Puruvesi MyCNC-ET7 Controller first look.

[Neale]

A few points to discuss there! First of all, although I did have some initial problems in getting the thing to work at all under Win10, it is now running OK (although there are one or two minor tweaks PV are making to the Windows version to make it fit a bit better with the way that windowing works on Win10 but nothing that affects functionality).

Physically - the CSMIO box I used (IP/M) is better packaged, DIN rail fitting, etc, while the PV boards are unprotected PCBs. However, I found the connections easy to make (once I had the thing bolted in place) and the removable connectors make that a bit easier than the rather fiddly connections on the IP/M - in my control box, anyway, where the IP/M was fairly deep into the box. Electrically it was virtually a wire-for-wire replacement for the IP/M, 24V signalling, differential outputs, etc, with the exception that the IP/M allows a choice of common +24V or common ground for each input and the ET6 groups them in fours. I had to change a couple of my inputs but it was easy to do, fortunately, and what I now have would have worked equally well with the IP/M (and I now wonder why I didn't do it that way to begin with).

Remember that I am using the ET6, the baby of the ET family, and use steppers, not servos, and especially not analogue servos. I am using a slave axis (X+A) and after a little bit of fiddling with homing macros (these need customising for each machine although the basics are done using built-in macro creation wizards) homing and gantry squaring work fine. If you are not using a slave axis (sounds like you are not) I suspect that the standard homing macros generated by the wizards would be fine. In your case, you could run the Z homing wizard twice, giving the appropriate parameters (home switch ID) each time, then the overall homing macro calls Z1, Z2, X, Y macros in order.

It has taken me some time to sort out tool-height setting macros and I'm not quite sure if I'm there yet (been using the machine and parked this problem for the time being) and the tool-change macro (for manual tool change, in a way that lets me set tool height as part of the process) is still a work in progress. I'll be testing my latest version later this morning as the current job needs it! It's not obvious how you set things like the G28 tool-change position but again, I guess that this is part of the learning process and I had to climb the same learning curve with Mach3.

It's probably taken me a bit longer to get the ET6 set up than it did with Mach3 - but then, with Mach3, I never did get automatic gantry squaring working. Swings and roundabouts.

I have looked at the way that screen layout is defined and it's something that I want to play with. In particular, myCNC has separate tab pages for gcode (showing code progress, rewind, things like that - stuff you tend to use or watch while running) and basic machine controls (particularly "home all"). I would like a custom page that has the bits I regularly use always available on the same page, and things used less often (like selecting gcode file, odd bits like that) on a second page. I don't think that this would be too difficult but I just haven't actively played with this yet. There is no GUI for screen design although I am reasonably familiar with XML so I'm not too worried about having to work at this level. Maybe this is another Linux-type philosophy that has carried over - real programmers edit text files, only wimps use GUIs

At the moment, I have just one reservation that I have not properly investigated. A recent job involved adaptive clearing (as per Fusion 360) in a small area that needed to leave a small number of projecting "pips". F360 generates a lot of short straight moves (we are talking a few thousand lines of gcode) to achieve this, and the cutting action seemed to generate more machine vibration than I have seen in the past. My impression was that the CV mode was not properly smoothing direction changes as it should. However, I might be being too sensitive and I cannot now remember how the Mach3/IP/M combination handled this. It's something that I need to look at (maybe need to tune CV parameters?) before I make any formal statements about it. It's a pity that there are not more users of this hardware/software to exchange experience yet.

Happy to answer any more questions - if I can from my limited experience to date.

Edit - I've checked the CV settings and rather as I suspected, either the default was silly or I changed it without noticing/thinking. The max angle that maintains CV action as opposed to stop/start was 1 degree - in other words, it was almost always using stop/start. I changed it to 45 deg and things are much smoother - there's a surprise! I'm not sure how much smoother the s-curve trajectory planning should make but it's all looking fine anyway.