Dan, Graham Waterworth has a IO-M on a wee mill and he said its been working great for a while now.
Hood

That's good, Hood. Still want to see what you'll have to say about the threading.

Dan

BTW should that not be 6 digital out rather than the 4 you said? Maybe you were thinking of the 4 axis?
Hood

You're right - There are 6 digital outs - 4 solid state and 2 relay contact...... I missed that... :>)
Their manual's I/O listing is incorrect and doesn't agree with the digital I/O connector pin-out.

Regarding threading using MACH3 - I haven't tried it with MACH3 but have read that there have been a lot of issues with that portion of the program.
Do you know if that's been sorted yet?

Orin

Mach3 using the parallel port for threading had issues for some and worked great for others. With external devices it has always worked well as far as I know, certainly does with the Smoothstepper.

I think the problem most had with the parallel port and threading was down to one of two things (or both), one is a severely underpowered spindle for the threads they are trying to cut and second is if they have a VFD that is set in a mode which tries to keep the spindle at the commanded speed. What happens in that case is the spindle slows, Machs driver sees it and slows the axis but at the same time the VFD sees it and speeds the spindle, so Mach sees the speed increase and... well an ever ending loop of bouncing back and forward

I never had any issues when I was using the parallel port but then again my spindle could take all I could throw at it and never blink.

Hood

I may as well stick my bit in as well,  Hood used me as a test case for his purchase convincing me I needed one of these, the man is an evil genius   

I have 2 of these units now a 4 axis CSMIO/IP-M and the new and just released 6 axis +/-10v analogue CSMIO/IP-A

The 4 axis is fitted to a mini mill and has worked without a hitch for several months now, the installation was quick and easy as the mill is a very basic stepper driven 3 axis wired for a 4th when needed, home switches and a 0-10v spindle drive. It runs off a ASRock PV530A-ITX 1.8Ghz Mini-ITX Mainboard with 2 Gb ram and a 30Gb solid state drive and WinXP the whole lot was less than 100 quid and it works very well.

The CSMIO/IP-A 6 axis unit is fitted to a 4 axis mill with Baldor Flex drives working +/-10v with 4096 pulse encoder feed back, I have to say the documentation is somewhat lacking at the moment so installation of the software was a bit confusing on a clean install of windows, I am informed the manuals are been worked on as is the automatic installation of the software and new versions are due very soon.  The team at CS_Labs have been very helpful and are very keen to get things right.

The unit is now installed and controlling the XY & Z axis the motion is very smooth and very accurate, the servo tuning is manual at the moment so it was pot luck as to just how good I got the motion, there is an auto tune feature in the setup screen but this is not working at the moment, again a new plugin is due soon with the auto tune working.  At the moment its running off my old Dell laptop but I will be installing the same PC as the mini mill.

All in all I only have good things to say about the controllers and the company, I have just ordered a MPG unit to go on this machine too.

Graham

Tell the truth, you are just loaded and needed to splash some cash

Very interested to hear how the Analogue version gets on as you progress. I was tempted to get one just for the hell of it even though my drives can accept step/dir as well as the analogue. Decided against it however as it wasnt ready when I was needing to get mine on the go.

Not much progress for me, have been busy with work as well as other projects (lathe Hyd chuck etc)
Have attached a pic though of the CSMIO stuff from a different view, this is showing it with the door closed and the all in one screen/computer removed so you can see inside.
Hood

Hi, I'm retrofitting an Esab Sabre 3000 burning gantry with Mach3 running on an Itronix gobook using the new CSLabs CMSIO-A ethernet drive controller.  Is there any kind of standard i/o map that Mach3 would like to use?  I've noticed that I can't config the cslab addin from the plugin control and activation tab, get an "Error found, Art Code: 9991, Attempt Recovery?" after which Mach3 closes.  I'm assuming they have something wrong with either the firmware or mach3 addin dll.  Has anybody else had any trouble with this?  I like the looks of the controller and if this works there's probably going to be a few more of these retro's around here.  Makes a cute little installation in the old Vision 1000 enclosure.

Are you meaning the monitoring from Plugin Control menu or are you talking about click the Config from the Config menu the Config Plugins?

When you start Mach are you choosing the CSLAB plugin at the start?

Your problems may be because the A version is just out and I noticed Graham said he had problems with the install of the software.
The install of the S that I have was very straightforward so hopefully the A will be the same very soon.

Hood

I'm trying to set up the i/o, the software seemed to load easily, communication between the computer and the csmio seems to be occuring, as I'm playing around with an estop circuit tied into the first input, but I have no outputs at all.  Monitoring from the plugin control menu seems to be working although I'm assuming that it should be possible to force the outputs from this menu.  In the Mach3 documentation they show being able to configure the plugin from the Config menu--config plugins--click config to the right of the plugin, except the entire column of "config" is yellow and I get the alarm message when I click on that particular one.

You can click on Config with the S version but maybe the A version that you have does not have that yet as I know the plugin is very new for it so likely will need an update before you can get access.

Regarding the outputs, you would need to either set it up in Mach or call it from VB to activate it.
Easy way to test is just go into Machs Ports and pins and set one of the outputs up to port 10 and pin 1 then change the active state, the output should switch on/off depending on the active state. Alternatively you could set one up as coolant and that would switch on/off with the coolant button.
Hood