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Post by sandcrab123 on Feb 27, 2012 14:52:00 GMT -8
I am using an AJAX CNC ALLinONE controller runing on Mach3. I was wondering if anyone is using MSM with this set up and if the probe options can be configured to work with Mach and AJAX.
I like the look of your screens and have been following you series in "Digital Machinist".
Thanks
Dan
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Post by DaveCVI on Feb 27, 2012 22:37:14 GMT -8
Dan, Good news and bad on this topic: Bad news first: A while back ( a few months) there was an MSM user that tried to use an Ajax control and we ran into problems. We learned that the Ajax control did not correctly implement the details of probing for mach. As I remember (and it's a bit of a fuzzy memory at this point), the problem was that they did not do probing in the way mach expects. Thus no probing operation worked right - I think I remember that they use a plug-in to interface mach to the control hardware and the plug-in does not set the mach probing led at the end of a G31 operation. That means that mach does not get the right conditions set by the plug-in. Sine MSM uses mach for interface to all control hardware, this meant that I could not fix it at the MSM level. I and their customer both contacted Ajax - I had tracked the bug down to a specific action that the lug-in was not doing for probing ops. I was frankly disappointed that they seemed not to care that they had a bug and were not interested in fixing it. Good News: I don't know if that issue ever got fixed by Ajax or not - I've not heard more from the MSM user. You might search for ajax topic on the MSM support board here and try to contact that poster to see if there is an update. I'm also not sure if this bug applies to the specific ajax control you have or not. Fortunately, you can try this without cost - I suggest trying MSM in trail mode. You get 30 days of full MSM functionality in trial mode. That should be enough time to see if your ajax control model works right or not. At least you can find out, before buying an MSM license - that's the type of thing that trials are good for. Dave I am using an AJAX CNC ALLinONE controller runing on Mach3. I was wondering if anyone is using MSM with this set up and if the probe options can be configured to work with Mach and AJAX. I like the look of your screens and have been following you series in "Digital Machinist". Thanks Dan |
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Post by sandcrab123 on Feb 28, 2012 10:19:39 GMT -8
Thank you Dave, My Ajax Controller is fairly new and I can surely appreciate your frustration with the AJAX support team. I really like the controller, but I did have some issues getting support while doing the retrofit from a Fanuc 10M controller. I know they support a probe and I haven't tried to implement any kind of a probe yet, but reading the AJAX forum there are some issues. Maybe this will stimulate some discussion in the group. I did a search for Ajax here, but no luck. I sure would like to use your probe functions  Maybe something will come up. Scott at Ajax is the man to talk to if you need some help in implementing your MSM with AJAX. Thanks again, Dan |
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Post by DaveCVI on Feb 28, 2012 11:10:36 GMT -8
Hi,
I'm going to add some more historical info so the next person that is interested in an Ajax control can find this post.
My notes lead me to believe that Scott is the fellow i talked to before and he was the one not interested in fixing the problem.
I went back and looked at the notes re this - the issue is that Ajax plug-in does not set the Mach ProbeActive LED correctly when a probe move completes. What I remember is that at the end of the G31 move, the plug-in drops the input line to mach (Ajax thinks they are all done wioht the G31 action) and therefore the plug-in does not give mach accurate information about the state of things at the end of a probe move. What Ajax seems unable to comprehend is that the state of the "finished" G31 operation has to be provided to mach - but they don't do that, so there is no way, after Ajax "gets done", for mach to know if the G31 was "interrupted" by a trigger or ran to the G31 specified position.
Ajax claims that instead they set DRO 1999. However, that's useless to mach - and useless to any script that uses mach's probing APIs. Neither mach nor a mach script knows to look at the Ajax DRO 1999.
Ajax seems to be rather confused as to who is the dog and who is the tail.... Expecting mach to change to match some non-standard Ajax sematics is unreasonable. The purpose of a mach plug-in is to interface mach to OEM controller hardware. The Ajax plug-in simply does not correctly implement the sematics of a probe result in their mach plug-in, thus mach does not get told by the plug-in all the info it requires.
Since MSM uses mach interfaces to get probe status, MSM also gets bad info. Not a thing MSM can do about that - if an OEM makes a bad plug-in to handle motion, then mach and any script using mach are hosed.
What irritated me personally is that I spent a lot of time to drive this to a clear, precise technical issue and I personally called and told Ajax what needed to be fixed in the plug-in. Frankly they appeared to me to not care - their attitude was "we do it differently". So I stopped wasting my time to help them and I was not (and am not) willing to put in special code to to try to work around ajax's bugs.
This is blunt, but from my view point, I sold a single copy of MSM pro for a whopping $59, and then spent a lot of hours (20?) tracking down an Ajax problem for one of my customers. I created 2 or 3 special beta revs just to try to get the ajax control to work. I did that because thats part of what I consider "customer service".
I personally called ajax and said that we have a mutual customer and I've identified a problem, and I would like to tell them what it is, so that together we can solve the customer's problem. When Ajax made it clear that they didn't care to do anything to fix the problem, I gave up.
If you want, I will forward your email address to the other MSM user that ran into the ajax probing problem. Perhaps he will contact you with updated info, or the two of you can call Ajax together. Maybe they need two live customer complaints before they start to care....
Dave
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Post by bonestock on Feb 29, 2012 8:33:31 GMT -8
Dan,
I myself am using the Ajax 3rd Party MPU11/GPIO3D controller. Many months ago Dave and I worked extensively to attempt to integrate the MSM probing interface with the Ajax plugin. Sadly this is still not resolved through no fault of Dave's.
Ajax choose to work around the entire Mach3 probing stack which effectively kills any hope of seamless compatibility. From my conversations with their support staff it is clear this will not be changing any time soon as it was the easiest and most efficient solution on their end for consistent and repeatable probing.
Unlike Mach3 which operates probing in software the Ajax plugin offloads that work to the motion controller. That is why they opted for the solution of polling OEMDRO 1999 to see if contact had be made.
My work-around was to use a screen editor to embed custom probing code into each of the MSM buttons. It has worked okay and resulted in a few bent probe tips as I attempted to implement many of MSM's probing functions.
Reverse engineering the probing scripts in CNC11 helped a lot but they can get pretty involved. If you have a full cnc11 installation still from your initial installation and diagnostics of the Ajax kit you can find them in c:\cncm\system\
-Shane
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Post by sandcrab123 on Mar 26, 2012 13:55:56 GMT -8
Dave and Shane,
First I want to appologize for the late response to your reply's and I appreciate the effort you made to get AJAX to change the way they deal with Mach Probing. Somehow I'm not surprized at Scott's reaction. I'm really happy with my controller, but I'm disappointed with the way AJAX treats their customers. They have a great product and I see the price continuing to rise. the reason I went with the mach software, is price and support. Ajax CNC11 is great software as well, but it seems that every time you want to add a feature it costs.
Throughout the conversion process I had difficulty getting support. Even if it was thier problem it took weeks to get an answer on their forum and the only way I could get through to them on the phone was to call the sales line as they must look at that as a possible sale. They kept telling me that they are working on their support, but you only have to read through the forum to see that this issue has existed for many years and still exists today.
I wish they were more "customer freindly", as I know I could sell some units for them. I don't know what it would take to get them to work with us on the probing issue. I think Scott owns that portion of Centroid so if he turns his back on us, we don't have a lot of choice. I guess you could buy their software and their probe for a considerable added expense. I can't help but wonder if that has anything to do with their motivation.
I'd sure like to use your MSM Dave. Thanks for trying,
Dan
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