ill try in older version see if that helps

Dan:

   It works with ver 1767 , but not after. The bug has been found and it shoudl also work with the next release.
Ill reinstate the download at that time.

Art

btw:
    I hear probing doesnt yet work properly in Darwin , that will be out soon.

Art

were can I download Darwin (parallel port plugin).
 Thanks
    Don Clifton

You can't until the next version of Mach4 is released.

Thanks Ger21

art when I was adjusting the pules rate the machine sounded a lot smother is it just me or what,
also does the Darwin plug in support the spindle

Dan:

  Darwin is , or should be , somewhat smoother. Its a very much cleaned up Mach3 driver using 16 bit shifters for each motor.
It can handle spindles, as any output signal can be given a frequency for that output. It has alot of capabilities that probably will
never be used, but as its probably the last printer port cnc driver to be made, I thought Id try to make it the best of its class.
When it homes or jogs in the config, its jogging in hi order , not a bang bang type of motion, thats what makes it seem smoother
I suspect.

Art

 

My congratulations go out to the Mach4 team and Art for his excellent work with the parallel port driver.

This engraving was my first test run using Mach4 ver.1767 with the Darwin driver and it behaved faultlessly (except for the final blended G00 X0 Y0 home move which stalled both motors but that was my fault for having my Velocity / Acceleration settings optimistically set way too high). The 4 holes and the profile cutting require a tool change and as I don’t have Auto Tool Zero set-up decided to give this part of the toolpath a miss. The actual engraving is not the finest – I used an old (retired) engraving bit mainly because I just wanted to get some confidence in the software without damaging a good engraving bit if anything went wrong during the run.
It is hard to describe the sound but the motion is just so smooth my machine sounds entirely different – the steppers make a much higher pitch whine as opposed to the hum they make when running Mach3.

Setting the spindle to respond to the M3 / M5 commands defies my understanding and seems to be just a matter of luck. Although I finally succeeded I don’t know how I did it or if I will ever be able to do it again. I still have no idea how I will be able to switch my laser on / off  from Mach4 but that will have to wait until another day.

I don’t know if it is just me or if others will encounter a similar issue but once everything has been set-up and is working OK – shutting down the PC then restarting the following day nothing works and the only cure has been to re-install Mach4 then enter all the settings again from scratch. This could just be a WinXP problem in the way it saves settings on shutdown but I need to investigate this further.

One major problem I encountered initially was that the graphics card fitted to my machine PC was not up to the task of handling Mach4 and this card had to be swapped out for a higher spec. gaming graphics card before I achieved anything like smooth motion from the steppers.

Overall I am very impressed with the performance of Mach4 but the initial setting-up is very different to Mach3 and takes quite a bit of learning (without a manual) but I am getting there slowly.

Tweakie.