Hello All!
I've set about writing a macro for Mach4 that will take 5 axis Gcode, interpret it and return Gcode that Mach4 can read. The intent is for there to be an M11 call on every line of the 5 axis Gcode program and the custom macro will translate the line that it's currently on, there's a number of advantages to this that I won't bore you with now.
The problem is that I've recently learned that Mach has a 500ms delay before executing an M code. That means every 1mm or less my machine will pause and start as it delays for the M code, this is completely unacceptable. Will writing a plugin be a better solution? If so, where do I start with that? There's not much documentation that I can find, but there's obviously people writing them for their motion controllers, can anyone shed some light on how I'd get started writing a plug in?
Just to make myself seem more credible - I've already written a complete working 5 axis Gcode interpreter and machine simulator in Blender (the 3D modelling program), but that's in Blender and written in Python. I just need to translate the logic to work with Mach4 (or Mach3 if absolutely necessary).
ANY advise is appreciated.