DDSCV1.1 3 and 4 axis offline motion controller

[m_c]

But while you are laughing many people will retrofit it on 3 or 4 axis mills and this will seriously undermine the market for EU made and USA made stuff for DIY. Will see who laughs after 2 years.

Plus now that i have found the good expensive controllers for 500 euro from manufacturer, per piece, not wholesale price, it will be interesting to see how CSMIO will sell after an year or 2 their controllers for 900 euro, even if the offer all the support in the world.

Things could be very different in two years.
Every chance the Euro could very well implode by then, along with China's artificially deflated economy.
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I've got a friend who works in materials import and export, and he reckons it's just a case of when, not if, the Chinese economy causes major problems. Brexit has caused him enough headaches already, but I think he fully expects to be out of work for a long time once China loses grip on inflation, and global demand plummets.

[JAZZCNC]

Things could be very different in two years.
Every chance the Euro could very well implode by then, along with China's artificially deflated economy.

Things could be very different in two weeks time if that lunatic Trump wins in few hours time.!!!

[Boyan Silyavski]

Things could be very different in two weeks time if that lunatic Trump wins in few hours time.!!!

Hopefullynot,comeonLee,fixthatquickreplyplease

[magicniner]

Things could be very different in two weeks time if that lunatic Trump wins in few hours time.!!!

You forgot to cross your fingers while you typed that! :-(

[m_c]

<snip>
I bought a K-Flop a while ago as having been told it can do lathe which it can IF you are able to program in C++

So it stands on the shelf with the rest of the very expensive components that promise the earth but never deliver.

Some very valid points regarding support.
One of the things I like about Dynomotion, is Tom (main man behind the company) is very responsive to any questions. Any bugs discovered are dealt with quickly. Only last week a bug was found in their new screen editor, and the fix was released today, which was actually pretty slow for them, but he had already posted a work around within a few hours, so a full fix wasn't urgent.
It's not unknown for him to release patches within a day to fix proven bugs.
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Yes, they can be daunting to setup, but if you post up on the Yahoo group, or the cnczone forum, you'll get help. I've seen people with no programming background have their systems up and running within a couple days, which isn't bad by the time you factor in time for replies, and for the people to gather/post/test things.
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For basic systems, the hardest part is the main configuration file (configures the KFlop with what axis outputs/inputs are needed), but there are sample files included, and for the axis configuration information, the KMotion configuration program can generate the required code for you to copy and paste in.
It's only when you want to start doing custom things that the C coding really kicks in, but there are plenty sample files included.
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For a basic lathe, running Mach3, all you need is the main config file, with just the axis information for the two axis. Everything else can be handled in Mach 3. For KMotionCNC, with the new screen editor, simple things like flipping outputs with a button, can now be handled without having to write any C code.
However KFlops also suffer with the Mach3 slow pull out problem when threading. The problem is although Mach3 switches back from mm/rev to mm/min mode, it uses the mm/rev value as the mm/min value, so for a 2mm pitch thread, you get 2mm/min pull out, instead of the set federate.
KMotionCNC on the other hand doesn't. Provided you write the G-code correctly, it'll group together all the required synchronised moves, so you can pull out however you want.
Somebody posted an example not that long ago which involved a taper lead in to a parallel thread to a 45deg pullout.
The only requirement is you need a quadrature output encoder on the spindle. Single/multi-slot sensors won't work.
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However, if you want to clear some shelf space, I'd buy the KFlop, as it can be handy having an extra one for testing.

[John S]

The price for a commercial Mach4 license plus a good motion controller gets close enough to a commercial grade stand-alone controller from China that the only thing keeping New Fangled Solutions going is the ignorance of their potential customers to the options available!

- Nick

I still follow the Mach support forums on their web site and the Yahoo groups and there are still plenty of posts about erratic behavior with Smooth stepper and also Pokeys.

Mach 4, unlike mach 3 is no longer a self contained program as the parallel port operation in Mach 4 is very limited and mach 4 needs an external controller to run.
This means Brian no longer has any control over a full system and so far Mach and any of the external controller manufacturers has bothered to bundle the two products up for an easy install.

Being interested in Lathe I have been following Dan Maulch's journey to get mach4 working with the Pokeys57CNC board.
It looks like he has finally got it working after 6 months or so with a lot of help from Pokeys and seemingly none from Mach 4 but why has he had to do this ? He's not being paid by Pokeys or Brian ?

Last year at the CNC conference near Detroit Ron Ginger set a workshop up to convert 10 or 12 Hi-torque lathes to run off Mach 4 and pokeys with a box built by Arturo Duncan at CNC4PC, I believe the box cost around $900.
According to Ron everyone left the workshop with a working lathe but only one person has posted since then about their machine and that was to say that due to issues with Mach 4 he couldn't get his machine running and so far it still isn't running.

Not one person posted a video? and Ron will not show a finished thread?

But using the plug ins that were available at the Workshop Dan Maulch could not get a lathe to thread, It took quite a few upgrades to the plug in before Dan's machine could work.

Personally i can't get mach 4 to run on my desktop machine, it won't run code generated by Mach3 even though a Chinese Fanuc clone will run the same file with no problem. It comes up with error messages saying it's running in the wrong plane even though G18 is in the startup line and others have reported the same and still no answer from Mach 4 support.

2 / 3 weeks ago Dan finally got his pendant working with Pokeys and posted how to do it. Quite a long convoluted post, to set this up.
I decided to see if the supplied pendant would work with the NEW990TD-b controller so took the pendant, plugged it into the back by it's 25 pin plug and what do you know, ? it worked.

Art when he handled Mach 3 had a whole different ball game. He listened to what people had to say, wasn't afraid to admit mistakes and go back to rectify them and mainly he was able to work smart,

Since retiring he's written Gearotic V1.0, V2.0 and is now on V3.0. He has written Auggie which is a 3 D printer and laser motion controller, a lot like M3 and Brain still hasn't managed to get mach4 reasonably stable.

Sorry for me, far too little and far too late.