Hi Guys,
After all these years as an extremely satisfied (and I mean ‘really satisfied’) user I am starting to get disillusioned with Mach3 (and the speculative, guesswork, statements that version 4 will fix all the problems really does not help).
Mach was just fine ‘yesterday’ but we, as well as our machines, all move on – more complexity, more sophistication, more function, faster operation etc etc and in my case also more laser.
It appears to me that recent revisions have catered for those that shout the loudest and have not really been for the good of all. The changes that have occurred to the way CB is treated was bit of a shock at first but the addition of “While IsMoving() … Wend” between every CB statement now seems to prevent tool breakage on the ‘auto tool zero’ routine at least.
My main gripe, at the moment, is with M11P1/M10P1and the E1P0/E1P1 commands which would switch an output coincident with axis movement in more or less exactly the same way as the Z Axis can move during any X and Y Axis movements when included on the same line of GCode. Now they just don’t work !! Why ??
Believe it or not, laser usage is going to grow in popularity and if Mach keeps moving backwards by ignoring the, perhaps unique, requirements of laser users it will get left behind in this important area of CNC. I get more than a dozen emails a week about using a laser with a CNC machine and many relating to using Mach3 with a laser and whilst I am learning fast I am still far from being an expert (perhaps I never will get there).
The LPT Parallel Port is dying in its availability so I have tried the Smooth Stepper controller and Mach (without benefit as far as laser is concerned) and am now looking toward external motion controllers which use other software (a sad day for me).
My requirements, as a laser user, are pretty basic – I just need to switch an output on when an axis moves and switch an output off when an axis stops – without any delay. Is this too much to ask ?? The E1P0/E1P1 commands that Art included (for laser use) used to do exactly this so why does it no longer work ??. Why has it been changed ??. Will it be fixed ??.
Questions that will never be resolved, or will they ??
Tweakie.