I decided to test MACH4 and my ESS after waiting another six months to see if it is now stable. I have installed Build 4.2.0.2872, the latest ESS plugin and have the machine moving fine and homing works fine as well. I decided to load a small Gcode file that I have run on MACH3 fine as just a little test to see if things look good before getting the license for MACH4.
My little Gcode file is to build a small bracket and it uses four tools. I do not have an automatic tool changer so for the test I did not even turn on my spindle, nor did I have any tool in the spindle. I referenced all axis and that worked fine. Then I put in a offset of three inches in X and Y and zero those DROs. I set the Z0 about two inches off the table as this was just going to be an air cut to see how well motion was working.
The first part of the code worked just fine. It hits the first tool change and I click ok. There is no tool so I just tell it to proceed with cycle start and it does the next segment just fine as well. On the third tool change things go wrong.
N480 M01
N490 T3 M6
N500 G0 G90 G54 X.8028 Y.6692 S8000 M3
N510 G43 H3 Z.1
N520 G99 G83 Z-.407 R.1 Q.1 F4.28
On line N510 the Z axis goes full speed all the way down into the table. No tool broken and I hit the emergency stop to avoid damage to the ballscrew.
This segment of code is pretty much identical to the two previous parts of the code after a tool change. The DRO reads something like Z 1.5 when the spindle is crashing into the table.
T1 M6
G43 H1 Z1.5
T2 M6
G43 H2 Z1.5
T3 M6
G43 H3 Z.1 *** this one crashes....
I just looked at the release notes for this version and it says they cleaned up fixture offset corrupting the tool table. Well something seems corrupted for sure....
Keep in mind this code works perfect under MACH3 with no changes. Since I am not using the automatic tool changer, I never populate the Tool table. I assume and seems to be confirmed by others that MACH should use a zero offset and use the Z setting created when using G54.
This is a very short program and it is next to impossible to troubleshoot the issues due to the fact they have the timeout value for the DEMO version so short you can't do much testing. The previous Gcode lines of code limit seemed to work much better at least you could test to see if everything seemed to be working. Anyway this appears to be a bug unless I have just done something completely wrong. Any help or suggestions would be much appreciated. Thanks
Russ
Build 4.2.0.2872 - 01 February 2016
1) Update core API documentation covering threading, rigid tapping,
and general recommended practices for plugins.
2) Updated handling of canned cycles to address issues with spindle
speed override and soft limits violations.
3) Fix problems resulting from use of Unicode characters in file names.
4) Added infrastructure needed to support user controllable CV modes.
No user interface yet though.
5) Cleaned up some issues with fixture offsets corruptings tool table values.
6) Allow jog rate override to work while jogging is active.
7) Added plugin to allow send and receive from RS-232 serial port.
Convert LUA environment to use dynamic runtime to support loadable
LUA modules. LUA RS232, LFS file system, LUA Sockets with TCP modules
now provided.
9) Update SIM plugin to support CALLBACK function allow SIM to be used
to monitor other plugins.
10) Added mcPluginPanel control to allow a plugin to have a panel that is
integrated into the screen set as opposed to a floating window. If
this is used, a button must be provided on this panel to access the
normal plugin configuration dialog if needed. SIM plugin updated to
include example.
11) Provide autofill of function call paramaters while using LUA editor.
12) Added new control type to provide gage control to replace the default
Windows gage (which could not set colors, and had flicker issues).
13) Added ability to turn menu bar on and off in screen sets from a screen
script.
14) Fixed screen offsetting issue when editing a screen in a scrolled view.
15) Fixed tool path mouse events not working after a screen edit.
16) No screen set updates in this release.