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Author Topic: Taig Mill: Mach3 --> Mach4  (Read 1554 times)

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Taig Mill: Mach3 --> Mach4
« on: May 18, 2018, 05:36:02 PM »
I have a setup consisting of:

-- Taig mill;
-- 166 oz-in stepper motors;
-- Gecko G540;
-- 48V motor power;
-- Ethernet SmoothStepper;
-- Mach3; and
-- Windows XP/SP3.

I have been having some strange, infrequent but frustrating errors within Mach3 that I just haven't been able to figure out, and I'm considering migrating to Mach4 instead, to see if that may just work in my case.

Has anyone made this same migration from Mach3 to Mach4 with a similar setup?  I would deeply appreciate any impressions or recommendations with this process, and/or a working and debugged profile if you've gone one.

Thanks for any advice;

--dave
Re: Taig Mill: Mach3 --> Mach4
« Reply #1 on: May 18, 2018, 06:26:52 PM »
I have not made the exact transition but Mach 4 is much more stable than Mach3 and since you are having problems with Mach3 I would suggest that you do make the move to Mach4


Mike
We never have the time or money to do it right the first time, but we somehow manage to do it twice and then spend the money to get it right.
Re: Taig Mill: Mach3 --> Mach4
« Reply #2 on: May 18, 2018, 06:29:39 PM »
Hi,
all of that gear should work well with Mach4, the PC may be a bit old school but it should still work.

You can download Mach4 and run it in demo mode with the Sim(ulator) plugin for as long as you like but if you load a motion plugin
like the ESS plugin thenit will run for about six minutes before needing to be reset. The upshot is you can have a go without spending a cent!

Mach4 is stable, it is not prone to random or unexplained errors. It is a very different program to Mach3 and when you try it you will find certain things
behave differently and when you complain 'its not like Mach3' the reply is 'so what, its not Mach3 and is not meant to be, get used to it!'.

Mach4 with the ESS is a little confusing to start with. Have a look at Daz's series of Mach4 videos, they are superb and there's a couple that deal exclusively
with ESS setup.

Mach4s real strength is the facility with which it can be customized. For basic mills/routers you probably wont have to do any coding but inevitably you will
want to tweak a few things.  Learning Lua, using Machs API, using the screen editor, understanding Machs structure and operating sequence is a big learning
experience and if you like a challenge you'll love it. If you don't want that sort of brain stretching exercise then Mach4 may not be right for you.

Either way you can download it and start experimenting with it for free...whats not to like about that!

Craig
'I enjoy sex at 73.....I live at 71 so its not too far to walk.'
Re: Taig Mill: Mach3 --> Mach4
« Reply #3 on: May 22, 2018, 05:00:17 PM »
Okay, Mike, Craig, thanks for the replies.  Over the past couple of days, I've still been trying to figure out how to make my Mach3 system operate predictably; I guess I'm suspicious that I may go though all the work to configure and convert over to Mach4, and _still_ find failures happening...  Anyway I guess I will see!