I was wondering realistically how reliable Mach with Galil is?

I know that the Galil cards are pretty rock solid in terms of not causing random run away and such, so I would assume that since the plug-in is basically a real-time g code to Galil code converter that it should always be pretty reliable?

I have seen on the forum, people talking of machines with the pport driver having tool take off at random sometimes. And I want to minimize this as much as possible by not using the pport.
Am I assuming right that I pretty much shouldn’t have any position errors of take off’s with the Galil card even if the computer crashes of has hick ups?


Thanks
Dave

Dave,
The Galil plugin is NOT a gcode to Galil code converter! The plugin uses Mach3 as the profiler and NOT Galil's profile generator. That being said, the combination has been working fine for about two years now. Your results as always depend on the quality of your installation. The Galil can't make up for bad grounding or incorrectly installed (unshielded) hardware.
Kenny

I am definitely not trying to make up for a bad install, just trying to cover all the what ifs.

Which commands does Mach send to the Galil card then? I am a little familiar with the Galil command set, but confused on how Mach controls it now.

Dave

Dave,
The Galil gets a "LI" with the new positions every 16ms. That is how more than two axes are interpolated at a time. This is true even for circles which are a collection of very short lines strung together. This is also why fast communication between Mach and Galil is important. The newer 40XX series controls also have a different method available, but Mach still sends the new position data every 16ms. Try it, and look at the galildebug file that is created by the plugin to see how the communication takes place and the commands that are send to the Galil.
Cheers,
Kenny

I haven't been able to look at a log yet, I am still working on homing issues.

With just the line commands sent, it would be pretty rare to have a axis take off due to mach errors then right?

I would say that the only reason you would ever see a run away axis with Mach/Galil is if you had an encoder failure.  And if you set OE (Off on Error), the Galil would stop even that in short order.

Thank you. It sounds like I don't have to worry much about damaging any work pieces once everything is setup then.