mach 4?

[blighty]

any one out there using mach 4?

I have a project coming up and i have discovered a fatal floor in my plans.
although mach3 can handle 6 axis. the screen set i use can only handle 4. as the new project needs 5. i'm a bit stuffed.

I have a few options to solve this. i could use the original mach3 screen set, but i dont like it for a shed load of reasons. plus the guy who did it had the intentions of the user modifying it as he/she wished. so even he didn't like it.

I could make my own screen set.
would take a lot of time, but in the end i would get exactly what i want. in all aspects.

or go to mach 4. spend £200 job done, but what is mach 4 like? plus mach 4 is 64bit, my PC is 32bit. all my other software is 32bit.
so going to mach4 would need a lot of changes.

 

[kvom]

I'm using it on my small lathe. Tried to get it to run on my mill, which has the old parallel port interface. With the plugin that can be had for the PP I was able to get the axes to move, but not the spindle. There are some hardware solutions that could work and eliminate the PP, but mach3 is working fine for me, so I abandoned that effort.

I think you'd likely need to either buy or modify a screen set for 5 axes with mach4 as well. Like mach3 it comes with 4 axes in the standard screen set.

 

[blighty]

I'm using it on my small lathe. Tried to get it to run on my mill, which has the old parallel port interface. With the plugin that can be had for the PP I was able to get the axes to move, but not the spindle. There are some hardware solutions that could work and eliminate the PP, but mach3 is working fine for me, so I abandoned that effort.

I think you'd likely need to either buy or modify a screen set for 5 axes with mach4 as well. Like mach3 it comes with 4 axes in the standard screen set.

thought mach4 would only work best with a smooth stepper or such other device.
it doesn't display 5 axis:wall: c**k, a** and pants !!

this one don't look to bad.

http://www.stoneart.dk/PBJ-ScreenSet-2012.htm#1

and to me its only 15 quid i'll have a better look tonight and go from there.
best get on with the project.

any other info on mach4 as in whats it like to work with and setup etc compered to mach 3.




.

 

[John S]

Mach 4 is a work in progress.

Problem is it's been 5 years in the works.........................

Screens can be modified in Mach 4 but you need to be a programmer, nothing like as easy as Mach 3.

Mach 4 is not a stand along program like Mach 3, it needs an external motion card which Mach doesn't do so you are working two handed, Mach4 on one hand and whoever develops the card on the other hand and from past experience these people work at their pace.

 

[gadabout]

why not use the 6 axis screen set that's available? I use it with mach 3 on my mill running 5 axis's

Mark

 

[vederstein]

Go to LinuxCNC?

 

[blighty]

Mach 4 is a work in progress.

Problem is it's been 5 years in the works.........................

Screens can be modified in Mach 4 but you need to be a programmer, nothing like as easy as Mach 3.

Mach 4 is not a stand along program like Mach 3, it needs an external motion card which Mach doesn't do so you are working two handed, Mach4 on one hand and whoever develops the card on the other hand and from past experience these people work at their pace.

yes it has been a long time in the making, think i heard rumours about 2011.
i already have a smoothstepper so that parts not a problem.

i have had a play with the screen mod program that art soft proved for mach 3. thought it was much like Dreamweaver (webpage software) in the way you made a button then tell it what you want it do to. that side of things was ok, just takes for ever making all the button etc.

 

[blighty]

why not use the 6 axis screen set that's available? I use it with mach 3 on my mill running 5 axis's

Mark

there is nothing wrong with it. just never liked the look of it since day one. have been using mach blue since day two and kind of got used to that type of screen.

do you have any vid's or pic's of your 5 axis setup?


just had a look at the standered screen and it only has 4 dro's. what screen do you have? if its the 6axis screen on there website.... good looking screen, but i cant get it to work.

 

[blighty]

Go to LinuxCNC?

have been think about that for a few months, i have even got a laptop up and running with it on. decided to give a go when i found out tormach use it for there machines, but with modded screens. from what i have seen on the net about it, is it's a hell of a lot better then mach 3 and a lot better than 4.

also seems to be a lot of coding to do to get things to work. like MPG's probes etc. there may be linux "macro's" for this, but not found any yet.

are you using it?

 

[RonGinger]

I have been using Mach4 for a couple years now. I do have a close connection- I work for Newfangled, Brian Barker, doing the wizards and support. I wrote some of the M3 wizards and the NfsMill wizard package.

mach4 does not have a big presence in the hobby world because Brian is working the industrial world. He has hired a few guys for development and support so he is selling where the real money is. He has many OEM customers and there are many sales out there- the hobby guys seem to think its new and no one is using it yet. The industrial customers do not post to forums or mail lists.

It is MUCH more stable than M3 ever was. Motion is smoother, feed hold is instant. The design of the software is extremely well done. It has built in screen editor, screen elements have all the modern screen widgets- pulldown list, scroll bars, tabbed dialogs, just about every windows function. The ability to make great screen sets is all there. It uses LUA as the programming language, a very complete and powerful language.

if you are into reading manuals there are several documents in the installer- install the demo and look under Mach4hobby\Docs.

It does require a hardware motion controller. There are several available in the hobby range. I have used the PoKeys, and the smart BOBs PMDX from PMDX as well as the ethernet smoothstepper. My mill uses a Pokey for pendant and a PMDX416 for motion. There are a few high end motion controllers but they are out of my budget so I dont know much about them.

My favorite now is the PMDX416. It has full encoder support for lathe spindle and I think the best form- screw terminals easy to mount board. But the PoKey57 is also great.

I did a lathe build class last year (Kvom was one of 14 students) we used a pokey control on a motherboad from CNC4PC.com. A couple years ago we did a mill build for 12 guys with the PMDX box. Im doing another lathe class in April, in Detroit- there is still time for a couple more guys, but we need to know in a few days. You would go home with a converted 7x16 mini lathe from Little Machines Shop.

The demo is available for download from machsupport.com. As with M3 the demo will run without license, but it is no longer a 500 line limit-- the limit is now a random time of a few minutes. it was to easy for freeloaders to just break programs in 499 lines.

Mach3 was great, 15 years ago when it started, but the world has moved on and there are much for capable controls now. Go Mach4 and dont look back. Oh, and the parallel port is dead- it was barely usable 25 years ago forget it now- are you still using your floppy drive?

 

[blighty]

RonGinger

and whats wrong with floppy drives! will upgrade to a 3.5" floppy one day:thumbup:

yes it has been available for a while now, 200 bucks for the hobby. already downloaded and played with. as said above, i already have the ESS running with mach 3. was thinking about changing over for a lathe build. as i liked the way it reads the spindle over how mach 3 does.

but still leaves the problem of 4 dro's and not 5.

is mach 4 only 64bit?
also one licence one PC no way of putting it on two PC's for hobby guys.

 

[John S]

It does require a hardware motion controller. There are several available in the hobby range. I have used the PoKeys, and the smart BOBs PMDX from PMDX as well as the ethernet smoothstepper. My mill uses a Pokey for pendant and a PMDX416 for motion. There are a few high end motion controllers but they are out of my budget so I dont know much about them.

My favorite now is the PMDX416. It has full encoder support for lathe spindle and I think the best form- screw terminals easy to mount board. But the PoKey57 is also great.



Mach3 was great, 15 years ago when it started, but the world has moved on and there are much for capable controls now. Go Mach4 and dont look back. Oh, and the parallel port is dead- it was barely usable 25 years ago forget it now- are you still using your floppy drive?

Got to agree with Ron here that the world has moved on.
We had issues looking for a system that would thread on a lathe.
Mach 3 is dead in the water as it can only use the index pulse and none of the add on controllers like CS Labs, although they can read an encoder thread correctly.

Mach 4 although it can thread needs an external board and it's not been until recently that Pokeys and PMDX have brought a working board out.

However taking lathe and doing a costing exercise.
You need a computer, monitor, keyboard, mouse, windows license, Mach license and an external breakout card and in some cases a spindle card as well.

I reckon all this lot, which you have to build yourself, no plug and play and you are then dealing with at least 2 or 3 companies will set you back in UK pounds about £690 - £700 pounds.

However you can now buy and have been able to for a while 2 to 5 axis stand alone controllers from China that don't need a computer, licenses, monitor and are all self contained and plug and play. The lathe one can even run an 8 position tool changer .

This one cost £400 landed and duty paid and is a dead ringer for a Fanuc21.

It comes with about 9 plugs on the back and they supply 9 cables to fit with plenty of length and all clearly marked in English. All you have to do is connect to drivers, limit switches, VFD, encoder etc and supply mains and you are good to go

As Ron says the world has moved on.

In November I converted 17 obsolete training machines for a college down in Oxford. They were adamant that they did not want computers and all the associated bumph and it was only the fact that these were industry standard, more so than any PC based controller and stand alone that we got the job.

 

[RonGinger]

is mach 4 only 64bit?
also one licence one PC no way of putting it on two PC's for hobby guys.

Mach4 will run on 32 bit win7 or win 10.

Yes, the license is tied to a PC, but the hobby terms allow you to license up to 5 Pcs. You simply go to the web page, log in to your account and request a new license. Enter the PC ID code and a new license will be mailed to you. You may also de-activate a license and open a new one. So for hobby users you may still run multiple machines.

 

[gadabout]

there is nothing wrong with it. just never liked the look of it since day one. have been using mach blue since day two and kind of got used to that type of screen.

do you have any vid's or pic's of your 5 axis setup?


just had a look at the standered screen and it only has 4 dro's. what screen do you have? if its the 6axis screen on there website.... good looking screen, but i cant get it to work.

I think I googled for it , think it was from europe? somewhere maybe it was from the mach support site. never had an issue with getting it going once I followed the instructions properly. I don't use the 5 axis as true 5 axis , I have two Z's the knee and the quill, have some pics somewhere. I think to get it work I needed to do this:When you download and install a new screen you also need to copy it's associated graphics to the Mach3 Bitmaps folder.


Mark

 

[blighty]

John S

yes times do move on, but if it ain't broken dont fix it or it wont do what you need any more.
now what you mean about threading. I had a boxford 240 for a year or so, had lots of problem threading (think it was G32). started single point at first. that was fine. but if the thread required a lot of passes it would screw up. then fitted a USB SS and G76. had no problems after that.

as for my set up. the only thing i need is mach. been using the mill for 8 odd years now running under mach 3. it's had a few problems in that time, but works fine now. so that's why I'm a bit reluctant to change it. but as you say times do change and may be time to move on.

 

[blighty]

I think I googled for it , think it was from europe? somewhere maybe it was from the mach support site. never had an issue with getting it going once I followed the instructions properly. I don't use the 5 axis as true 5 axis , I have two Z's the knee and the quill, have some pics somewhere. I think to get it work I needed to do this:When you download and install a new screen you also need to copy it's associated graphics to the Mach3 Bitmaps folder.


Mark

from the sounds if it, could be the 6 axis from the web site.
thats the problem i have. when it runs all the buttons etc are missing. might give it another go latter.

 

[blighty]

Mach4 will run on 32 bit win7 or win 10.

Yes, the license is tied to a PC, but the hobby terms allow you to license up to 5 Pcs. You simply go to the web page, log in to your account and request a new license. Enter the PC ID code and a new license will be mailed to you. You may also de-activate a license and open a new one. So for hobby users you may still run multiple machines.

this is sounding better by the minute. like the 5 license bit. thought it would be strange not to, as you could get 1 license on a laptop. make a load of profiles for each machine you have and just move the laptop from machine to machine. bit of a pain in the a**. but a way of running several machines on i license.

had a look on the ESS site last night. seems there are a few issues still.

Known issues:

• The Spindle works with PWM mode, please see steps 10 and 25 below.
• The Spindle works with Step/Dir mode. You will need to temporarily set it up as an OB motor, which is shown here.
• Probing works with "Probe" only. It will not work with Probe1, Probe2 or Probe3 yet.
• M62 and M63 are not yet implemented.
• THC is not yet working.
• Homing only backs off the switch. A lua script is currently required to then move a known distance.
• Backlash Compensation needs to be implemented.
• Lathe threading support needs to be implemented.

whats THC?
are these issues going to be fixed?

 

[vederstein]

are you using it?

I have a mini-mill that I converted to CNC. It's running LinuxCNC. There are several guis available for it. I use the default AXIS front end. It does what I need it to do.

Granted I have a simple three axis setup and therefore have never really dived deep into it. It does work though, and without all the licensing hassles of commercial software.

I'm sure you can get there with the help of the LinuxCNC forum, but the journey may certainly may be more frustrating.

...Ved.

 

[RonGinger]

THC is Torch Height Control for plasma cutters. No need for mills.

The smoothstepper was the premier device for Mach3, but sadly they are way behind on Mach4. I gave up waiting and moved to PMDX and PoKey. I have 4 or 5 machine s in my shop- a Jet mill is my main machine and I have a router and lathe that I expect to keep, but now I have a KX1 and a Chinese router and laser cutter that I am playing with. I decided to go with one PC. I found a nice rolling desk in a surplus store for just $40. I have mounted a PC in it and a large touch screen (Amazon refurb for $99) I built a panel with two pots for controlling Feed and Rapid speed, and a few push buttons for things like Start, Hold Stop and nice Pendant. All of this is connected to a PoKey57E.

For motion control I have a PMDX416 mounted on the cart and connected to a male and female DB25 connector. I connect to my Jet and the router with a parallel port connector- the machines are unchanged since parallel port days, the motion control is on the cart. The cart also has a USB hub and an ethernet port so I can connect to devices like my CNC4PC lathe
control or anything I am testing.

This has been very flexible and I can put some money into the single PC, like the touch screen. The PC has many profiles, but only needs one license.

 

[blighty]

at last, i have found something that you guys use that i can get in the UK.
http://www.zappautomation.co.uk/electrical-products/pokeys-products/pokeys57e.html

like the look of this one as well.....
http://www.zappautomation.co.uk/electrical-products/pokeys-products/pokeys57cnc.html

must admit, i'm not to keen on ditching the ESS it works and it cost a lot. I could put it in the lathe project and use mach 3 on the lathe. but thats the reason i started looking at M4 because of it's threading was much better than M3. then yesturday i found ESS has a problem with threading "Lathe threading support needs to be implemented."

all this because i'm building a 5th axis that i will use once in a blue moon.

i'll have a YT hunt see how others have got on with M4 and ESS.