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  #31  
Old Tue 31 July 2007, 05:16
Greg J
Just call me: Greg #13
 
Hagerman, New Mexico
United States of America
Thanks Mike,

That makes perfect sense.

As for me picking this stuff up fast ... well .... its just fun. Its bad when you go to bed thinking about all this and wake up at 0500 without the alarm wanting to read a manual.

Coffee's ready, got some reading.

Again, thanks.
Greg
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  #32  
Old Thu 20 September 2007, 04:12
Marc Shlaes
Just call me: Marc
 
Cleveland, OH
United States of America
Send a message via Skype™ to Marc Shlaes
This exchange of posts appeared on the Gecko forum!

In a couple of months, MACH will be in new hands.

Read on!

[In geckodrive@yahoogroups.com, Art Fenerty <fenerty@...> wrote:

Hi Marris,
LOL , I just read the rumour,

( deleting the message still leaves it on many of our inboxes ) ,
just so people do know without any rumour, and with your permission to put this message here...
I will be retiring on Jan1 / 2008 to follow my nose and explore the many interesting things Ive learned and have seen since I started 6 years ago to write a program for myself to use in artistic expression.

ArtSoft will continue with new proprieters , users will be well taken care of, and while Im retiring from all this, Ill still be around, only now I can bitch as a user, not a developer. This has been in planning for almost a year, so Im pretty sure of the successfull continuance of ArtSoft and that everyone will be very well taken care of. I suspect other developers can understand how draining the years have been, and now , with over 10,000 users, Mach3 has become a standard.. and a demanding mistress. Something that needs a periodic infusion of fresh ideas, and youthfull enthusiasm to continue its path. There is a post on the Mach3 group explaining my going away, so I wont bog Mariss's bandwidth, other than to say its been a great experience doing all this, and Im proud to have left my mark on an industry just leaving its infancy I think, and learning from the Guru's like Mariss has been a joy...

But Ill still be seen poking my nose in and occasionally donating some plugin or code to all the other users..like myself.. ..now that Ill actually have time to myself.. wow, thatll be weird...

back to being a basement mad scientist...

Thanks,
Art
www.artofcnc.ca


Then Mariss Freimanis of Geckodrive replied:

I'm flabbergasted, envious and enormously happy for you all at the same time! I'm flabbergasted because I cannot imagine who will ever fill your shoes. I'm envious because every year I say "Just another two years and I retire". I am happy for you for having the good sense to know when to start enjoying the rest of your life. You have made a mark that few others can hope to equal; Mach3 is the runaway success story of the last decade. At heart what you humbly call artistic expression is a labor of love and it separates the magnificent from the mundane. Mach3, your work, has certainly achieved magnificence.[/font]
I hope sometime in the future, I get the opportunity to meet you in person. That will be a rare and fine pleasure.
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  #33  
Old Wed 24 October 2007, 09:23
smreish
Just call me: Sean - #5, 28, 58 and others
 
Orlando, Florida
United States of America
can anyone get to the Mach3 site?

I purchased a site license yesterday from CNC4PC and I can't get to the Mach3 homepage or any support pages to D/L the software. Is the site available to anyone else?
Sean
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  #34  
Old Wed 24 October 2007, 09:28
Marc Shlaes
Just call me: Marc
 
Cleveland, OH
United States of America
Send a message via Skype™ to Marc Shlaes
No, but I wouldn't panic. Probably a small problem. Give it some time.
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  #35  
Old Wed 24 October 2007, 11:40
Gerald D
Just call me: Gerald (retired)
 
Cape Town
South Africa
This is the downloads page:

http://www.machsupport.com/artsoft/d.../downloads.htm

It is working now.

We are still using Mach3 Release 1.84.002 (one of the "Release Lockdown"s)
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  #36  
Old Tue 01 January 2008, 00:11
BernardR
Just call me: Bernard
 
Georgetown Texas
United States of America
Quantum: long term software solution?

I have recently returned to the CNC scene after an absence of a couple of years. I converted a Bridgeport size import to 4 axis servo motor control under Mach 2.

I find it amazing just how far Art Fennerty has taken the whole field of CNC; however what I am bringing to the people on this forum is the potential for much smoother control than is currently available for MechMate and Shop Bot style machines.

Quantum is another product from Art, I believe in colaboration with Brian Barker, it is downloadable and operational, but currently is not officially supported.
I copied the following excerpt from one of Art's write ups.
'The difference you will notice is highly dependent on the system. Shopbot style systems will see a huge smoothing effect when its setup properly tuned to their system. '
The full forum can be reached at the following url.
http://www.machsupport.com/forum/index.php?board=44.0

Art also gives a video explanation:
http://www.machsupport.com/Videos/Ma...elections.html

At the present time there will probably be few people here who can take advantage of quantum, but I thought it might be very useful if Gerald had the time and inclination to have a look at it. In the longer term I get the feeling that the program will give much better smoothing of some of steppers that Gerald rightly had some reservations about.
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  #37  
Old Tue 01 January 2008, 07:46
BernardR
Just call me: Bernard
 
Georgetown Texas
United States of America
URL correction

The video explanation link I posted earlier leads to the page of Video selections, but loads the first video. The one for Quantum is found on the list on the left edge and is called QuantumPlanner, and I believe explains the problems and the proposed solution very well.
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  #38  
Old Mon 07 January 2008, 11:54
Gerald D
Just call me: Gerald (retired)
 
Cape Town
South Africa
Bernard, Quantum was mentioned in this thread about a year ago. Somehow the excitement of it has died - unless something happened while I was away?
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  #39  
Old Tue 08 January 2008, 01:02
BernardR
Just call me: Bernard
 
Georgetown Texas
United States of America
Gerald, the reason I brought the matter up was that reading through several posts it did appear that there are several people who sound as if they could use the help of Quantum, and also having just viewed Art's video and several recent posts on the Mach3 site, I thought it was worth a mention.
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  #40  
Old Fri 11 January 2008, 12:21
Gerald D
Just call me: Gerald (retired)
 
Cape Town
South Africa
Here is an interesting exchange on the Mach Yahoo forum. Brian Barker, who picked up the reins from the retired Art Fenerty, replies to Ozzie:

> Is there a published list of development priorities or what's being
> worked on at present.
Nope and there will not be a list.... We are working on bugs as we find
them and cleaning up the code... there are no "new" things being added
and I do update the list to tell you what I worked on for each rev.
>
> I've monitored most of what's gone on from almost the advent of Mach 1
> to about 9 months ago. I'm sure my license is one of the earlier ones.
> I still occasionally skim a few pages of this forum to see what is
> going on, but a good deal of what's going on is not really new.

I would say that other then cleaning up the code the software is done
and will not have much of anything added to it... This is why there
will not be a list of what we are working on....

>
> For a hobbiest like me Mach 3 seems to have reached a level of maturity.

I think you are right! It has grown to the point that I don't think
there are anymore things that need to be added..

>
> So it would be great if we had an overview of what the development
> team is working on. I know to those busy developing, this is just a
> request that would slow down the important work they're doing. But
> perhaps there is someone close to the project but not really working
> on it day to day who might give us an update, say quarterly; Maybe,
> ,,,,,,,ART??????

If Art would like to tell you what he is playing with that is cool On
my side if I make it so you think I have not changed anything I have
done my job... I am in cleanup mode

Thanks
Brian
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  #41  
Old Fri 11 January 2008, 13:09
Marc Shlaes
Just call me: Marc
 
Cleveland, OH
United States of America
Send a message via Skype™ to Marc Shlaes
As a former product manager for a significant piece of software, I say that Brian's response is very ominous.

If that means that he intends to put Mach in permanent maintenance mode while he and a team bring out the next new thing (perhaps not parallel port based), he certainly isn't saying that.

Frankly his response gives me very little confidence.
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  #42  
Old Fri 11 January 2008, 14:20
Richards
Just call me: Mike
 
South Jordan, UT
United States of America
Mach 3 has been very stable for me for more than a year. Parallel adapter cards are readily available for normal desk-top type computers (for those newer computers that don't have a parallel port built in). I've tried several parallel adapter cards in my test-bench units and have had no problems of any kind.

Whether Mach software continues to evolve should not be a great concern to those of us who use the current version. It works just fine as it is.
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  #43  
Old Fri 11 January 2008, 20:43
Gerald D
Just call me: Gerald (retired)
 
Cape Town
South Africa
I welcome Brian's response. Mach3 (Mill) already has far too much in it for woodwork routing. The curious thing is that there was no mention of Quantum.
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  #44  
Old Fri 11 January 2008, 20:49
Gerald D
Just call me: Gerald (retired)
 
Cape Town
South Africa
The discussion continued:

Question:
Brian, in this discussion vein. Can you offer any rough idea's as to future
version's of Mach. I know Art had mentioned about this time last year that "Q"
would be the next big thing and this would entail a complete re-write from the
ground up, of Mach. Things like 5 axis interpolation/offsets would also be
included.

Anyway, just thought I'd ask.. having S curving with the rest of Mach's
attributes would be great!


Brian's reply:
I would like to take the next 6 months and just keep fixing small bugs
and cleaning up the code. Art had been working VERY hard for 6 years and
never got the chance to do this and if we are going to add anything more
to the code it must be done. Mach3 is very robust at this time and we
would like to make it better There are 5-6 small bugs that have
plagued us over time and I would like to see them gone!

Q will get worked on after Mach3 is finished as it is the base for
Quantum.. As you can tell we are not looking for any big jumps at this
time
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  #45  
Old Fri 11 January 2008, 21:01
Greg J
Just call me: Greg #13
 
Hagerman, New Mexico
United States of America
Gerald,

Thanks for the updates.

Maybe it's just the damn Engineer in me, but this is good reading.
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  #46  
Old Fri 18 January 2008, 11:13
J.R. Hatcher
Just call me: J.R. #4
 
Wilmington, North Carolina
United States of America
Send a message via Skype™ to J.R. Hatcher
Does anyone know what pin # is used to turn on the router relay in Mach 3? I guess what I need is the entire deal about how to do it.
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  #47  
Old Fri 18 January 2008, 11:38
Gerald D
Just call me: Gerald (retired)
 
Cape Town
South Africa
I think it is pin 1. (See table 17 of PMDX-122 manual)

In Mach3, ports & pins, Output Signals, I have Output #1 enabled to port 1, pin 1.

Check if M03 in the G-code turns it on and M05 turns it off. My memory is rusty on this.
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  #48  
Old Fri 18 January 2008, 13:10
J.R. Hatcher
Just call me: J.R. #4
 
Wilmington, North Carolina
United States of America
Send a message via Skype™ to J.R. Hatcher
Thanks Gerald. I'll check it out.
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  #49  
Old Fri 18 January 2008, 15:53
Doug_Ford
Just call me: Doug #3
 
Conway (Arkansas)
United States of America
J.R.

That's one of my projects for this weekend too. If I figure it out, I'll post something.
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  #50  
Old Sat 19 January 2008, 14:38
Gerald D
Just call me: Gerald (retired)
 
Cape Town
South Africa
JR, I think you are looking to make the green tick, plus add 1 and 1 as port and pin, on this screen:

Clipboard01.gif

And I think that is all there is to it - the relay will then respond on the M03/M05 commands
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  #51  
Old Sat 19 January 2008, 15:52
J.R. Hatcher
Just call me: J.R. #4
 
Wilmington, North Carolina
United States of America
Send a message via Skype™ to J.R. Hatcher
I'll try it Sunday and let you know. Thanks
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  #52  
Old Sat 19 January 2008, 19:29
Doug_Ford
Just call me: Doug #3
 
Conway (Arkansas)
United States of America
J.R.,

I found some pretty good instructions for basic setup of the program at http://www.machsupport.com/documentation/

If you download the basic setup of Mach3Mill, it discusses setting the ports and pins for the charge pump and the relay you are using to control your router. Good luck with it.
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  #53  
Old Sat 19 January 2008, 20:23
J.R. Hatcher
Just call me: J.R. #4
 
Wilmington, North Carolina
United States of America
Send a message via Skype™ to J.R. Hatcher
Downloaded!! Thanks Doug.
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  #54  
Old Sun 20 January 2008, 14:38
Greolt
Just call me: Greg
 
Victoria
Australia
Just to add to Gerald's post above

Also the second part of setting the spindle control is on "Spindle Control" page.

Make sure "Disable Spindle Relays" is not checked. Set Clockwise to output 1.

Set the delays you need in "General Parameters"

Greg
Attached Images
File Type: jpg spindle.jpg (92.4 KB, 530 views)
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  #55  
Old Sun 20 January 2008, 22:09
Gerald D
Just call me: Gerald (retired)
 
Cape Town
South Africa
Greg, thanks very much for posting that page - I completely forgot about it

That is the page where you say the router/spindle is controlled from Output #1.

On the page I showed earlier, is where you say that pin number 1 (to which the relay is soldered on the PMDX) shall be designated as Output #1.

(Could of course have #2 etc., but then both pages must correspond)
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  #56  
Old Mon 04 August 2008, 09:16
CNCGuy
Just call me: CNCGuy
 
Reston, Va
United States of America
Your manufacturer should give you a configuration file like a driver.. Unless you use a DIY..

also there are a great set of tutorial videos. I've watched them a few times. http://www.machsupport.com/videos/
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