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  1. #1
    Join Date
    Nov 2017
    Posts
    591

    G4 dwell only in seconds

    When i set configuration to dwell in milliseconds, it still dwells in seconds. i found posts about this issue from almost 10 years ago saying its a bug when using mach3 with smoothstepper. Was this really never fixed? I really need some dwells that are only about 250ms. A whole second is just unnecessarily long

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Dec 2013
    Posts
    5717

    Re: G4 dwell only in seconds

    Would it accept an input of 0.25 seconds?
    Jim Dawson
    Sandy, Oregon, USA

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Nov 2017
    Posts
    591

    Re: G4 dwell only in seconds

    i tried experimenting with that last night and the short answer is no, but what it does do might happen to work out. When given any decimal value, it doesnt read the value and dwell properly, but it also doesnt quite just skip over it either. I tried both a 0.01 and 0.99 dwell as well as no dwell at all between 2 opposing X moves. With no dwell it makes both moves with no noticeable pause. With both dwell values of .01 and .99, it gives a momentary pause, but the 2 are equal. Im guessing about a third of a second. Also just to confirm it isnt double digit decimals that it doesnt like, I tried 0.1, and 0.9 but still the same one third second delay. It does seem to work out about right for what im doing, but it would still be nice to have functioning milliseconds. This is for the delay after releasing the pneumatic brake on my mill turn spindle. I designed my brake to be dual action instead of spring return, so it really is lightning fast at releasing. Ill need similar length dwells when writing my bar pull cycles, so hopefully it works out for that as well. Some of the continuous parts ill be doing will easily be under a minute each, so adding multiple one second dwells when i dont need them will definitely start building up some cycle time. I can imagine theres probably ways to get around this to get accurate short pauses. One example i can think of is enabling a B or C axis that isnt actually pinned out to anything and just command a specific length incremental move at specific feedrate and that should result in controllable short delays. Could probably even calculate a proper feedrate so that the move entered equates to milliseconds but mach3 would have to allow infinite accel and deccel on the move for that to work out consistent for any value.

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Nov 2017
    Posts
    591

    Re: G4 dwell only in seconds

    wow, huge brain fart on my part. I was using code "G4 Pxx" in my macros for timing. Obviously not the right way to do things. Somehow i forgot about the existence of "sleep" which works just fine in milliseconds and should be used in macros. G4 still has the issue of no milliseconds, but i literally never need to use it. Oops lol

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Dec 2013
    Posts
    5717

    Re: G4 dwell only in seconds

    Happy to hear you got that one solved :cheers:
    Jim Dawson
    Sandy, Oregon, USA

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