Mach3 flaw for slaved gantry motors
 

Message posted to Mach Yahoo forum:

Hi All

Mach3 running with Smoothstepper. Pair of motors slaved for x-axis under long
gantry. . . .

While using right cursor to jog x-axis, a finger slip over to the Ins(ert)
button moves a single x-motor (skewing gantry). The Del(ete) button runs the
other x-motor.

Anybody seen this before?

The keyboard is slightly unusual (looks more laptop-like, but is packaged for
desktop with PS2 connector)

Our only "cure" for this very dangerous situation is to remove the two offending
buttons. Surely there must be a better solution?

Thanks

Gerald
www.mechmate.com

JB answered there:

Hi gerald,

del and ins are jog keys for A axis

you have to change the keys using config/system hotkeys, or edit xml
file and change the number for this keys to 999 to disable it

for art and brian :

1 -is it a way to disable an hotkey without changing its code to 999 in
xml file ?
in other words, any friendly method to disable a hotkey ?


2 - is it possible to disable the hotkeys for slaved axis automatically
when configuring it ? (in future version of course)

JB DUBOIS

PS for gerald : i will post the same mesage on mechmate forum

Mach3 jogging hotkeys
 

hi all,

gerald posted a message on mach yahoogroup, saying that del and ins keys on keyboard jogs only one axis motor

in fact those keys are jogging hotkeys for A axis, and in case of slaved axis, this keys still works and jog X axis slaved motor

be very carefull and desactivate this keys if you don't want to twist your gantry

2 ways at this time
- assign hot keys that you can't press easily using config/system hotkeys

- edit the xml file to change the value of those hotkeys to 999

JB

We never had problems with those keys before, but since adding the SmoothStepper, these keys seem to have become alive. (Before the SS, the keyboard was wider, and maybe we did not notice they were live?)

Here is the screen:

Attachment 5181

How do I change the 45 & 46 to 999?

The rest of you guys with slaved x motors (J4 on PMDX to X2 motor); what happens if you press the Ins and Del keys while Num Lock is off?

Manually edited the .xml file in Wordpad:

Attachment 5182

i guess that smoothstepper xml variables are initialized with A++ and A-- configured as the old default xml file for mach

certainly smooth stepper dev have begun while this values was used in the .xml

feel free to ask evreything about mach3, i'm an expert :cool:

and i'm going to be an expert on mechmate too (building has begun, i've just picked up laser cut parts this afternoon):)

I checked some old xml files from before our SS installation, and the problem has been there all the time - that is the default of Mach.

But, we never saw it before because the keyboard's NumLock was switched on, which switched off those keys as cursors.

In my opinion it is a bad error from Mach's side.

Oh well, no interest from the Mach guys (or the other MechMaters?) in what seems to be a serious flaw in Mach. I have added some Yahoo correspondence at the top of this thread.

The default hotkey settings for both A/U++ and A/U-- are 999 At least on the release candidate which I use.

So maybe that is why you are not getting much reaction from the so called "Mach guys" :)

Greg

Okay, that explains why nobody is worried about it. Our .xml file was originally from Mach2 days and copied through to later releases.