DDSCV1.1 3 and 4 axis offline motion controller

[John S]

Jazz, nothing you say applies to lathe.
Lathe in Mach 3 or 4 just doesn't work.
Dan Malch has managed to get it working in M4 but he's lost 3 months of his life. Is that worth it ?

Me I can't even get M4 to run, error message after error message and not one reply to forum posts.



Error message at the bottom, Line 42: I word given for arc in YZ plane.

Now correct me please but in line 4 does it not say G18 ?

And according to Mach's published list of G-Code G18 is XZ plane for lathe.

[Boyan Silyavski]

It's poor workman that blames his tools.!! . . . . There are many 1000's of people using these products with no trouble and even more using Mach3 very succesfully.
So maybe you might want to look at what your doing wrong if things are not working as expected.?

My cabinet is steel. Line cables are 3 wire with ground connected. Every bit inside is connected to its own regulated power supply, no sharing. All PSU are shielded and grounded. With line filter before them to separate from servos or VFD eventual RFI /removed now as no help/. Signal and PSUs cables are Twisted, Shielded, Grounded. . Hell, even my Ethernet cable was CAT7 . How many people use cat7 cable to boards? My LPT cable to board and inside cabinet was shielded too.
My garage PC on other side is good for graphic design, i have all versions of Windows and even some you maybe have not heard of / custom builds made for fast processing / and i am around PCs from 1995 and repaired PCs and laptops for quite some years for other people.
In short - All here is prepared for connecting a HF plasma torch to machine so i highly doubt its my fault .


I dont trash. I say things how they are. Some boards were working fine, some half, some even not half. None 100%. When i pay 100 or 500 to sb, mentally i expect 100% but in real life i am happy with 90%. things to work. But 50%? Thanks but no. By the way 2 Pockey boards and 2 relay boards are on the way back right now to them. Had high hopes for them being made in EU, but no.

So i don't have your experience, that's why i am testing all on market which intrigues me. Next are some other controllers. And nope, i will not pay 800euro for CSMIO when i could buy a dedicated controller for that price

If i am doing something wrong, hows that the chinese board works now well and the other ones did not? In the same enclosure and same PSU. Its not shielded and by the way i had packed my previous board like a sandwich with aluminum foil at one moment just to check if that could be the problem.


And the time spend with boards were because of their crappy manuals also i must say. Pokeys for example. take a look at their Mach3 forum section. How many times the same bloody question Spindle and Probe. Not a word in the manual. I had to ask them also. Its like swimming against the current with some people.

So, no. Offline controllers may be at the moment a bit short of what could do, but when that shortcomings are ironed, i bet in the DIY world no one will buy anything else . And this controller we are speaking here for less than Mach3 / 4 licence is a no brainer . The red is not for you Dean but for the people who will read that post

[John S]

And the time spend with boards were because of their crappy manuals also i must say. Pokeys for example. take a look at their Mach3 forum section. How many times the same bloody question Spindle and Probe. Not a word in the manual. I had to ask them also. Its like swimming against the current with some people.

This is the bit I feel for.
On another forum it was pointed out to me that PlanetCNC andd UCCNC can now do threading and rigid tapping so last night I wasted another hour to take a look, here is a copy of the post.

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It seems that PlanetCNC and UCCNC now support fully synchronised threading as well as rigid tapping.

Martin.

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Thank you for those links Martin, I wasn't aware that either could do threading on lathe.

However having spent nearly an hour perusing both websites and down loading both hardware and software manuals for both I'm non plussed at what they can do. This is starting to get familiar ??

Planet CNC first.

The board says it can take spindle encoder in but in the 35 page manual of which 7 pages are spent telling you how to wire all the different types of limits switch [ which aren't actually needed for the machine to run] but no explanation of how to wire the encoder in and not even is it just index pulse or multi line. I suspect it's index pulse only which is not a lot of good for accurate work

UCCNC next

Again hardly any information other than a video of threading with a felt tipped pan. The hardware manual is 21 pages long 19 of which tell you how to connect it up to the ethernet port, [ is it THAT hard ? and if it is WHY ? ]

Then the last two pages tell you what the terminals are in flowing terms like output 1, 2,3 etc for Port 1, poert 2 is identical but no a clue where to connect to ?

So please excuse me if I don't throw 215 Euros for the UCCNC board and software plus breakout board and another 263 Euro for the Planet offering.

I don't think the shelf can stand any more white elephants.

Seriously lads it's this total lack of support that is killing this. They know if or how good it works but it's a closely guarded secret.

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The reference to the shelf and white elepants is the fact that the shelf above the bench where I do all the CNC work is literally full of controllers, breakout boards etc etc that either don't work, are no longer supported etc, etc to the tune of somewhere between £1500 and £2000 and I for one have now decided after the Mach 4 fiasco above that enough is enough.