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Mach4 in factory automation
« on: October 23, 2020, 04:35:14 PM »
Hello,

First, I am new to Mach4 and Mach in general.

I have a vendor supplying an XYZ gantry for doing spot welding and they are including Mach4 Industrial. I would like to automate loading of programs (recipes) and interaction with the the motion software from our PLC and SCADA system.

I would love some feedback on how to approach this. Maybe Read a Modbus register in a master G-Code program that then calls subprograms? Ideas and pointers to existing similar applications welcome.

Thank you!

Tanda 

Offline Graham Waterworth

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Re: Mach4 in factory automation
« Reply #1 on: October 24, 2020, 09:48:14 PM »
There are many way to do this, if you only want to run one program for ever in a loop it can be loaded from the screen load code and executed or you can have a modbus call to load and execute a program of a button on screen to load and run a file, I would email mach4 support and they will probably have this type of thing ready to use.

Without engineers the world stops
Re: Mach4 in factory automation
« Reply #2 on: October 25, 2020, 02:40:26 AM »
we use c# application that control mach by Api
so we can load files ,change ,stop....do every thing we need
also control more then one mach system paralel
Re: Mach4 in factory automation
« Reply #3 on: October 25, 2020, 04:36:44 PM »
we use c# application that control mach by Api
so we can load files ,change ,stop....do every thing we need
also control more then one mach system paralel

Thanks for the response. Yes, with a bit more research I found some videos on the MACH4 internals and architecture which led me to the API. Looks like they have done a good job of exposing the functions in the CORE though the API. I've already specified MACH4 Industrial to drive another machine we are building inhouse which is doing weld inspection. I think it's just what I was looking for which is a motion platform that interprets G-Code but allows me to drive it from, and integrate it with, external applications. Looks like I am going to be up to my eyeballs quickly in MACH4 development. Wish me luck!