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Author Topic: Mach4 Printer Port Discussions  (Read 1243680 times)

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Offline ART

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Re: Mach4 Printer Port Discussions
« Reply #140 on: July 21, 2014, 11:49:14 AM »
Tweakie:

 Hard to say is the M11P0/P1 capability will be repeated. Up to Brian really. I added it for engravers but its not a Gcode staple.. Id ask the M4 guys if they intend to offer a realtime on/off signal capability..

Art

Offline ART

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Re: Mach4 Printer Port Discussions
« Reply #141 on: July 21, 2014, 11:50:11 AM »
hmm.. weird that over 2us causes trouble..Id have thought youd never notice if the pulse was too wide.. Ill have to check why that might be..

Art
Re: Mach4 Printer Port Discussions
« Reply #142 on: July 21, 2014, 06:01:18 PM »
Tested tonight with Darwin 1.10 and was able to get the motors moving :) The movement appears to be good on a test run of road runner with the pulse width stretched to 3us.
This is what I found when setting up.

As someone else reported the charge pump doesn't activate when you first click enable in Mach4. It then activates when you click disable.

Charge pump frequency measured on an oscilloscope is half the value that is set.

I cannot jog from within Darwin configure. Charge pump was toggled on when testing.

Changing the setting for pulse width doesn't take affect until you restart Mach4.

Frequently when exiting Darwin configure Mach4 stops responding and the Mach4GUI task cannot be ended via task manager. Only option is shut down and restart.



I will do some more testing when I get some spare time. For now thanks go to Art for Darwin and to Brian and the team for the effort and time that has gone into Mach4.

Alastair
Re: Mach4 Printer Port Discussions
« Reply #143 on: July 21, 2014, 06:20:14 PM »
Tested Mach4 1900 with Darwin driver today.
I have configured the darwin plugin as described in the youttube video...

I was able to jog all three axes, but I wasn't able to do a homing with the homing button.
Do I have to configure anything else?


Offline ART

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Re: Mach4 Printer Port Discussions
« Reply #144 on: July 22, 2014, 07:23:42 AM »
Hi:

  You need to map the homing in Mach4. Check the Mach4 config screens and youll find a way to map the home switches you named in Darwin to the axis in m4. All the inputs and outputs you turned on in Darwins config, you need to map inside m4's config screens...

Art

Offline ART

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Re: Mach4 Printer Port Discussions
« Reply #145 on: July 22, 2014, 07:28:46 AM »
Hi Alistair

 
>>Tested tonight with Darwin 1.10 and was able to get the motors moving Smiley The movement appears to be good on a test run of road runner with the pulse width stretched to 3us.

  Very good, thank you.
 
>>As someone else reported the charge pump doesn't activate when you first click enable in Mach4. It then activates when you click disable.

  M4 bug, being fixed by Steve, IO isnt inited until after an enable disable toggle..

>>Charge pump frequency measured on an oscilloscope is half the value that is set.

   Probably my fault, I think its toggling at the set frequency which does make it 1/2 the right rate. Differently from
M3 the charge pump I think is a wide pulse, Ill check and correct.. thc for that test and report..

>>I cannot jog from within Darwin configure. Charge pump was toggled on when testing.

  On the ports screen there is a RESET button, press it if the led above it is red, otherwise no motion can be done.

>>Changing the setting for pulse width doesn't take affect until you restart Mach4.

  True, part of driver design. Ill have a message put out in near future to tell a user that fact.. agains, thx, I missed that one.

>>Frequently when exiting Darwin configure Mach4 stops responding and the Mach4GUI task cannot be ended via task manager. Only option is shut down and restart.

   Ive heard of this one, but I only use wxMach so far, this appears to be a Gui error of some sort..will iron out in future.

>>I will do some more testing when I get some spare time. For now thanks go to Art for Darwin and to Brian and the team for the effort and time that has gone into Mach4.

Thx for the testing, I know its a drudge bvut it does help get things right.

Art

 

Offline dude1

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Re: Mach4 Printer Port Discussions
« Reply #146 on: July 22, 2014, 05:15:46 PM »
Art I have been playing with Darwin a bit more, every new release you do seams to make it more stable on my win xp computer. decided to push my luck and set it at 45000 hz it ran fine I moved it back to 35000 hz and it runs very nicely.
I am haveing a couple of  problem one is with the graphics I think it is a m4 problem it comes up with vertex buffer objects not available this has also shown up on my win 7 laptop from release 1900 before that it was ok.

And I cant get the spindle to run properly I can start and stop it but it runs at full noise I have try all sorts of different configs cant seam to get it to work right its connected to a super pid what is connected to a g540 what has pin 17 on/off and pin 14 pwm.

Offline ART

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Re: Mach4 Printer Port Discussions
« Reply #147 on: July 22, 2014, 06:09:03 PM »
Hi Daniellyall:

>>Art I have been playing with Darwin a bit more, every new release you do seams to make it more stable on my win xp computer. decided to push my luck and set it at 45000 hz it ran fine I moved it back to 35000 hz and it runs very nicely.

  Good to hear. :)

>>I am haveing a couple of  problem one is with the graphics I think it is a m4 problem it comes up with vertex buffer objects not available this has also shown up on my win 7 laptop from release 1900 before that it was ok.

 Id mention it to the M4 guys, I dont use vertex object and I know they do. It may simply be a opengl issue or somethign with widgets.

>>And I cant get the spindle to run properly I can start and stop it but it runs at full noise I have try all sorts of different configs cant seam to get it to work right its connected to a super pid what is connected to a g540 what has pin 17 on/off and pin 14 pwm.

  Im no expert on either g540 or SuperPid... but form what I recall, you need to hook a 10volt source to the G540 ( pin 7 & 9?) and then feed in a 50hz PWM to the PWM input. It will then put out a voltage from 0-10volts based on pwm to control a vfd..or a superPid Im assuming.

   TO do that with Darwin youd create a signal, name it SpindleOn and just set it to be high active. Youd map that in Mach4 to SpindleForward and connect it to pin 17 for on/off. Youd then create a signal named SpinPWM in Darwin and put 50 in the frequency box, connect its output to the g540 on pin 14. . Then in M4 map that to SpindleOn. If you then command M3S500 in the mdi the pin17 should go high and the pin14 should see a (50%?) duty cycle if your m4 spindle max is 1000 for example. The G540 then will put out 5volts.. ( 50% power) on its vfd output.. again, Im no expert on any of that, its just my understanding of how it "should" work. Try it and see whats on pin14.. pwm? Does pin17 toggle? etc..

Thx for the report.

Art


Re: Mach4 Printer Port Discussions
« Reply #148 on: July 23, 2014, 12:37:45 AM »
Mach 4 build 1900
Darwin 1.10? (says 1.09/1.08 after removing and re-installing)

Completely reconfigured and everything appears to be working well.  I'll have to try configuring my spindle next and see if it behaves.

Art, one day I hope you can release the code for Darwin - after you have made you billions.  I really want to know the black magic you used to do this.  I've been a computer geek and developer for over 25 years and you PP driver still amazes me.  I could do it under Unix/Linux (I've written device drivers and kernel modules), but under Windows - never.


-Freeman
I'm not a complete idiot...
    there are some parts missing.

Offline ART

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Re: Mach4 Printer Port Discussions
« Reply #149 on: July 23, 2014, 07:19:58 AM »
Freeman:

  lol. I once showed the source to a Windows device driver professional when he offered to help in some questions I had,
he sent back a reply saying he didnt understand what the hell I did but as long as it worked..what the hell. Its truly not that
difficult, but it is a worm virus that uses a trick. To figure it out you kinda have to squint your eyes and look at it sideways...
 Someday I will release the code to it, like most magical tricks, you might be surprised at what you end up seeing..

Art