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Hi, i've switched recently from the parallel port to an ESS i add since a long time, then to an UC300-ETH i've purchased mainly because it does support spindle encoder for rigid tapping.

I'm using Mach3 3.043.062.

I had no issue with homing before, but since i did switch to the UC300-ETH i can't get the X axis homing.

Here is what i do in the homing script :

RefCombination 4
RefCombination 3
Code "M931"

Ref Z axis, then Ref X and Y axis. Then run M931 macro for a couple other tasks.


Z is homing correctly, then Y, but X does not home. M931 does not execute neither. I tried to remove M931 but that does not help.

As a side note, the homing was a lot faster with the ESS : refcombination was working and the dual speed homing did help too : fast speed to reach the homes switches, and slow speed to retract to the home point. The UC300 is using the mach3 homing settings with a single speed. Would be nice if we could have refcombination and a dual speed homing.

Thanks,

Olivier.

If I recall refcombination function is not implemented, but I will ask my collegue and confirm later.

cncdrive wrote:If I recall refcombination function is not implemented, but I will ask my collegue and confirm later.

Thanks. In the ESS there is an option to get refcombination working. The only drawback is that if it is enabled, then you cannot use anymore G28.1. This is not a big deal because single axis referencing if needed during program execution can still be done by a macro with DoOEMButton(1022 to 1027).



This option did solve homing for slaved axis too. The dual speed homing setup we have in the ESS is very interesting too, go at high speed to the home switches positions, then retract from the switch to find the home point at a slow speed. For machines who have the homes switches at axis extremities (most machines), this is a big time saving specially for large routers.

As a side note Refcombination is not working correctly with Mach3 3.043.066 and probably not with 3.043.067. I needed to stay with 3.043.062 that seems the latest stable recommended version.

If Refcombination is used with Mach3 3.043.066, subsequent scripts are not executing correctly or not executing at all. At least this is what i did see on my setup, but i've seen users reporting the same problems.

I can't remember what the 3.043.066 version gives that 3.043.62 does not have, probably last minutes small changes or corrections, just before or after Art Fenerty did retire. For me, the 3.043.062 version is fully working.

Olivier.

Our motion controllers don't support this function unfortunately.

What you've mentioned, the separate homing up and homing down speed is implemented into our UCCNC software also, so you can run the axes to home with high speed and register the reference position with low speed.

cncdrive wrote:Our motion controllers don't support this function unfortunately.

What you've mentioned, the separate homing up and homing down speed is implemented into our UCCNC software also, so you can run the axes to home with high speed and register the reference position with low speed.

Yes i did see this inside UCCNC, nice feature and very nice software.

Unfortunately the amount of work to switch to UCCNC would be quite high. I should learn C# and translate my toolchanger VBScript macro; my Toolchanger screen, as well as a couple other things. Would ask testing too, specially for Modbus master.

Doable but not easily.

Refcombination was something i did ask to Art a long time ago just before the final testing phase of the last version of Mach3. Seems that some users are using it as ESS did implement it in an evolution of their firmware.

The UCCNC supports Visual Basic macro language also.
You just have to write the #VB word to the first line of the macro if you want the UCCNC to use the Visual Basic compliler instead of the C#.
However yes, the macro scripting language differs from Mach3, but most things are similar though.

cncdrive wrote:The UCCNC supports Visual Basic macro language also.
You just have to write the #VB word to the first line of the macro if you want the UCCNC to use the Visual Basic compliler instead of the C#.
However yes, the macro scripting language differs from Mach3, but most things are similar though.

Ok i didn't know that, good point. But most of the work would be to read all the documentation and learn the internals of UCCNC. Not to learn C#. I did some small projects in C so C# should not be much different.
I would have to learn a new screen editor too.

I will probably do it later, but for now i prefer to concentrate on implementing rigid tapping with Mach3 and the UC300. Interesting project with a custom encoder wheel to build as i have an integrated ATC spindle where it's not possible to put an external encoder. So i need to modify the internal single track encoder.

As a side note, if you could implement Refcombination and dual speed homing in the mach3 driver, you would have a few advantages : something better compared to low cost clone hardware, stronger alternative to the ESS that have this, and make happy users that still want to use Mach3 for some reasons. I could test that if you do it. It would nicely complete the very advanced rigid tapping feature you have, only found on more expensive controllers.

Other point, Refcombination is very interesting on a 5 axis machine where homing 5 axis separately is time consuming.

Last,most users that stay on Mach3 are probably advanced users for those main reasons :

- It is time consuming to relearn a new programing environment and a new screen designer, to adapt toolchanger macros or other advanced hardware or wizards.
- UCCNC does not have yet integrated conversational wizards. Advanced Mach3 users will probably do that soon if they find inside UCCNC the same advanced features set they had with Mach3.

For other users and beginners they have a better time to choose UCCNC directly for sure. More modern, more polished, integrated probing screen. But mach3 will still have probably a large user base for a few years more as it is still working on Windows 7 and 10.