[SwampDonkey]

Something like a smoothstepper, or better yet, a PDMX 126 would eliminate the need for ancient printer ports and give MUCH faster and more reliable step rates on virtually any cheap computer. Instead they tried to sell me a $700 controller with their "embedded proprietary" software. This was after spending $700 on the Emerson VFD I didnt need. I bought an identical one on ebay days earlier, wired it up, it didnt work. I was told it was because they were specially programmed JUST for Tormach and could not be reproduced with an identical unit bought elsewhere. This was untrue.
So I called Emerson. We had it running in 20 mins. Of course I already ordered the Tormach version on their advice.....

If anything else goes wrong, im ripping out all the electronics and going with the Kflop or PDMX 126+ smoothstpepper..


Anyone in the market for a bunch of V3 components? Brand spanking new.

[ger21]

Probably because there have been minor issues with the Smoothstepper plugin for years, and updated plugins often required different versions of Mach3 to work correctly.

[SwampDonkey]

Probably because there have been minor issues with the Smoothstepper plugin for years, and updated plugins often required different versions of Mach3 to work correctly.

I dont necessarily mean the smoothstepper. The control board itself is a fairly complex pieces of engineering, though it amounts to a glorified BOB in the Tormach apparently. The technology is mature enough to for them to include a pulse generator on the board, or include a plugin in their modified version of Mach 3. People do this constantly and reliably on this very board. Running kernel speed is considered obsolete by all but the lowest end hobby standards. It would be far cheaper and better than $700 controllers and years of software development.

[SCzEngrgGroup]

I dont necessarily mean the smoothstepper. The control board itself is a fairly complex pieces of engineering, though it amounts to a glorified BOB in the Tormach apparently. The technology is mature enough to for them to include a pulse generator on the board, or include a plugin in their modified version of Mach 3. People do this constantly and reliably on this very board. Running kernel speed is considered obsolete by all but the lowest end hobby standards. It would be far cheaper and better than $700 controllers and years of software development.

What do you think you would gain? The Tormach only 110 IPM, which is a very modest pulse rate easily handled by the PP. You would not be able to make use of faster pulsing. And, at that speed, the jitter is also acceptable. So, again, no functional gain from using a more expensive motion controller.

Regards,
Ray L.

[SwampDonkey]

What do you think you would gain? The Tormach only 110 IPM, which is a very modest pulse rate easily handled by the PP. You would not be able to make use of faster pulsing. And, at that speed, the jitter is also acceptable. So, again, no functional gain from using a more expensive motion controller.

Regards,
Ray L.

How would it be more expensive? You can take an off the shelf, typical PC and add a cheap UC 100 or something and trash the Tormach Controller for 1/3 the price or less. You'd also get Ethernet communication instead of the rapidly obsolete printer port interface.



It can only reliably hit those 110ipm speeds with specialized computers and highly modified versions of Mach3 with industrial embedded versions of Windows XP. In fact, thats exactly what their $700 controller (they sell) is/ does. Try that with your average desktop. WIth an external pulse generator you would gain versatility in computer hardware, software, save money, and gain a huge amount of stability and performance. Ever experienced the performance increase from adding JUST a smoothstepper to a controlling PC and nothing else? Its amazing.
You could use nearly any inexpensive computer without modifying the bios and wiping every program from the hardrive except Mach, which is what they require for anything running their machines.

[SCzEngrgGroup]

How would it be more expensive? You can take an off the shelf, typical PC and add a cheap UC 100 or something and trash the Tormach Controller for 1/3 the price or less. You'd also get Ethernet communication instead of the rapidly obsolete printer port interface.



It can only reliably hit those speeds with specialized computers and highly modified versions of Mach3. In fact, thats exactly what their $700 controller (they sell) is/ does. Try that with your average desktop. WIth an external pulse generator you would gain versatility in computer hardware, software, save money, and gain a huge amount of stability and performance. Ever experienced the performance increase from adding JUST a smoothstepper to a controlling PC and nothing else? Its amazing.
You could use nearly any inexpensive computer without modifying the bios and wiping every program from the hardrive except Mach, which is what they require for anything running their machines. This should all be pretty self evident.

Do the math. At 110 IPM, assuming 10:1 micro-stepping the pulse frequency is only 3.6kHz. The slowest Mach3 kernel speed is 25khz - almost 10X as fast as required. I've run servo machines running MUCH faster (up to 350 IPM) on very cheap, generic PCs, including an ancient 500 MHz PC using Mach3. A "specialized" computer and "modified" Mach3 are absolutely not required. Tormach chose to use a custom version of Mach3 so they don't have to deal with bugs introduced in newer versions. It saves them support calls. Of course, since their version of Mach3 is now many years old, they've also missed out on a lot of bug fixes. But the fact is, a motion controller would offer nothing in terms of performance or reliability.

Regards,
Ray L.

[mountaindew]

Always interested in mods and builds I hope you start a thread so we can follow along.
As for tormach controller, I used one of my old workstation computers for controller with no problems. "I have so many its hard to pay for old iron just to run xp"
Was easy to format hdd and install a limited software stack to get only mach up and running and little else.
To be very honest I would not want that computer to do anything but control the very expen$ive mill tools and the expensive parts its milling out anyway.
Still It would be fun to see different mods and hardware. I drive a jeep and where I live they are all different, no reason to keep your mill stock if it does not meet you needs
keep us updated
md

[SwampDonkey]

Do the math. At 110 IPM, assuming 10:1 micro-stepping the pulse frequency is only 3.6kHz. The slowest Mach3 kernel speed is 25khz - almost 10X as fast as required. I've run servo machines running MUCH faster (up to 350 IPM) on very cheap, generic PCs, including an ancient 500 MHz PC using Mach3. A "specialized" computer and "modified" Mach3 are absolutely not required. Tormach chose to use a custom version of Mach3 so they don't have to deal with bugs introduced in newer versions. It saves them support calls. Of course, since their version of Mach3 is now many years old, they've also missed out on a lot of bug fixes. But the fact is, a motion controller would offer nothing in terms of performance or reliability.

Regards,
Ray L.

Your processor speed and to a lesser extent, RAM mean nothing to the Tormach control board. Its all about the signal interupt / latency (so they tell me). My lenovo from 2007 with a 2.4ghz processor ran fine on my series 1, but it was bios modified to do so. Not only that, but it cost a fortune for the mods they to make it perform. Not only that, but it was useless for anything else.

If you can run servos at 350 IPM on a cheap, generic PC, then why are the Tormach controllers seven hundred bucks and highly modified? Hell, they're only running steppers at 110ipm.

And just today I was told my 3.4 ghz IBM with 4gb of ram using Tormachs own hardrive using their operating system and they're version of Mach 3 was the reason my Z axis was stalling. As per usual, they suggested the new costly controller because it uses "embedded" Windows XP and wouldnt work with my computer motherboard. Apparently he forgot I had the same issues with the original Lenovo a month earlier.

[TurboStep]

Something like a smoothstepper, or better yet, a PDMX 126 would eliminate the need for ancient printer ports and give MUCH faster and more reliable step rates on virtually any cheap computer. Instead they tried to sell me a $700 controller with their "embedded proprietary" software. This was after spending $700 on the Emerson VFD I didnt need. I bought an identical one on ebay days earlier, wired it up, it didnt work. I was told it was because they were specially programmed JUST for Tormach and could not be reproduced with an identical unit bought elsewhere. This was untrue.
So I called Emerson. We had it running in 20 mins. Of course I already ordered the Tormach version on their advice.....
If anything else goes wrong, im ripping out all the electronics and going with the Kflop or PDMX 126+ smoothstpepper..
Anyone in the market for a bunch of V3 components? Brand spanking new.

It sounds like you're fairly upset with YOURSELF! If you would have read the documentation for the VFD before ordering it would have been clear that the VFD must be set up. This is why Tormach sells them pre-programmed and are understandably not very willing to support anyone who thinks he might be able to do it himself. Before ripping out all the electronics I would recommend you do your research first - I don't think Tormach are going to be very willing to help you debug the Kflop

,,,It can only reliably hit those 110ipm speeds with specialized computers and highly modified versions of Mach3 with industrial embedded versions of Windows XP. In fact, thats exactly what their $700 controller (they sell) is/ does. Try that with your average desktop. WIth an external pulse generator you would gain versatility in computer hardware, software, save money, and gain a huge amount of stability and performance. Ever experienced the performance increase from adding JUST a smoothstepper to a controlling PC and nothing else? Its amazing...

Not at all true. I ran my Tormach from an 8 year old HP Desktop for almost 3 years. When it eventually died I replaced it with a 10 year old Dell 8300. This also ran very nicely. Unfortunately it quickly began to show its age so I tried a more recent HP Desktop - perhaps only 5 years old - but it didn't run at all well. This is when I decided to test the ESS.
I got the ESS up and running fairly quickly (despite the lousy documentation) and the Tormach ran very smoothly. However, it made short pauses between moves! I compared a small spot drilling routine to compare the ESS against the PP and found that the ESS took about 20% longer for exactly the same code! That's not what I call amazing. A while back there was some discussion on this forum about tapping and I decided to test my (otherwise unused) floating head using the ESS and found that these delays REALLY messed up the timing. I threw out the ESS and went back to the parallel port (and thread milling).
I replaced my old PC just last week with a brand new Dell Optiplex 3010; I replaced the OS with XP and added a couple of parallel ports. Unfortunately jogging with the Shuttle was rather erratic but this was solved by adding a dedicated PCI-E USB card. Just for the record I re-installed the ESS in the process of elimination and the jogging was still erratic.
Basically you CAN use an average desktop - that's what many of us are doing - but just not EVERY desktop.
Just because the ESS is capable of higher pulse rates doesn't mean that the Tormach can take advantage of them. On my machine I found the limit to be about 150in/min. This is exactly the same as what I'm using now with the Dell 3010 so the ESS wouldn't give me any increase in speed; it just runs programs slower and cost me $200 for the pleasure of trying it.

Do the math. At 110 IPM, assuming 10:1 micro-stepping the pulse frequency is only 3.6kHz..

Really?
Step

[cybot]

Hi Don't talk much here but was reading and thought i would say something that might help. Try putting a higher watts power supply in the computer because most computers sold had cheap 300watt power supply's just to get them out the door. I find that if a computer that is starving for power will run slow and lockup. I think Tormach should use the ESS with the C32 board and C53 board for encoder feedback and the DMM AC servo that are much quieter and smoother and all will match with Mach3 or 4 software. PS. You can use the ESS hooked up between the computer and the board that Tormach uses that way you will get a better signal stream and then you can use Ethernet. The Tormach version 3 had the motors changed from steppers to servo's it wouldn't be hard to change the controller board to a C32 and run it with the ESS and that way the signal is sent to the ESS and stored there till the C32 board uses it so less trouble.

[SwampDonkey]

[QUOTE=TurboStep;1494822]It sounds like you're fairly upset with YOURSELF! If you would have read the documentation for the VFD before ordering it would have been clear that the VFD must be set up. This is why Tormach sells them pre-programmed and are understandably not very willing to support anyone who thinks he might be able to do it himself. Before ripping out all the electronics I would recommend you do your research first - I don't think Tormach are going to be very willing to help you debug the Kflop


Correct, I'd never used a VFD before and had no idea what to expect. I relied on what info they gave me with relation to the VFD working with their system. What I did know was that it was supposedly plug and play with their $800kit. Since its controlled by the board, and by extension Mach, I figured any information needed would be sent to the drive through those data signal cables.
Thats not my gripe. My gripe is that it cost me a huge amount of money and time, all because they wanted to sell me their drive by telling me there's was the only one that worked with there system.

[SwampDonkey]

It sounds like you're fairly upset with YOURSELF! If you would have read the documentation for the VFD before ordering it would have been clear that the VFD must be set up. This is why Tormach sells them pre-programmed and are understandably not very willing to support anyone who thinks he might be able to do it himself. Before ripping out all the electronics I would recommend you do your research first - I don't think Tormach are going to be very willing to help you debug the Kflop

Correct, I'd never used a VFD before and had no idea what to expect. I relied on what info they gave me with relation to the VFD working with their system. What I did know was that it was supposedly plug and play with their $800kit. Since its controlled by the board, and by extension Mach, I figured any information needed would be sent to the drive through those data signal cables.
Thats not my gripe. My gripe is that it cost me a huge amount of money and time, all because they wanted to sell me their drive by telling me there's was the only one that worked with there system.

replaced my old PC just last week with a brand new Dell Optiplex 3010; I replaced the OS with XP and added a couple of parallel ports. Unfortunately jogging with the Shuttle was rather erratic but this was solved by adding a dedicated PCI-E USB card. Just for the record I re-installed the ESS in the process of elimination and the jogging was still erratic.

Thats great. Now lets say it didnt work for whatever reason, you call customer support to get an idea of what went wrong.What do you think they will blame? The computer. I know this because Ive done this, twice in 2 weeks. In fact, I was just told that the exact same computer they use as a controller wouldnt work because it didnt have the "embedded" Windows XP theirs comes with. We're talking identical hardware.

[mountaindew]

Turbo step!
What is a ESS and PP?

And imho their is nothing special about tormachs controller other then it has a clean software stack dedicated to it.
Can I build one like it? Of course newegg sells all the material required , the xp software stack is the hardest part.
As noted above I used an old workstation computer, took out anything not required, formatted and installed a clean fresh xp o.s. and mach
Turned off all power saving features in bios and hooked it up.
Was I lucky it works? imho NO. Are these clunky economy computers from walmart or dell, NO!
I guess my point being modern cpu's have enough power to run a dozen cnc machines real time and none reliably because of energy saving features built into them.
Also if someone wanted to build a diy machine controller all it takes is time research and little know how to do it. Want to save money doing it . that's another story "I never can beat oem"
As I have noted before Im new to cnc machines but very experience in computer builds. Having built a few computers from scratch I find this well inside my wheelhouse.
md

[mountaindew]

Thats great. Now lets say it didnt work for whatever reason, you call customer support to get an idea of what went wrong.What do you think they will blame? The computer. I know this because Ive done this, twice in 2 weeks. In fact, I was just told that the exact same computer they use as a controller wouldnt work because it didnt have the "embedded" Windows XP theirs comes with. We're talking identical hardware.

Put yourself in their shoes! Might help you settle into a place of learning to trouble shoot it and fix it with no support.
Someone calls Ford and wants to know why the Warn winch on front bumper don't work. Fords going to say whats a winch.
They have no idea what exactly you have going on and the thousands of little details that make a difference.
Most techs at that point just say replace! just like a mechanic will tell you on your car. It faster "not cheaper".
If your using your hardware then diy research and fix it.
That's what I would do. just an opinion!
md

[tmarks11]

It is ironic that the computers recommended by Tormach for suitable use as a controller sell on ebay for $45-125. Of course that might be because the service bulletin on this is from 2010. But their $715 motion controller has a Cor2Duo processor, so it doesn't look like it has evolved from that suggestion.

http://www.tormach.com/uploads/88/SB...1113A-pdf.html

I am with you about buying a controller of this age for $715, since I have a couple sff computers with c2d cpu in my attic awaiting repurposing. I would much rather have a ethernet based controller solution allowing me to use a modern computer for dribbling code.

Ray, I know you really prefer KFlop over using direct computer based mach3. Is that just because of the programming flexibility (being the c++ pro that you are), or is it that you find the FPGA based motion controller more reliable. It does look to me like KFlop has a steep learning curve.

I know that my engineering inclinations is to prefer use of a dedicated FPGA solution. I wish Tormach would go this route; it really seems to me that it would simply their tech support issues.

[sansbury]

If you think $715 is steep for a machine control call a FANUC reseller and find out what one of those costs.

Of course you can DIY it cheaper. You're not paying Tormach for parts, you're paying for integration, knowledge, and support after the sale. Tormach is better than most machine builders when it comes to providing alternatives to owners for repair with off the shelf and aftermarket parts.

FWIW I switched to LinuxCNC a few years ago and have never looked back. You can build your own PC and get the config files from tormach and it's pretty much turnkey.

[tmarks11]

FWIW I switched to LinuxCNC a few years ago...

With Tormach's recent work creating a custom lathe version of linuxcnc, I am wondering if they are going to work up a mill version?

Do you find that linuxcnc works better with a modern computer.. i.e., not one that is almost a decade old :tired:

[sansbury]

I suspect that they've considered a mill version. They'll probably give the lathe some time to see how it works out in the field since it's still an unknown quantity.

As for how LinuxCNC works with modern PCs, I don't know, but my guess would be "not well." What I did, and this is really the best way to go, was to build a PC based on a known-good motherboard which, several years ago, was an Intel Atom-based setup. Cost for the whole rig from Newegg was about $200. I had this on a previous DIY machine so when I got the 1100 I just swapped in the config files from Tormach and was off to the races. That said, there is no reason to not try out a newer computer. You can download the LiveCD install and boot directly from it and run the jitter test to see if the results are good. The jitter rate will determine how fast the machine can pulse cleanly. If the results are good then you can take it to the bank.

Of course all of this is a bit ridiculous. The open source 3D printer community has a vastly better software/control stack but it also has a MUCH larger community that is generally a lot more tech-savvy.

[SCzEngrgGroup]

Ray, I know you really prefer KFlop over using direct computer based mach3. Is that just because of the programming flexibility (being the c++ pro that you are), or is it that you find the FPGA based motion controller more reliable. It does look to me like KFlop has a steep learning curve.

I switched to KFlop primarily because I found Mach3 to be too unreliable. The KFlop has proven to be dead-reliable over several years of use now. Being able to write my own CNC Controller application was also very attractive. It has allowed me to write a custom application that does exactly what I want, and that too has proven very reliable, and convenient. It does, however, have a VERY step learning curve. Not a big deal to get the basics up and running, but to get all the bells and whistles does take a lot of time. Anyone who is not comfortable with C programming will have a very hard time of it. For me, it was worth every minute of effort, as I now have machines that simple work, ALL the time.

Regards,
Ray L.

[TurboStep]

What is a ESS and PP?

Sorry! ESS=Ethernet Smooth Stepper, PP=Parallel Port.
My current Mach3 solution works well for me at the moment and I have no reason to look any further.
Yes, I could spend weeks (or months) writing code for a Kflop but I really have better things to do. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against the Kflop, but as Ray implies getting everything running properly is likely to be a significant exercise, which I would personally find hard to justify for a one-off.
As far as the controller is concerned I used to build all of my PC's myself, but now I'll only do it if I need something specific. The Dell seemed to be a reasonable option but it was still a gamble - it might not have worked. Even then, it took me quite a while to figure out why the jogging was erratic. For anyone not comfortable with this kind of work then the Tormach controller is certainly a good option.

...I know that my engineering inclinations is to prefer use of a dedicated FPGA solution...

My engineering inclinations tell me that if my system works then I should just use it! A system can always be improved but there's not always a real benefit. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Step