Soft Limit errors appear all the time

[dezsoe]

Hi Guenther,

I tested your profile and found no errors. I can't imagine what's happening there. Yesterday evening it was running for about 3 hours without any problems.

I would like to ask you to do some tests.

1. Copy the following code to e. g. M20000.txt in your macro folder. When you get softlimit message, run the macro from MDI and tell me what shows up in the status field.

Code: Select all

AS3.Additemtolistbeginning("Softlimits is turned " + (exec.mainform.UCsetup.UCset.Generalsettings.Enablesoftlimits ? "on" : "off"), 2);

2. Set up a small softlimit border on all axes, e. g. set minus to -10 and plus to 10. Ensure that softlimit is off, then try to run any code. Tell me if it stops, and if stops, tell me the actual machine coordinates where it stopped and the values you have set for softlimits. You can also run the above macro in this moment and tell me the result.

[Guenter_Schmied]

Dear Dezsoe,
this installation is running in a customer machine, so for this reason I am a bit delayed with my
answers. And probably it will take some time before I come back with a replay.
But the problem happends all days in this company.
We have 4 more Uccnc installed that work well, have never seen this before. And this
profile of the customer machine I am using on a regular basis It did never happend to
me.
This customer had before a problem with limit switches, it can be now a problem of noise.
But the reports we get from UCCNC was always "Soft limits" no fisical limits.

I have another question, can you tell me how we can make Machine Coordinates to 0 ?(without limitswitches)
We have 3 axis in this machine wired with limit switches, but the A axis runs free.
THere is no need to have a real 0, all machining will start at any point. And if the customer
needs a 0, he uses the engraved dial on the rotary plate, this works ok for him.
By the time the Machine Coordinates of A are at 12000 mm or degrees. How can we reset this
to 0 ?

Regards
Guenther

[cncdrive]

this installation is running in a customer machine, so for this reason I am a bit delayed with my
answers. And probably it will take some time before I come back with a replay.
But the problem happends all days in this company.
We have 4 more Uccnc installed that work well, have never seen this before. And this
profile of the customer machine I am using on a regular basis It did never happend to
me.
This customer had before a problem with limit switches, it can be now a problem of noise.
But the reports we get from UCCNC was always "Soft limits" no fisical limits.

We understand this, but without any possibility to test it will be very hard to impossible to figure out what the problem is,
because we've never seen this problem and can't reproduce it, so at the moment we have no idea what could cause this issue.
So, we have to start on something and what Dezsoe adviced is a good starting point, to know the internal softlimits enabled variable value of the UCCNC,
then we could see if it is set properly or not and then could go on from there with figuring out the cause for this problem.

I have another question, can you tell me how we can make Machine Coordinates to 0 ?(without limitswitches)
We have 3 axis in this machine wired with limit switches, but the A axis runs free.
THere is no need to have a real 0, all machining will start at any point. And if the customer
needs a 0, he uses the engraved dial on the rotary plate, this works ok for him.
By the time the Machine Coordinates of A are at 12000 mm or degrees. How can we reset this
to 0 ?

If that A axis has no home input pin setup then you can simply add it to the homing sequence on the general config page.
Then if you home the A axis it will set the machine coordinate of the axis to the set offet on homing value without moving the axis, because the controller will know that you have no home switch setup.
If the offet value is 0 then homing the axis will set the machine coordinate of the axis to 0 value.

[Guenter_Schmied]

Hi Dezsoe !,

Please if you can explain this a bit further, I could not understand what you mean :

"If that A axis has no home input pin setup then you can simply add it to the homing sequence on the general config page.
Then if you home the A axis it will set the machine coordinate of the axis to the set offet on homing value without moving the axis, because the controller will know that you have no home switch setup.
If the offet value is 0 then homing the axis will set the machine coordinate of the axis to 0 value."

[Guenter_Schmied]

I did come back to the problem of softlimits.

We triyed many things and nothing did any sense. Suddenly in the middle or beginning of a work
the message appeared all the time "softlimits reached...etc etc"....

What we finally did, was, to exchange this customer his PC. We installed in a new PC win7, (the other
was running Xp-pro and nothing more in the hd as UCCNC).

And the problem apparently did not happend again.
This was done 3 or 4 days ago, so we still are waiting with caution.

I suspect there must be any conflict with the drivers of the other XP-pc (foxcomm motherboard-dual core mpu)
(we changed even the HD and did a new installation but nothing helped)

will keep u informed if something happends again.
Thank for your time and help !
Regards
Guenther

[dezsoe]

Hi Dezsoe !,

Please if you can explain this a bit further, I could not understand what you mean :

OK, I'll explain the whole homing process, so you will understand what happens and how to configure it. I tell you the process for one axis, the home all works the same doing the homing axis by axis in the order you set in general settings.

a) You have home switch. The axis starts to move towards the home switch with the set homing speed up. When the switch switches, the axis stops and starts reverse with the set homing speed down until the switch switches back. Then the axis stops. In the moment the switch switches, the axis' machine coordinate is set to 0 or if auto set is checked, the write offset on homing value is written to the axis' machine coordinate.

b) You don't have home switch. The axis will not move. The axis' machine coordinate is set to 0 or, as above, set to offset value. So, if you don't have home switch, you have to move your axis to a known position and do the homing there.

The softlimit coordinates are in machine coordinates so if you do the homing with true values, the softlimits will work as you want.

The G54..G59 fixture coordinates are offset from the machine coordinates. They can be set and zero as you need for your workpiece.

When you exit UCCNC, the software will save the current machine coordinates, so when you restart it, it will know where it was last time.

Normally, you should use home switches, so every time you start UCCNC the first to do is homing the axes.

[Guenter_Schmied]

Hi Dezsoe,

Thanks for your explanation.

It worked well, homing without Limit Switches. It did reset the A axis Machine Coords. to 0.
This is all we needed to know.

Yes, of course we use in all axis (except the A axis) the limit sw. and work well , no complaints.
In the A axis we do not use any limit sw. because we use the dial engraved on the plate, which
is accurate enough for this application.

Regards the SoftLimit error, changing the PC resolved the problem. The customer is working
without any messages any more.

B.Regards, MfG
Guenther