in Windows, Linux, and Mac's. Source code available.
http://www.ecklersoft.com/
Gerry

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Re: USB and Mach
« Reply #17 on: January 15, 2010, 05:32:35 PM »
I downloaded the latest release in November after it came out.  Although I see a note about OGX2 there now, I can't remember if I got it before or after that.
Even if that is fixed (and it sure would be nice, it's silly not to have a STOP option) 

Koko did you not understand what i said, the stop thing is fixed in OG2X

Phil
The Good Thing About Mach3, Is It's very Configurable

The Bad Thing About Mach3, Is It's Too Configurable
Re: USB and Mach
« Reply #18 on: January 15, 2010, 05:42:58 PM »
I read and understand very well thank you.  As it so happens that IS the version of the software I am using, and although it may be fixed for you, it is NOT FIXED for me.  I will try and re-download the plugin in and re-install it to see if that makes a difference. 
« Last Edit: January 15, 2010, 05:47:47 PM by koko76 »

Offline Hood

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Re: USB and Mach
« Reply #19 on: January 15, 2010, 05:47:15 PM »
koko, have a look in the plugins folder to see the version you are using because if you look from the plugin menu in Mach it will show up as OGX even though you may have OGX2.

Hood