[mcphill]

I bought my machine about a year ago, got the SmoothStepper at the same time. I never installed the SS, though. I wanted to get a bit more speed from the machine, so I installed the SS today... I have a few problems, maybe someone can help me out?

What works: X, Y, Z axes, adjusting speeds, jogging with the onscreen pendant. All this works great.

What doesn't work: Spindle, jogging with hotkeys.

I get NO motion from the spindle. If I run the SS diagnostics screen there are changes when I turn the spindle on and off in MACH, but the spindle itself doesn't ever move.

On the hotkeys, I just get nothing! Clicking the onscreen pendant works great. I have reassigned the hotkeys again, but they still don't work.

I don't know what to do. I set the ports and pins and the spindle motor tuning all as they were in the original configuration, but the SS plugin has a Spindle section too. I matched that as best I could (PWM control and 15 for the "base freq" or whatever is there...

Anyone had similar issues?

I am using Mach 3.042.040 and the current driver (2.08.14) and plugin (v17) from Warp9.

Any suggestions?

[ger21]

I've never used a Smoothstepper, but the latest plugin from their website requires the use of the latest development version of Mach3. Not sure if that's the plugin you have, as there are several V17 plugins. Read the red text.
Warp9TD Downloads

[mcphill]

Got a reply on the Warp9 board:

Hopefully these instructions will help. First start with Mach's Ports & Pins config. Select the Motor Outputs tab.

Enable the spindle
Assign port numbers
Assign pin numbers

Select the Spindle setup tab.

Check the box that says "Use Spindle Motor Output". The other check and edit boxes do not apply to the SmoothStepper.

Motor Tuning

For PWM it is a little different than Step & Direction. This software needs to be cleaned up in the SS. For now, please follow these directions because they will work:

For PWM:

Set "Steps Per" to 1000 (you can adjust this later to adjust the acceleration)

Set "Velocity" to 60 (This only has an effect on some calculations Mach does. It has no effect on the actual output from the SS)

Set "Accel" to 1 (The accel is calculated as "Steps Per" * "Accel", so just adjust "Steps Per" to get the accel results that work well)

For Step & Direction:

Set "Steps Per" to the maximum step frequency. This is the frequency that will produce the maximum speed of the spindle motor.

Set "Velocity" to 60. This is a magic number that allows you to enter the max step frequency for "Steps Per".

Set "Accel" to whatever value gives you the acceleration you want.

Config -> Spindle Pulleys

Select a pulley

Choose min and max RPM, and a ratio so that spindle feedback calculates the correct RPM for display

SmoothStepper Config (Under PlugIn Control)

For PWM:

Check the box for PWM
Select a _base_ frequency for PWM (in Hz)

For Step & Direction:

Check the box for Step & Direction
Select a step pulse width. Make sure the frequency that was selected in Motor Tuning is not too fast for this pulse width. Otherwise the signal will never transition. For example, for a max step frequency of 25 kHz, the maximum pulse width is 40 microseconds. At 25 kHz, the waveform would be 100% duty cycle if the pulse width is 40 us.

I need to work out the math so that it makes more sense, but hopefully this will get you going in the meantime.

The SmoothStepper can output a PWM _base_ frequency that is very high compared to the Parallel Port driver. If your spindle control can go higher I would recommend it.

There was a problem not too long ago where the Include files that were used to build Mach were changed, but the files were not given to me. I discovered it when a new feature of Mach wouldn't work. Once I had the new Include files and used them to build the plugin, then Mach and the plugin saw eye-to-eye. I would at least upgrade to the latest lockdown version of Mach, if not the latest development version. This might be the cause of the hotkeys not working.

Greg

While they were writing that reply, I had gone to the garage and did get the spindle working. I used a combo of this link:

Warp9 Tech. Design - Home of the SmoothStepper

and this one:

http://www.pmdx.com/Doc/ANGen-4_PWMS...Stepper_01.pdf

to get things working.

I will go back out with the new instructions, though, and see if they can make any difference in the performance. It seems like I have it working now like it did before, but I would like to get some more accel/decel out of the system if I can. May be spindle driver limited, though (I think it is...).

As stated, I am using MACH version 3.042.040. This is the one that ger21 on CNCZone seems to like better than the current lockdown or beta versions... Should this version have hotkey issues or not?

[mcphill]

I've never used a Smoothstepper, but the latest plugin from their website requires the use of the latest development version of Mach3. Not sure if that's the plugin you have, as there are several V17 plugins. Read the red text.
Warp9TD Downloads

Ah, that could be it... I made sure I was running 3.042.040 as that is the one you seem to promote the most... Guess I will go for the latest development and see if that helps... Know of a "good" development version? I know you recommend AGAINST the latest lockdown, right?

I just read the disclaimer, and am certainly going to try the new DEV version... If as they say that the dev versions are "just" the lockdown plus bug fixes, it sure seems like an odd naming convention!

[mcphill]

Went to the lastest DEV version, and still no hotkeys I tried assigning different keys, ensured the numlock was not on. Nothing works so far... Any ideas?

LOVE the machine motion now, have the spindle tuning under control, but I gotta have hotkeys to make working with the machine liveable!

[mcphill]

Update...

I uninstalled and reinstalled MACH, still no Hotkeys.

I changed to the standard MILL XML file, and Hotkeys work.

I went to the XML backup folder. There IS a change in the file size yesterday... BUT, when I use an older XML backup (from December) as a profile, it still doesn't work...

So, I guess I can rebuild the XML from the standard Mill, but want to understand what happened here if I can. I am going to compare the files pre and post the SS install and see what I can find...

[ger21]

Could just be a corrupt .xml file. It's a pretty common occurrence with Mach3. I'd recommend making a backup immediately after setting it up, and any time you make any changes.

[mcphill]

Turns out it is MUCH simpler... I had jogging turned off...

BUT, I am NOT the only one!

Stopped halfway thru Gcode now no keyboard jog

I don't know why I didn't check the MACH support forum yesterday, but since it coincided with the SmoothStepper install I focussed my efforts there.

NO idea how it got turned off, but turned it on and BOOM, happy Mike :wee: :banana:

[slowtwitch]

Mike, your timing good not have been better at posting this, as I recently installed a smoothstepper on my Mikini and had spindle issues (not turning on, wrong direction, etc. etc).

Thanks to your post and info, I have a mill running very nicely with the smoothstepper

[mcphill]

I haven't cut anything but I did run a few programs in air. The motion seemed MUCH improved, and that was with the ipm turned up. I ran one program from the sardine can lid mold that had tons of short fast moves and muttered TONS before. Enough that I had to turn down the acceleration on the machine as it sounded awful. With the SmoothStepper I had both the acceleration and ipm up for an air cut test and it sounded great... Very happy with it so far, after figuring out the issues I had, but like I said I have not really put it through anything challenging yet.

Mike, your timing good not have been better at posting this, as I recently installed a smoothstepper on my Mikini and had spindle issues (not turning on, wrong direction, etc. etc).

Thanks to your post and info, I have a mill running very nicely with the smoothstepper