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Calling MACH 3 experts

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awemawson:
My CNC Plasma table Mach 3 runs custom screen sets to interface with my Purelogic Ethernet breakout board and ethernet  torch height controller.

It would be very convenient to pull up the "Alt 7 Diagnostic Screen" to monitor a few changes I want to make to limits, estop etc, however "Alt 7" fails to elicit a response.

I can run up a more standard screen set that has the "Alt 7" active and also a button to bring up the diagnostics screen that way, but this screen set doesn't initialise the BOB so the inputs don't get through to it  :bang:

Is there any way I can incorporate the facility into the custom screen sets developed by Purelogic?

(The ethernet BOB seems to just create a standard parallel port on the end of a bit of ethernet cable)

philf:
Andrew,

On the Machsupport forum it was suggested to install a third party (free) parallel port monitor:

http://www.geekhideout.com/parmon.shtml

Phil.

David Jupp:
I've recently had a brief play with the Klaus' Mach screen Designer (suggested from the Screensets area of Machsupport site). 
See http://www.kd-dietz.com/klausphp/pages/eng/machscreen/description/ms_description.html

I found it easy to add a button on a screen to open up a new screen I made to check out some tweaking I'm trying in Mach3.  If you have any experience with Screen Design programs for control software it should be easy enough to pick up.  Least documented item was finding the screenset to select for editing.

You can look at exiting buttons or likely even copy them to other screens.  From what I can see from my brief play, Page0 forms an overlay on other screens - I didn't look into if/how that is enabled/disabled.

Not sure if you can copy a whole screen from one set to another - don't really see why not, but I haven't tried that.

awemawson:
Phil, thanks, I've just down loaded that and will try it when I'm back in the workshop

David, I did briefly look at the Klaus screen designer a couple of weeks ago when I was trying to force the THC  to 'enabled' on start up. I confess to having been totally confused by it. I'm sure it must be possible to copy the entire 'Alt 7' screen to another screen set, but perhaps not by me  :bang: :bang:

David Jupp:
Probably helps if you've configured screens using similar software before - I've built screens for a DCS that controlled the plant I worked on - the basic concepts are all the same, even if the software differs in detail and how user friendly it is. 

If I get a few minutes on my old laptop, I'll see if I can see how to move screens between sets...

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