[itchy]

Hi all I am having trouble with my new promica mill with the mach3 program.
If someone is near Epping vic and would like to look at it that would be great.
Promica must have shut there doors as i have been tring for months to get hold of them with no luck.
The computer says things are moving on the screen but the machine isn't.
All help would be greatly recived.

Cheers itchy

[paul3112]

Hi, I am in Kew. Can you give us a bit more info?

Paul

[GusBiz]

Guys,

I have a Promica mill. Turn Key solution. ie 100% build by Marc.

I have been out to see itchy's mill and have used my controller to make it work. It worked. The controller he has does not work.

Upon returning to my mill. I plugged it back in and now I cannot get my mill to home.

It has the following screen in the diagnostics. (attached)

It was homing and I hit the E-stop because the table was about to hit somthing on my bench that I didn't know it was going to touch.
(Just a can of WD-40 sitting next to it)

All of a sudden the homing lights and the index light are on and who knows why they won't turn off. The mill now homes backwards because it thinks that the homing switches have been tripped and its heading away from them.

I turn the homing switches to active high from active low and that just makes the lights go off and so the axis move in the opposite. (the correct direction ) but then they get to end of the screws and stall by hitting the wall! I don't have homing!

The part that is strange is that it was working before I disconnected it. I have a feeling that there is a break in the homing circuit. I wrote to Marc and he said

"Hi Gus

Check the manual for the IC3A controller ... EVERY axis card MUST have a
home input connection if the card is installed ... so if you unplug the
rotary table make sure you plug back in the little 3 way terminal block that
has wire loop only on it ... basically the homes are all 'common' .. so if
any one is disconnected the controller shows an activated home - when you
tell Mach3 to home it therefore thinks that it is already on the sensor and
tries to back off it (which is why it goes in the wrong direction). If you
do a 'ref all home' then Z will be the first to move and it will start
heading DOWN!!. So plug in the rotary table home sensor (green 3 way small
plug) or put the jumper plug back in ... and you will see that all the
YELLOW indicators will go out.

Under normal circumstances Mach3 only homes one axis at a time and expect to
start the process with nothing sitting on a home sensor ...by having any one
of them unplugged Mach3 will think a sensor is tripped and back off ..."

(by the way endless calls to his phone is futile. I posted that he has concluded his business. He was really upset that I said that and his email response to my post in CNCZone stated that I have no right to just blast away on this forum like that. Yet 30 calls later and there is no response.....anyway)

So I have the 4th axis, its pluged in and I think what is happeneing is that the cables that lead to the connectors may have a small break at the terminals at some point causing that loop to break every time I unplug it. ie its a fluke if they connect the home switchs.

This happened at some other time and I took everything apart and put it back together and it all worked. Like Magic. The CNC gremlins were on my side that day.

If anyone can help me with this I would very much appreciate it.

I don't know what the index even is ( the green alert light ).

What I would like to know is if my homing does not work can I use the mill all the same. Is this going to stop any part of my G-Code from executing?

[paul3112]

while in diagnostic screen, you should be able to trip the limit switches manualy and see it in mach3

[paul3112]

have a look at ArtSoft USA - Video Tutorials the homing, limits and offsets video

[GusBiz]

Paul,

Completely appreciate your response, but the issue is that they are already tripped and headed the other way.

The issue is that they haven't actually been tripped. Its a switch that is saying its tripped when it hasn't been. Soobviously the resolution is to change the active low. This does send the table the right way but then hen it hts the switch the switch doesn't trip at all.

I am really confused.

Gus