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  1. #1
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    Exclamation Project Comments

    Hi Guys - Welcome
    This is the general comment thread for the CNCZone Driver Group Project.
    General discussions and thoughs VERY WELCOME!
    Best
    Aubrey

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    I'm not sure that I know completely what I'm talking about, but.... What's wrong with Mach3? It runs on windows, Is "Software" only. And does a damn fine job of sending the correct pulses at the required rate. Nothing special is needed. Just install it, set your motors up, and away it goes. I've never had a problem with it, and for the money it's probably the best value software I have ever purchased.

    Regards Terry.



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    Quote Originally Posted by MrBean
    I'm not sure that I know completely what I'm talking about, but.... What's wrong with Mach3? It runs on windows, Is "Software" only. And does a damn fine job of sending the correct pulses at the required rate. Nothing special is needed. Just install it, set your motors up, and away it goes. I've never had a problem with it, and for the money it's probably the best value software I have ever purchased.

    Regards Terry.
    Hi Terry,
    I've heard a lot of good things about Mach3 as well.
    To start with, you need some sort of power driver circuitry between you serial port and the motors.
    Next, as Mach3 itself sends the stepping info at the desired timing interval, if (or when) Window$ decides to do some sort of internal task, both Mach3 AND the parallel port operations are suspended (maybe a short time, may be a couple of seconds) and this delay is what can cause problems.

    A good example that I have seen is when you put a cd in the drive and as the drive closes, you press <Windows>E (to start Explorer). Explorer loads but does not complete the display untill the operating system has finished probing the cd and setting things up. Now during this "wait", I am not sure if the port output is suspended or not but if it is, a que of step instructions will start to form in the port buffer and once the probe of the cd is complete, all the instructions will be sent to the port regardless of the delays that are supposed to be between them.
    Results : Rapid tool movement at uncontroled (very short) intervals and the faster the pc, the faster the steps in the que will be dumped.
    Now if your motor can keep up, there will be rapid movement and if the motors cannot keep up, there will be skipped steps. Both are nasty.

    Best
    Aubrey



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    Registered MrBean's Avatar
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    Hi. I have experienced windows queing instructions when running general PC applications, but never ever while running Mach2/3. The pulse streams from Mach 2/3 seem to be extremely accurate, regardless of what Windows is doing.

    I think the Mach2/3 "pulse engine" pretty much stamps on anything Windows wants to do, and gives priority to timing the pulse stream.

    Like I said. I've never experienced any deviation in stepper motor speed while running a gcode using Mach2/3. I've been using it for about a year now. Anyone else seen any problems relating to this?



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    Aubrey,
    I too have been looking at building a hardware-based motion control /G-code interpreter using PIC or similar microcontroller or possibly some other PLC. I've been intending to start this project for several years now, so I finally got around to building a HobbyCNC kit and started my gantry table.



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    Smile Project

    hi everyone , i am trying to develop a cnc machine using arm processor . But, my typical challenge is to communicate with arm processor through usb instead of parallel printer port . So our biggest challenge is to develop corresponding dll file for the same . So i need to know how to develop a dll file for mach 3 . I need some source code examples for developing dll file for mach 3 .I am new to this big cnc world and dont know where to start . I am trying to develop it as a part of my project . Looking for help .



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