Feb 1, 2011 - Skip the second check box for now. I used the simpler old Modbus plug in. Setup the serial ports to match the Arduino settings.

KMotion/KFlop Mach3 Mach3 is a popular CNC program available for purchase through. Traditionally Mach3 has relied on little hardware support and performed low level motion and even stepper motor step pulses directly by the PC. The pulses were output using the PC's parallel port. Minitab 17 product key serial. This required a special Microsoft Windows Kernel driver with a high interrupt rate and was limited to 50~100K steps per second. Mach3 has the capability for adding 'plugins' that allow additional functionality and hardware support.

DynoMotion has developed a plugin that allows Mach3 to work with a KMotion or KFLOP Motion Controller. The offloads most of the real-time requirements from the PC, allows USB connectivity, much higher step rates, and allows easily adding other motor types including brushless servos.

This is an overview of the overall setup process of getting Mach3 and KMotion to play together. • Install Mach3 • Install KMotion • Within KMotion configure/tune your motors • Within KMotion create a configuration and initialization program • Within Mach3 - configure plugin (enter name of KMotion Init program ) • Within Mach3 - configure IO Bits.

• Within Mach3 - configure motor tuning (set resolution, speeds, and acceleration) Note: when using encoder feedback see also: Note: for configuring probing see also: Note: for information regarding operating steppers in closed loop see also: Note: For passing Parameters see also: Note: For Rigid Tapping see also: 1. Install Mach3 Mach3 should be installed before KMotion so that the KMotion installation program can copy the necessary files (Dynomotion.dll) into the Mach3 plugin directory.

The KMotion installation will also add a registry entry under 'App Paths' so that Mach3.exe will have access to the necessary KMotion DLL libraries, programs, and data files. It is not necessary to load the Mach3 Kernel driver. If KMotion has already been installed, it should be re-installed to make the necessary links between the programs. Install KMotion At the end of the KMotion installation an option to install the Mach3 Plugin will be displayed. Check the Mach3 Plugin option and select Next.

You will be prompted to enter the directory where Mach3 was installed. A check will be made that a valid Mach3.exe exists in that directory, and the Dynomotion.dll will be copied to the plugins subdirectory. 3.Within KMotion configure/tune your motors Follow the normal procedures to use the KMotion Executive program to configure and tune all of your motor axes. The simplest method to configure the system is to enter and change values in the various KMotion Executive Screens, download them to the KMotion Board, and test and tune for correct operation using the Step Response Screen as well as Console commands.

Within KMotion create a configuration and initialization program After each axis is functioning properly, the configuration for that axis can be copied to the clipboard as a valid C program code. See the circled button below.

C Code to configure axis 0 might look like the code shown below. Detailed knowledge of C programming is not required to paste these into a User Program. The configuration for each axis should be pasted into a single program. Later this program may be executed at any time to completely configure the KMotion Board. The KMotion Executive program would not be needed to do this. The RESET button from within Mach3 will be configured to execute this program.

Link / News Box Your Link Your Link Your Link Your Link Your Link Text Box Use this box to type any specials, new updates or even gallery pics here. Serial communication with Mach3 Out of the box Mach3 provides some limited ways of communicating with external devices over the serial port (not counting MODBUS). Under Config -> General Config you can select the baudrate and either 8-N-1 or 7-N-2.

You can then use the macro-call SendSerial ('This is a test') to send a string of data. As you can see this is quite straight forward but it's also quite limiting since you don't have full control over the port - you can't for example set the parity and you can't, to my knowlege, receive data from a device.

Fortunately the Cypress Enable scripting engine built into Mach3 allows you to access commands and functions in external.dll files and the intention with this page is to show an example of how that can be done to achive a more flexible way of doing serial communication. The brute force method of doing this would be to access the directly in order to gain access to the serial ports but this is neither easy or straight forward and it is beyond my knowlege level when it comes programming.