Help setting up Ethernet Smooth Steper

[komatias]

Leave the pulse width as it is on the motors tuning page. Quoting from a conversation I had a while ago: "pulse width" settings in the Motor Tuning dialog do nothing". Neither does the option on ports and pins menu regarding the clock speed (25, 35, 45 khz)

Your Smoothstepper will by default run at 250kHz, This is set in the plugin control menu for the ESS.

[AndyFromWarp9TD]

In motor tuning, the step and direction pulse widths are totally ignored by the SmoothStepper. As a hardware vendor and plugin designer we just have no way to hide those fields in the main app.

Here is a page that answers this and other similar questions about Mach3.

Andy

[Tenson]

Thanks, yes it makes sense that the step frequency is setting the pulse width - it's just a different way to say the same thing.

Do you think the 1KHz Controller Frequency will be fine for my old Pentium 4 laptop?

[AndyFromWarp9TD]

Actually, step frequency is not the same same thing as pulse width; lets use some easy numbers for math:

• You have a 1 kHz pulse frequency, which means you have 1000 pulse occurring per second, or one every ms
• If the pulse had a 50% duty cycle (on half the time off half the time) it would be on for 0.5ms or 500 us for its pulse width.
• If the pulse had a 1% duty cycle, it would have a pulse with of 10 us and then be off for 990 us.
• If the pulse had a 90% duty cycle, it would have a pulse with of 900 us and then be off for 100us.

Step frequency is how often the pulses are being generated. Pulse Width is how long each pulse is on before it turns off to await for the next pulse to be generated.

Start with 1 kHz. You can adjust from there later if you need too, but you probably won't.

~Andy

[Tenson]

Begs the question, what do the step and dir pulse length do in the mach3 menu when using their PP driver, if the pulse length is determined by the desired velocity?

[AndyFromWarp9TD]

So I have never used the parallel port in Mach3 since I have always used a SmoothStepper. My *guess* is that if you use a 1 us wide pulse, they will come out 5x more often that a 5 us wide pulse would. The higher number of pulses would make the system more responsive, but you might miss a pulse easier. Again, I am guessing how they are doing it in the parallel port version since we just ignore those parameters in motor tuning.

[JAZZCNC]

Sorry Tenson I've only just seen your PM but looks like you have been sorted by none other than the Man himself.!!. we are honoured.!!. . Lol
This probably answers the question why plug-in's never get finished. . .

[AndyFromWarp9TD]

Sorry Tenson I've only just seen your PM but looks like you have been sorted by none other than the Man himself.!!. we are honoured.!!. . Lol
This probably answers the question why plug-in's never get finished. . .

Support time does come out of development time, but it is worth it to help our customers. Also I try to take the results of most support questions and add them to our website in the hopes that others can have their questions pre-answered.

As for the plugins, Greg has been working on the Mach4 v2 plugin for the ESS. There are some significant changes under the hood, and we will be releasing a beta version of it shortly.

Andy

[Tenson]

One more question which is probably more about Mach3...

It used to be that if I used 'Run From Here' command it would rapid to the start location at a safe Z height. Now it seems to descend to Z=0 to move. How can I fix that?

EDIT: Ahh sorted it. There was a 'Safe_Z Setup' option to set in the 'Config' menu. For some reason I don't recall ever setting this in the past. I did install the latest Mach 3 when adding the ESS.

[JAZZCNC]

As for the plugins, Greg has been working on the Mach4 v2 plugin for the ESS.

I'll be watching closely Andy thou Brian and team at Artsoft need to pull there figure out and get Mach4 working more stable.!! . Still some way to go for me.!