Hi Ken

No stupid questions exist (the first time anyway). I do not believe there is any issue running mach on dual and quad core CPU's, many people on the Mach support forum are currently successfully doing so at the moment. I believe this is to do with a wider problem of people not understanding the technology.

The operating system is the traffic cop that controls the cores at the lowest level. A patched up SP2 or SP3 windows XP install is most certainly multicore enabled. The software then sits above this and the software itself may or may not be multi core aware and able to multithread, as us nerds call it !!. The worst case scenario is that one core may lay idle.

What is important is the core clock speed to obtain a system that can step quickly. When choosing a CPU for a machine controller it is best to select the highest clock speed per core rather than a greater number of cores and a lesser clock speed. As a practical example a dual core 3 gig per core CPU can theoretically pulse faster than a 2.4 gig quad core CPU and probably cost less. In some applications core clock speed is everything, Mach and EMC are just these applications.

The pulse speed of your set up can be tested using the trial of the Mach3 software. Install as suggested and then in the Mach3 install directory run the drivertest.exe, it will let you know how fast your controller can pulse. It will also indicate how much variation between pulses in micro seconds (10 -6s) as the test runs. Running mach itself the diagnostics will also indicate the pulse rate and show the pulse rate changing in real time. The steadier the better but due to the way the operating system itself services it own requests some small change is inevitable.

The higher pulsing rates that Mach offers are used when the stepper drivers (Gecko Drives are often used in the Mechmate) are set to finer resolutions of microstepping. The machine can be ran at the same pulsing frequency but at the cost of speed. By pulsing at at higher rate the machines cutting speed and rapid rate will once again return. There are practical limits to both the speed and pulse rate that vary from machine to machine. Some of these elements could be the memory bus speed of the host PC or the control wiring's resistance to electrical interference.

regards
Ross

Like the rumble pad

There is concern the "noise" created by routers, drives, PWR supplies and VFD's in combination cause interference for wireless devices and could create errant inputs. Last thing you want is jogging mid cut sequence!
I'll be watching with interest!

Rumbled Pad and Web Cameras
 

Hi Besser

I am using a solid metal control box that contains both the power supply and the stepper drivers. A grounded solid metal box is the most effective Faraday cage there is. It was on this basis and the reports that others have also used this means of control successfully that I decided to try it

My "portable electrocution kit" on my first post to the thread also appeared to work OK with the pad and it provided no RF shielding from the PSU, two drivers and two steppers. No router was in the mix but it was successful enough to proceed with the experiment to full scale.

Could I ask you about your camera monitoring. I have had great issues with long cable runs on USB web cams and when they say 5M max on the USB standard they mean it. I have found that cameras such as the Logitech Pro 9000 are very sensitive to the cable quality and cable length. Could you let me know what model IR cam you are using, how it connects back to the controller machine and the cable length you are able to run. If you have a screen capture or video of the web cam output I would greatly appreciate the chance to "see what you are seeing".

The reason I ask is that is that my controller can be remotely monitored and a web cam would be very easy and cheap to add, so you got my interest !!

kind regards
Ross

For what it is worth, I have been running my 4 axis router from a Foxconn 45CSX MoBo with on board 330 Atom CPU, 2gigs ram at 35khz via LPT, for some time now, with no problems.

Greg

Hi Greg

Can you please run the driver test in mach, record your score and get back to us with the pulse rate, as that was the figure I was referring with respect to the Atom 330 Intel board. That way we can compare apples with apples. My test was also conducted with the max 2 gig Ram these boards allow.

cheers
Ross

Ken

Could you also run the test and report back. Your machine will help give a larger sample of performance figures for the Atom 330's even if the motherboards they are on may not be the same.

Don't get me wrong here fellas, there is a lot to like about these little form factor boards (after all I did buy one). It is a very simple experiment to do, so over to you now so we can find out what is the typical pulsing rate.

Thanks Ross

Stopping Twist
 

Clamped up some PFC over the square section and it held everything really straight while it was welded. Besides the fairly brutish over welding, it is straight and has great penetration of the weld. The last one I did was the best - a familiar story played out as any one learns a new skill.
Attachment 8501

Ross

Pulse speed that the driver settles on will vary with which driver version you are using. Art has been playing around with the driver and it's ability to settle at close to the called for rate, in the last couple of revisions.

The pulse speed so long as it is near the setting is not important. What is is important is how stable it is.

The Atom 330 that I am using is rock solid. As I said I am running 35khz kernel speed.

Where the little Mini ITX all in one MoBO shows it's limits is with the on-board graphics. When running very large 3D files with around a million very small segment moves, then I turn off the toolpath view. All other cutting I leave it on.

Greg

Ross, I wouldn't mind running the test but I'm not apple, but orange, Ubuntu OS & EMC2... My latency result is 16500us (worst result over at least 5 test over 15min ~90min),

Greg, I recon the atom is intentionally design to do poorly in the graphics department... imagine the impact it will do to the computer industry if everyone is running multimedia games, media center... etc on the Atom... the industry will collapse :)

Ross, you don't have to clamp them that way. What I will do is to fit the frame up nice & square, spot the corners of the tube ends, i.e. 4 spots per joint, spot weld on one side 1st then flip over for the other cpots.

then weld by joining spot, joint 2 spot welds on one corner, then weld on the diagonal joint... do the zig zag sequence.

I never bother to fight thermal expension, just go along with what they like & you will end up with a really nice job.

Hope this helps

"Latency" of 16500 milliseconds not sure what this is in your Linux EMC environment but my Atom 330 gave 16500 pulses per second on the driver test in Mach and refused to shift above that. I think you might have confirmed what I said all along.

Ken - Nvidia have produced a new chipset for the Atom 330 called the Ion. It is everything you explained a multimedia beastie that will give the little Atom enough help to do full HD. there goes the industry, haha.

Thanks Ken - I did do the spot and diagonal thing but my skills with welding are no where near as good as my IT skills. I am also welding on the uneven garage floor not ideal at all.
Ross

I weld under the same condition as your & my welding skill is worst then my english...:D

Don't weld too much in on spot, I keep my welds around 1.5in or about 4cm each time & move to weld other spot that are at least 2 feet away or the furthers from it... The idea is to warm up the whole steel assembly as evenly as possible & don't quence in water to cool... rest in between helps too, give time for the steel to warm/cold more evenly & good for the weldinng machine tooe...

Not really, Ion is another product to "upgrade" the Atom... so more product for sale, industry saved...

I find that since I don't weld every day, I like to take a piece of scrap and run beads on it to setup the welder (Who knows what I was doing with it last time) and get my hands back into the groove.

Also I see your welding on primered surface. Hit those joints with a rough wire brush on your angle grinder and clean the steel where it has no contaminants. Also do this where the ground is attached.

http://i14.ebayimg.com/04/i/001/5f/5a/15f7_1_sbol.JPG

You will be amazed at how clean surface and good grounds help your weld.

Also make sure your rods are for mild steel. Also if your rods are some just lying about the shop - go buy new ones.

http://articles.directorym.com/How_t...tanton_CA.html

Below came from the site above.

◦Electrodes. There are many specialized welding electrodes, used for specific alloys and types of metals, such as cast or malleable iron, stainless or chromolly steel, aluminum, and tempered or high carbon steels. A typical electrode consists of the wire rod in the center covered with a special coating (flux)which burns as the arc is maintained, consuming oxygen and producing carbon dioxide in the weld area to prevent the base metal from oxidizing or burning away in the arc flame during the welding process. Here are some common electrodes and their uses:
■E6011 electrodes are a mild steel electrode with a cellulose fiber coating. The first two numbers in the electrode identification is the tensile strength, measured in pounds per square inch times 1,000. Here, the yield of the electrode would be 60,000 PSI.
■E6010 electrodes are a reverse polarity electrode, commonly used for welding steam and water pipes, and are particularly useful for overhead welding, since the metal holds its position while in a liquid state, being drawn into the molten weld pool by the flow of the direct current from the electrode to the workpiece.
■Other specific purpose E60XX electrodes are available, but since E6011s are considered a standard, general purpose rod, and E6010s are considered the standard for reverse polarity DC welding, they will not be covered in detail in this article.
■E7018 electrodes are low hydrogenflux coated steel rods, with a high yield tensile strength of 70,000 PSI. These are often used in assembling structural steel used in the construction industry, and in other applications where a strong filler material and higher strength weld is required. Note that, although these rods provide greater strength, they are less forgiving in respect to achieving a clean, high-grade weld at incorrect amperages and with dirty (rusted, painted, or galvanized) steels. These electrodes are called low hydrogen due to every attempt to lower the hydrogen content. These electrodes must be stored in an oven with a temperature between 250ºF and 300ºF. This temperature is above the water boiling point of 212ºF at sea level. This temperature keeps the moisture (dew)(H2O) in the air from collecting in the flux.

You can also reverse the polarity on your welder. Make sure it is setup for your welding.

Oh yeah - Your build is looking awesome !!!

Hi Mike
 

Thanks all good advice, I was moving the earth closer to where I was welding but did not think to take the paint off on the earth. That's a keeper AND I will remove the paint. I asked an old hand about it and he just grinned when I asked about paint and cutting oil deposits - oh well looks like your my new weld master.

Regards
Ross

Greg we are talking around on subject not on the subject. I have asked about the driver test result and that is what the original post and my comments were about. If you are running Mach it would only take a few minutes to run the test and it is already loaded in the root directoy of the Mach install (drivertest.exe).

Last go on this one as the rest of the posts are a nice conversation about the Atom but not a test I'm afraid. Maybe we just think a little differently but I am trying to be as clear as possible on this one.

Ross

I can tell you that the Atom 330 settles at 35005 when on 35khz kernel speed.

However this tells me nothing much at all, and will vary according to what driver is being used. That is with version 517.

The driver tests main purpose is to test stability and variation of the time in interupt. This is what is important to Mach's ability to produce clean and consistent pulsing.

Greg

Atom Wins - Cut me a Slice of Humble Pie
 

Hi Greg and Ken

I have built up an Atom 330 D945GCLF2 controller with a clean install of XP SP2, the latest Mach3 release and ran the drivertest.exe again.

This latest build pulses right through all the kernel speeds to 100k reliably making my previous test a dud and my statement that the Atom could only pulse to 16500 pulses per second, quite wrong. The original test machine was running a variant of Windows Server 2003 at the time, I believe this was the source of my error.

The pulses per second on the driver test are stable. The variation in the frequency it reports against the mach kernel frequency are just an artifact of using the windows clock to measure the pulses. It also very reliably repeated the reported frequencies in subsequent tests. Where we skidded off the rails was that I just could not tell if Greg was actually running the test or getting the pulse frequency from somewhere else.

So the Atom 330 has been unfairly accused, Greg takes the high ground and the test machine is now a nice little compact box that hums away on only 40 watts of power. Before anyone rushes out and buys an Atom 330 motherboard on the strength of the test, remember that the Nvidia Ion graphics chip is now also available in combination with this processor and it will address the slow video response that Greg reported on large 3D files and it should be greatly improved.

Clarity through confusion is a path but probably not the preferred path !!!

Humbly Ross

AFAIK, the ION mobo is priced at about US300, at this price, IMHO, defeats my cost effective criteria. I'll still op for the D945GCLF (the old atom single core mobo ~USD75 w/o ram). Low cost, small form factor, very low power demand (4W, but if you install an hard disk, the HDD will draw a lot more power then this typically 20~30W) & the graphic is already more then enough as a dedicated machine to run MM.

Ross, take the frame welding as learning opportunity, have a better feel of how thermal distortion works , this will go a long way when you put up your gantry & Y-car.

Hi Ken

Life and the choices within it can be complex and rarely straightforward. One tip I can give you is, if you can develop a appreciation for brownish paint you can mix together other peoples leftovers for nothing. The real question of course is, do you actually like brown paint? I'm not seeing a lot of brownish Mechmates so I'm thinking to a degree everyone has indulged themselves in some vanity spending over and above pure function.

Regards
Ross

Two Table Base Sides Done
 

Welded up some more of the table base and now have two for my efforts.
Metal Head Mike - see the paint missing on the new welds. The removal of the primer paint was done by hand with a stainless wire bush but it worked OK.

Regards
Ross

Test Fitted Base
 

The next step of the base was to test fit the ladder sections together. I definitely was concerned about the accuracy of the build, especially watching that metal move around under some heat.

Anyway bolted it up rough and the diagonal came in at less than 1mm out of square - YES !!

Setting up a Datum for the Table Base Final Welding
 

Despite getting the table square on the diagonal, other factors needed to be considered. In order to eliminate any twist across the base, the X beams were placed on the garage floor. Each was leveled then further leveled relative to each other. This created a nice flat plane that I could do the final welding of the table base upon. The datum I am using is the top of the table base, so it is being welded upside down to achieve this.

I am so looking forward to having a big, relatively flat work surface to work on. As you might have seen in some of the other photos someone has put stuff all over the the table saw !!

Ross

You can't beat that for level and plumb.

That wire hand brush is fine. I keep one by my machines and use it all the time.

You should go ahead and weld you up some work benches now since the MM will be busy cutting up wood in the future :)

Question about the angle gauge,
given the size of them... aren't they small to measure accurate, spirit levels are much larger? I have no experience in this area.. just wondering.

Ries

Hi Ries

Yes the narrow base means that they are only highly accurate on a machined surface. I use it for setting saw blades and the drill press table and those applications it are very accurate, equal if not superior to an engineers square I use. You can actually see the deflection in say a drop saw as the weight of your hand goes onto the handle to make the cut and allow for it.

The device is just great for a quick run around to check things out. If you look back in my posts you will see me leveling the X beams and in that shot I am using a 1200mm level on a alloy section to get them right. So this is exactly what you are getting at, the gauge was used as a check in this circumstance. I find myself using the little Wixi gauge all the time and would be most unhappy if it ever got broken.

Hey I liked your T slot base on the table. I have been looking at how I might doing something the same and along comes your photo. Did you use a T slot cutter with the boards in place or some other technique? Also congratulations on your machine, a great effort.

Regards
Ross

Here is the link to the product if you would like to investigate further.
http://www.wixey.com/anglegauge/index.html

Ross

Foot Plates
 

Finished welding up the table base but no pics at least until I have had some more time to "groom" my distinctive style of welds a little !

Also put on the four foot plates for the adjustable feet on the 100x50 PFC legs. They turned out very well and at some later stage I will sit these feet in a vibration absorbing surround.

Ross