[ihavenofish]

so im thoroughly fed up with mach3. it hates me, or my gecko g540, or maybe its suicidal. in any case its stalling during contouring programs and im about to give up.

ive downloaded the latest emc2 live cd. id like to install it and try it out on my machine today. the hitch is, that the machine in in no internet land, so i need to have everything ready ahead of time. can someone give me a comprehensive list of things i might need to download ahead of time to get this working?

ive got:

- amd athlon dual core PC (very new)
- pci express paralell card.
- gecko g540 drive set.
- colombo spindle with delta inverter which in theory connect to the gecko pwm but has never worked right.

its a pretty basic setup, and i think theres linux drivers for everything hardware wise.

thanks

[GaryCorlew]

From your list the only thing I see that you may need a driver for is your parallel card, Most likely you have usb ports and if you have a usb key/jump drive then you can put the driver on that and just install it. I would suggest that you boot the computer from the live cd and check the latency, I am no expert by any means but I am heading down the same road for other reasons, and I am nearly at the end of it. You may also want to dual boot so that if you change your mind you can go back to mach

[ihavenofish]

From your list the only thing I see that you may need a driver for is your parallel card, Most likely you have usb ports and if you have a usb key/jump drive then you can put the driver on that and just install it. I would suggest that you boot the computer from the live cd and check the latency, I am no expert by any means but I am heading down the same road for other reasons, and I am nearly at the end of it. You may also want to dual boot so that if you change your mind you can go back to mach

merci.

my home computer uses the same mobo, so ive tried the live cd on it. seems to work. i picked g540 in the wizard and its all set up. of course this machine has no parallel card. the os will be installed on its own hard drive, so it wont interfere with my old mach installation.

so by the look all i need is the parallel driver, and some "instructions" written down for settings i might need that ive swiped from the net.

fun fun! maybe. haha.

this computer is giving me a max latency of 13700 if im reading it right. its a quad core 2.9ghz. does that seem poor or good? to me it seems bad as it only allows a 45khz pulse rate which is at the lower limit of the speed id like this machine to run. the other machine is an underclocked 2.1ghz dual core.

[GaryCorlew]

I think that latency is good, again I'm no expert. I have read somewhere that there is a version of ubuntu for multiple processors and if I remember correctly people were saying some very positive things about it! I assume your going to copy your ini , and hal files from one machine to the other? Linux is case senesitive, so keep that in mind! There is a lot of good stuff on the Linux wiki
EMC Documentation Wiki: Latency-Test

[samco]

You don't need a driver for the pci printer port. You probably want to this wiki page for finding out your printer port address for the step config wizard. (it probably isn't 0x378)

EMC Documentation Wiki: Hooking Up A MPG Pendant

(using lspci -v)

as far as what to have on hand. I think you can get the latest emc debs from the website to install. (but it is really nice to have internet on the machine to be able to get help troubleshooting though IRC or internet searches.) (it isn't like mach - you can acutally use the computer for other things while it is running the machine)

this is an extreme - but look at the task bar
http://www.electronicsam.com/images/...nt4-26ghz1.png

sam

[samco]

You should get them from here.

Index of /lucid/dists/lucid/emc2.4/binary-i386

(the latest there is emc2_2.4.6_i386.deb)


I think the latest deb is here.

Latest Stable

(emc2_2.4.6-21-gdaf7991_i386.deb seems to be the current one.)

sam

(ps - I have not done that before)

[ihavenofish]

i got it running, was fairly painless. but already its seeming useless to me.

the ui is so basic it commical. but thats not really where my problem is. my gecko g540 as well as my g203 machines dont work well with standard microstepping. when the axis is moving slowly, like at the top of a circle the motors wont turn. so you get losts steps and flattened circles. the way you fix this is enabling sherline mode in mach3.

i do not see any equivelant in emc2 (i dont see much of ANYTHING in emc2). this means it wont work with my machines.

its a shame too, cause it blasts through my programs at 500ipm with no hint of stalling. i could live with the useless UI if i could get the geckos running correctly.

[GaryCorlew]

You could get on the irc chat and they could probably help you quickly, You could try setting your parallel reset time higher, I'm not sure exctally what it does but its worth a try rather than just giving up, It will be in your hal file just make a copy of your hal in case things go wrong.
setp parport.0.reset-time 5000

[samco]

go back through the stepper configuration utility and try these timing numbers. (it is on the 'basic machine information page')

EMC Documentation Wiki: Stepper Drive Timing

what ui are you using? useless is a pretty strong word.

sam

[ihavenofish]

go back through the stepper configuration utility and try these timing numbers. (it is on the 'basic machine information page')

EMC Documentation Wiki: Stepper Drive Timing

what ui are you using? useless is a pretty strong word.

sam

ooh, thanks. that might be useful, as my understanding is that sherline mode doubles the pulse time or something. ill need to poke at those settings. when you pick "g540" they are all greyed out so i overlooked them.

as for the ui, i tried them all actually, but i guess axis is the main one. useless is a strong word, but i think its accurate. it runs the program, but seems to have virtually no other functionality. even things as simple assetting the coordinates to a specific point it seems not to be able to do. i dont see a way to pick a line in the program and run from there.

but a weak ui is better than a stalling piece of junk mach3 though, so we'll see if i can get this working. (im very bitter today, i wasted 7 hours and got nothing useful done)

im also curious about CV mode. its working, but it seems to be kinda low performance compared to mach. for example if i command a 500ipm speed, and set the cv tolerance to 1mm, its only hitting 300ipm, and a tolerance of 1mm is huge. if i raise the tolerance to 2mm, it gets closer to the commanded speed, but 2mm seems far too much path deviation for my liking. is there a setting for look ahead lines in emc? maybe it needs more lines to keep it up to speed.

[GaryCorlew]

As far as the UI goes you need to look into pyvcp, you can add/make it most anything you want as far as looks/usefulness, and also check out gladevcp(coming soon) glade looks like it will be even better and probably easier. In my opinion axis is a minimal UI after that you have to make what you want

[ger21]

Can you try a PCI parallel port, or a different PC?

I thought it was determined that if you need to run MAch3 in Sherline mode for the G540 to work, then the problem lies in the PC, basically a substandard parallel port. Sherline mode uses 40us pulse width, and the G540 is designed to run with 2us.

[ihavenofish]

Can you try a PCI parallel port, or a different PC?

I thought it was determined that if you need to run MAch3 in Sherline mode for the G540 to work, then the problem lies in the PC, basically a substandard parallel port. Sherline mode uses 40us pulse width, and the G540 is designed to run with 2us.

i dont know where you thought that was determined. this is 100% a gecko error. it does the same on every single computer and paralell card ive tried. one of my gecko g203 drives does it as well. at some point here marris has said that he knows the problem exists, but didnt know why or how to fix. they were replacing cards with this error. that was some time ago, maybe hes found something new?

its an annoyance, but since its happy with the wide pulses, its a non issue. based on what ive read of sherline mode (full cycle pulse width as you said), it should be possible to create the same settings in emc and hopefully clear up that issue.

then at least emc will be functional and i can get back to making parts and not yelling at computers when they eat $100 pieces of lumber.

ill check out those other emc ui options. i tried searching for some but didnt turn up anything. merci

[samco]

take some time to read the axis manual. it has 'touchoff' for setting coordinates and rfl works also.

AXIS

for run from line - just right click on the line you want to run from and select 'run from here'

sam

[ihavenofish]

take some time to read the axis manual. it has 'touchoff' for setting coordinates and rfl works also.

AXIS

for run from line - just right click on the line you want to run from and select 'run from here'

sam

cool, thanks. if i can get this pulse timing working, ill spend the effort to make the workflow viable. i was extremely angry yesterday with all thing cnc haha.

[ihavenofish]

so, it seems the g540 is happy with a step time / wait of 5000 each. i also raised the direction timing to 1000, but i dont know if that was necessary. no matter, no lost steps anymore. combined with a conservative 10000 latency, i get 420ipm, whih is fine. i never saw the latency go above 8000, but id rather be safe.

i also figured out the touch off, thanks. thats exactly what i need to make this worth while. for some reason the first time i tried it it didnt do anything.

i cut the back of a guitar that mach tried to eat yeaterday, did a nice job. you can really hear the difference in CV modes. no jerking or slamming into corners in emc, although it doesnt quite maintain the desired speed as well as mach. quite good enough thoguh.

yay!

[GaryCorlew]

Here is gladevcp
EMC Documentation Wiki: GladeVcp
And pyvcp
EMC Documentation Wiki: PyVCP
Looking at these pages should give an idea of whats possible

[ihavenofish]

ok, so now that the router works, i thought id try it on my big mill. it uses the same PC for control, so all i did was set up a new configuration.

i copied all the pin settings from mach and put them in. nothing worked. i inverted the e stop pin and i did get motion in emc. i closed emc to change the feed rates in the config and now it wont move.

i know its still talking to the machine because the e stop button is working. im now at a loss as to what ive changed to make it stop moving. ive tried every combination of e stop and charge pump setting and everything else i can think of.

any thoughts?

[chester88]

You need to systematically hunt for the problem.
does EMC enable the drives? check the HAL pin. check the parport pin.
does EMC send out signals to the drive to move? if yes then the problem is pretty much the drives/motors.
if not then you must hunt for why EMC is not sending out signals.
Once you break it down a little further then it's easier to help you.
Chris M

[ihavenofish]

emc is seeming to send pulses out the port if you moitor the pin. it intermittently goes true, as i imagine is correct since its short pulses.

enabling the drives im not sure of. what setting do you monitor to see that?

when i switch back to mach it works as normal, so theres no hardware issue.