Is there any easy way to use MDI-line outside of Mach?
Or it is impossible?

Regards,
Johannes Thelen
Finland

What are you trying to do?

Graham.

I will now try explain best I could, my English is not very good... I hope you understand something...
 
I making manual control for my lathe. Idea is to make control look like regular manual
lathe. It have manual pulse coders x&z-axes, virtual cross slide coder (This is one reason for MDI-line),
feeds&gears-switches and etc. I'm making this modifying almost only for my dad, he's old and like
to use  my lathe, but he can't understand it all (I tried explain many times but no affect et).

I have CuTouch-logic controller for controlling everything and I'm pretty good with it.
So I need some easy way put command lines to Mach, from CuTouch.

Now CuTouch is handling tool change, hydraulics, control panel, system em-stops...
Here's foto: http://i215.photobucket.com/albums/cc21/jonne_photo/HPIM0237.jpg

Second idea is make own controlling system (With CuTouch-logic) which use Mach3 only pulsing engine
and G-code translator. This is like inventing wheel again, but this is also little programming challenge.

And almost forgot, my lathe is Nakamura TMC-4, 18 KW spindle, weight about 6 tons, it is not mini lathe.

By using Mach's macropump and the VB calls to modbus you could write a parser to intercept the data and control Mach, its a lot of work and a lot of VB but it would work.

Is it worth it?

Graham.

Is it worth it?

Kennedy said some time ago:
"We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard."

I think he was right..

Another question: Can I start macro from brain? I mean if some ModBus address get right value,
then (example) M999-macro starts?

And brain local variables, can I use these in VB-script?