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Art,
how will you handle the rabbit microcode portion?

Erie Patsellis
Shelbyville Design & signworks
217-774-4444

Visit our website at:

--- In mach1mach2cnc@..., "Robert Campbell" <bob@c...>
wrote:

What is the smallest monitor that you can use with Mach2?

Wiil Mach2 work with anything less that 1024/768 ?

Bob

I suspect that maximum usability on a small screen will be by having
a lot of icon buttons (e.g. for Spindle CW, Flood, Mist) rather than
text labels. I have built a dummy Program Run (F1) screen with all
buttons defined as bitmap buttons (different files but not different
contents yet) and the performance when screen switching is fine.

ScreenTweak will scale screens with bitmap buttons with no problems
(bigger and smaller) so one design would suit many screen sizes.

I have tentatively decided that my basic buttons are to be desinged
as 96 x 48 or as 48 x 48 pixels (The latter for icons, the former
for Text). This gives reasonable resolution, especially as one can
use anti-aliasing with 24 bit colours where fine detail is needed.

I was going to colour code groups of related buttons - e.g. part
program running on Orange, jogging on Grey, Control of offsets etc,
Green, control of Mach2 itself Blue.

I got stuck trying to decide on "standard" icons for the wealth of
features in Mach2 and how to handle hot-keys. I suspect that Tool-
tips are the answer to this but the ramifications for Screen
Designer and Mach2 would be very great and IMO Art is doing much
more important things. The Thumbnails function (not yet implemented)
in ScreenTweak might allow one to view a screen with
superimposed "help" without requiring changes to Mach2 itself.

Keep us all informed if you are tempted to design.

Best wishes

John Prentice

ps My count gives 155 buttons (not all unique of course) on the
screens of Mach2Mill 1.003!

Thanks John.

Art
www.artofcnc.ca

Bob / Art,

I am working on a set of 640 x 480 screens which I hope to have done in the
next couple of weeks. The reason for this is I picked up a real nice
Advantech industrial work station on ebay and want to use it in my shop to
control my lathe and mill. It runs Mach2 just fine but the display
resolution is a problem that I am dealing with. I will be happy to share
these with anyone that wants them as soon as I get them in presentable form.

John Guenther
'Ye Olde Pen Maker'
Sterling, Virginia

Bob:

It will, but no screens have been done for smaller resolutions. It will
work in any resolution, but you need to redesign screens in that event.
John's ScreenTweak program can shrink them to size, but the buttons then
have too large a font, so editing is necessary. LEt me know if you end up
designing a 640x480 or 800x600 set as I'd like to add them to the release
list.

Thanks, Good luck,
Art
www.artofcnc.ca

What is the smallest monitor that you can use with Mach2?

Wiil Mach2 work with anything less that 1024/768 ?

Bob Campbell

Hi All:

I appeciate your patience this week or so, I willl be a little slow in
revisions. I have removed my large router table and am finishing
reddesigning my workshop so I have an R&D workshop for testing and
development of everything. I am setting up a proper electronics bench so I
can complete the Rutex tuning work and the G2002 version of Mach2 which will
be a hybrid at first. All IO will be done from the printer port, (this will
allow pins 2-9 to be used as inputs) and the G2002 cube will be doing motor
movements only at first
.
This version will be named Mach2-Gecko on the web site when it is posted
within weeks if all go well.

This Gecko version will be set at 250,000 pulses per second, but though I
will post it on the web site, it will be R&D for quite a while yet as
everything develops. The addition of the Gecko Cube will be the start of the
transistion to a hardware controller for hi-end users. It does not signal
the end of Printer port support and Mach2 will keep rolling along in
development. The Gecko Cube is an extremely nice piece of pulseing hardware
and I think it will produce a new standard in smooth hi-speed movment for
those that need hi-speed, hi count movement. If you haven't seen one yet, I
will post pictures of it soon. This will allow for 6 axis asyncronous
pulseing where the timing will be perfect so even low end full or half step
users should find no problems with resonance and some of those older systems
will be able to get much higher speeds and reliability.

Thanks, (Just an update of whats coming up...)
Art
www.artofcnc.ca

Hi Louis:

Your right and I will add that to the list to change.

I will also look at just displaying the file name as opposed to the
complete path. Windows has some very long path names...

Thanks,
Art
www.artofcnc.ca

Hi Art,

Here is a small suggestion on the layouts: under feedrate you
say "Velocity/Min" and "Velocity/Rev" I find them very useful but
don?t you think it should say "Units/Min" and "Units/Rev" I think
would give a more accurate meaning to the reading. Also I use the
typical folder "My documents" to store my files but then the path of
the file is long and when you display the file in use you can?t see
which one is it because it prints the start of the path string,
should it print the end of the files path?.

Thank you, best regards.

Luis.

Dolphin CAD CAM ltd have placed their CAD module
on their web site for free download.
Full details of the CAD package can be found on
the site :-

www.dolphin.gb.com <>

Regards

Michael Milligan
Dolphin CAD CAM Ltd


Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of
<> Service.

On Sun, 07 Sep 2003 21:07:32 -0000, you wrote:

I just got my cnc lathe going and tried a first threading cut then
realized I really don't know how to start. The z axis set up seems
straight forward but I have no undestanding of how to set up the X
axis start point.

First job is to load your material, then touch tool0 off aginst the
end and diameter of the stock , in the touch correction box enter the
actual measured RADIUS of the stock , press return, then click on
Touch Correction box (Alt T). The Touch correction LED should then be
flashng.

Click on Part X touch, the value you entered should appear in the X
DRO (and a negative value of the same amount should be in the Part X
DRO)

Then enter the Z value in the same way. - type stock length in touch
correction box, click part Z touch etc. That is not critical as long
as Z0 is outside the chuck!!

As I look at the G code every X move is based on
diameter - so I touched the material with the tool and manually
entered the starting point as the diameter value - needless to say
things cut a bit deep. Can someone give me a brief set up tutorial.
I searched the archives without much success.

No - every move in Mach2turn is radius!!

If you enter G0 X-1 tool will move -1, not - .5! Which if you think
about it is right. Diametric programming is easier in some cases (you
don't have to divide by two - dohh!) but makes an arse of tool
positioning.

Art's promised both radius and diametric programming at some stage,
but for now, I'm sure radius is much easier to debug.

How are you controlling your spindle speed? Manual, Step/Direction or
PWM?

If anything other than manual, how accurate is it for a commanded
speed across the full range? Please give as much detail as you can on
hardware and performance!



--
Steve Blackmore

Hi Jeff,
At this point in time you must use a G-code written for moves based
on radius measurements rather than diameter.
How you set up depends on how the code was written; what suppositions
are made. Did a program write the code? What program?

Hope that helps a little. If you tell us more we can help more.

Jerry

I just got my cnc lathe going and tried a first threading cut then
realized I really don't know how to start. The z axis set up seems
straight forward but I have no undestanding of how to set up the X
axis start point. As I look at the G code every X move is based on
diameter - so I touched the material with the tool and manually
entered the starting point as the diameter value - needless to say
things cut a bit deep. Can someone give me a brief set up tutorial.
I searched the archives without much success.

Many thanks - Jeff E.

The plans for my automatic tool changer are scheduled for release
October 1, 2003 (I hope).
I have Updated my website and more info is available
www.homeshopaccessories.com
You may direct questions to me there.
Thanks
Joe V.

but Art recently posted that the pulse train was/is now?

independent of the computer speed?(I'm unclear as to what exactly he
meant)

Just a short explaination. When Mach1 is running, it will produce a timer
interrupt every 40-22us depending on the speed setting. This is independant
of the CPU speed so it does not depend on the computer as to the pulse
timing. It is, however, possible that some computers will not be able to
produce 35 or 45Khz due to no time being left over for windows, but the
speed of the pulses are not affected by the core CPU speed. All computers ,
no matter their clock speed, will produce 25,35,or 45Khz as their base
timing.

Thnaks,
Art
www.artofcnc.ca

Isak:

This is normal, and is due to the way pulses are generated. Increasing to
45Khz does smooth it out more as its a function of the basic frequency. It
is harmonic distortion produced by the bresenham algorithm that generates
frequencies. It is most noticable on half and full step systems because as
the number of steps/rev increases, the phase lag produced is less and less.
On microstep systems it is usually not noticable, but can be seen with very
low acceleration. It should not produce problems in general movement though.

Art
www.artofcnc.ca

Isak,

What you are experiencing is commonly known as mid-range resonance.
It is a long-standing problem with steppers. Mostly it's a problem
with the physics of stepeprs and their drives, but MachX (or any
other cnc controller) can be part of the problem... Here's a few of
the common solutions:

1)Changing the speed/accel values to try to "get through" the
resonance band. As you discovered; a faster accel/decel is generally
better, but not always. You can also try changing the mechanical
portions of your machine (adding drag, making things heavier, or
lighter, changing drive ratios, screw leads, etc.)

1a) REDUCING the current of your drivers. Yes, reducing... You will
lose some torque at slow speeds, but you will "flatten" the overall
torque curve, and this may shift the resonance to a place where it's
no longer a problem. At higher speeds, the current is limited by the
motor anyway.

1b) using a faster computer, so MachX can more easily put out a clean
step pulse train. As you mention, using the 45khz base frequency will
improve the pulse train...

2)Changing your drives to microstepping types. The smaller step size
will reduce the "ringing" of each step. Geckos and many other types
use an electronic damping. Mariss of Gecko has posted about this a
few times on the cced list, and it may be in his "white papers" on
the gecko website.

3)Adding lanchester dampers to the 2nd shafts of your motors (these
are oil filled damping devices). Used to be VERY common, not as often
seen nowadays, since microstepping drives are everywhere, and
relatively cheap.

4)using different software<G> (not that you'd want to, but Mach1
tends to have enough instability in its pulse train that full and
half step stepper systems have experienced some problems) 1b above
could help, but Art recently posted that the pulse train was/is now?
independent of the computer speed?(I'm unclear as to what exactly he
meant) Anyway, some of the DOS cnc controllers will work with
machines that exhibit resonance in MachX, if you can't change your
drives or solve it some other way.

Hope this helps,

Welcome to the strange and wonderful world of motion control<G>

Ballendo

--- In mach1mach2cnc@..., "sisakl" <isak@h...> wrote:

Hi,

I have steppers with 400 Steps/Rev (Half step).
The acceleration value is about 400.
The maximum speed that I can get from those steppers is about 1500
mm/min (which is 25 Revs/Sec and 10KHz step freq).
I'm using 25KHz basic frequency.
The computer is P2 500MHz.

While testing the backlash/stall function, I changed my

acceleration

value to a very low value of 1.

Now it takes a lot of time for the steppers to accelerate.
I notice that at some specific velocities the steppers make a

strange

sound. They even stall on ocasion.
The stall happens almost exactly at the same frequencies.
I tried to attach a flywhell (handwheel) to the steppers. This
somehow improved the stall problem.
The frequency of the stalls didn't change though.

When the acceleration is high (400) the stall almost never happens.

I think it may be ralated to the fact that the step generation
frequency is constant.
At some velocities it is not possible to generate a perfectly

spaced

pulses.

Could this be a hardware or a software problem ?
Is this a function of the basic 25KHz frequency or the computer ?
Will increasing the freq to 45KHz solve the problem ?

Thanks, Isak.

Hi,

I have steppers with 400 Steps/Rev (Half step).
The acceleration value is about 400.
The maximum speed that I can get from those steppers is about 1500
mm/min (which is 25 Revs/Sec and 10KHz step freq).
I'm using 25KHz basic frequency.
The computer is P2 500MHz.

While testing the backlash/stall function, I changed my acceleration
value to a very low value of 1.

Now it takes a lot of time for the steppers to accelerate.
I notice that at some specific velocities the steppers make a strange
sound. They even stall on ocasion.
The stall happens almost exactly at the same frequencies.
I tried to attach a flywhell (handwheel) to the steppers. This
somehow improved the stall problem.
The frequency of the stalls didn't change though.

When the acceleration is high (400) the stall almost never happens.

I think it may be ralated to the fact that the step generation
frequency is constant.
At some velocities it is not possible to generate a perfectly spaced
pulses.

Could this be a hardware or a software problem ?
Is this a function of the basic 25KHz frequency or the computer ?
Will increasing the freq to 45KHz solve the problem ?

Thanks, Isak.

Servo
Thanks for the info.
Jim

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