[elnerdo]

Mach3 with Galil seems like it would be a nice pairing for a closed loop system. Is rigid tapping possible with this combination?

[samco]

that would be a question for smurph.

it is hard to tell from here
http://www.machsupport.com/forum/ind...c,2156.30.html
it looks like is or was on the to-do list

Emc2 supports rigid tapping.

(even from the printer port) but higher speed are possible with hardware (mesa, pico systems, pluto.. (see above))

Printer port rigid tapping
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C740zS9R9kk&feature=channel_page"]YouTube - Rigid Tapping M3X 5 750rpm[/ame]

You can read about his machine here
http://wiki.linuxcnc.org/cgi-bin/emcinfo.pl?Pjm
(he is planning on going mesa)

[samco]

or you can rigid tap with mach...

[nomedia="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGTfVlsA9Ww&feature=player_embedded"]YouTube - Tapping Attachment[/nomedia]

I am a b!tch - I know

sam

[smurph]

No rigid tapping yet. Mainly because I don't have a machine that is capable of doing it. That's one of those things that would require some testing, if you know what I mean. I recently got a 6hp spindle motor with an encoder, so if that ever gets put on a machine, I can start working on it.

But the rest of the Galil plugin is rock solid. It will do X31 probing and we are putting support in for 3D probing as well. The plugin will handle sinusoidal axes too. And if you wanted to mix servos and steppers for some reason, it will do that as well. One of the best things about the Galil is that we can use it for MPG input for the smoothest MPG control you will ever see. Kenny Crouch put that in and he pretty much nailed it. And last, but not least, there is a facility to run actual Galil commands through the Mach interface. You and attach these commands to a button on the screen, feed values to a Galil program running in a separate thread, etc... This makes the Mach/Galil combination very versatile and powerful.

The Galil is a nice controller that I really can't say enough good things about. And their support staff is about the best you can get. So if any of you guys are wanting to retrofit an existing machine for a production environment and are hesitant because of support issues, there is a support structure in place. Mach/Galil is a very viable solution for an industrial type environment.

And I'm really excited about the Mesa Plugin. I've got it functioning in my test environment and it seems like it's going to be really nice as well. Really smooth. What neat pieces of hardware those Mesa cards are! And Mesa is also a great company to deal with. Look for the release in about a month. I'm waiting on firmware change to support the 7i43. But the PCI cards are running flawlessly at the moment.

Steve

[battwell]

im hoping the galil 1750 cards i just bought on ebay can be supported by mach.and work well. building a 4 axis router with mitsubishi servos
i was looking at camsofts program until i realised mach had a plugin

anyone got any feedback on camsoft? read lots of differing reports from google searches

[smurph]

The 1750 cards will work. I have a 1760 running. Use the drivers that come with Smart Term v6.10 off of the Galil website. Get the fastest Mhz PC you can with an ISA bus. 800Mhz will work fine and dandy, but more is always better. With an external motion controller, Mach doesn't need as much speed.

Steve

[battwell]

will mach talk to external i/o cards? i need 96i/o all together plus the servos etc controlled seperately by the galil.
on another thread (camsoft) i was recommended to get an adlink/nudaq 7296 card and opto22 I/O boards. can mach handle this many i/o?