Hi,
First to express my satisfaction with Mach3 after an year of extensive use. i could not be more happy. Thanks guys!

Now please, take a look at my problem. I have a small cnc and live in Europe. I am making details from plastic and wood and most of the time i am developing ideas which not always convert to money. The price of electricity is very high here. So i could not run all of the time the vacuum cleaner/ connected to flood via Romaxx CNC screen set/ .  I mean it would make a montly difference to me of more than 100euro. But not running it at all as is acceptable with wood, is not so when milling plastic.

What i need is a function-timer, to tell the vacuum cleaner/flood/ to engage at a chosen interval for a chosen time.

If it can be programmable/ time in seconds/  with the possibility to change the intervals at will for different tasks will be best.

Examples:
1. I am milling a 3d part from wood. The total time is 2 hours. I would program it every 5 min to engage for 30 seconds. And so on...

I believe this function will be very helpful to all the owners of small or big cnc which use it for prototyping and willing to save some cash from electricity.  Even those who make money from every job  could benefit.

What do you think?  

First, you have to do a lot of testing to find out if that will actually save any power.  It may well cost you more.  Often it uses less power to leave a motor running all the time than to cycle it often.  It takes a lot more power to get something moving than it does to keep it moving.  I have heard that generally air compressors that start 8 times or more a day would use less power to just leave them running all day and use an unloader valve to regulate the pressure.  What your wanting will be a piece of cake for some of the macro gurus though.

Brett

(;-) Your power cost must be extremely high. Here I can run a shopvac 24/7 for a month for less than $30US.

The best approach would be to use a simple brain that looks at a User Led. If the LED goes active then send to the timer as

0.000 start delay, 30.000 sec pulse , Delay to restart 120.000sec.

Then terminate the function to the output that turns on the shoppvac.


Userled2250 -------->Timer(0.000,30.000,120.000)------------> Output2


As long as the LED in on the timer turns on for 30 sec then waits 120 and repeates.


The main problem you face is the cutter will always be at the wrong place when the VAC turns on to collect the largest pile of dust/cuttings. MURPHY's law.

(;-) TP

First, you have to do a lot of testing to find out if that will actually save any power.  It may well cost you more.  Often it uses less power to leave a motor running all the time than to cycle it often.  It takes a lot more power to get something moving than it does to keep it moving.  I have heard that generally air compressors that start 8 times or more a day would use less power to just leave them running all day and use an unloader valve to regulate the pressure.  What your wanting will be a piece of cake for some of the macro gurus though.

Brett

Hi,
it would save power and money even if there is some power sucking at motor startup.

(;-) Your power cost must be extremely high. Here I can run a shopvac 24/7 for a month for less than $30US.

The best approach would be to use a simple brain that looks at a User Led. If the LED goes active then send to the timer as

0.000 start delay, 30.000 sec pulse , Delay to restart 120.000sec.

Then terminate the function to the output that turns on the shoppvac.


Userled2250 -------->Timer(0.000,30.000,120.000)------------> Output2


As long as the LED in on the timer turns on for 30 sec then waits 120 and repeates.


The main problem you face is the cutter will always be at the wrong place when the VAC turns on to collect the largest pile of dust/cuttings. MURPHY's law.

(;-) TP

The problem is i have no idea of brains and VB programming. This with the cutter is no problem. I would use this function for more or less cleaning, for the dust not to flow arround and not to obstruct the cutter. Some dust is acceptable with wood.

1kw of power here is 15 eurocents +21%=~19ec . My vacuum cleaner is 1.5kw but i want to put a bigger one. So for now an hour costs me 30 eurocents which is roughly half a $. 8h a day x 25 days =100$ + when i pass a certain limit for the household they raise the bill rapidly and charge me again +21%.  So yes, its a 100euro difference.

Or can i simply put some Gcode here and there to turn it on and off?  May be its simpler until sb make a timer?. How do i do that?

You can turn the flood on and off at the main screen any time you choose.

(;-) TP

how about creating a new M code and control the time the output is on, then use the new mcode M707 in place of M7

'M707.m1s
ActivateSignal(Output1) ' same as the M7 output button
sleep(8000) ' 8 second dwell... change to suit your needs
deActivateSignal(Output1)