Hi Peter, > Hello Gentlemen, > this is mainly to the EMC developers. > > Since January I have tried to get my steppers run smoothly and evenly. I > wrote several mails to the list on this problem, but received little echo. > Now I seem to be near to the solution which might be of interest to the > developing team.
Any feedback is interesting to the "developing team" and to other users aswell. > My steppers rattled and lost steps regardless of the conditions I gave > them. I've changed almost everything in the setup to get the motors run > correctly. Result: No cure for the problem of "rattling steppers loosing > steps" (name of my former thread). <snip lots of impressive testing> > Note that I did all this with the "test axis" function of stepconf because > this is a very convenient way to see the result of parameter variations > immediately. Well, that wasn't the intent of test axis, at least not for some parts of what you did. Stepconf is a helping tool that helps new users come up with a stepper configuration. By all means you don't have to use stepconf to run emc2. There are also (a lot) of sample configurations which you can adapt to your system, or you can always write a configuration up from scratch (this is probably a tedious task, and few people actually do it). Test axis is a way to test the numbers you entered and pins you selected in stepconf, to see if everything is set up right and the motors are moving. If you change a configuration (the ini and hal files) generated by stepconf, then there are some cave-eats: * you can't run stepconf again on that configuration, or your changes will be lost * if you run stepconf on that configuration, it won't pick up the changes you made to the ini and hal files, so you won't notice any improvements * if you change the .stepconf file, then stepconf will see the changes you've done, but it's probably hard/not really usefull to do so. The best way to go on about this is: 1. generate a new configuration with stepconf (or copy a sample config provided with emc2) 2. once the configuration is somehow working (and you are not satisfied with it), you can start changing things in the ini and hal files 3. tweak the config (also observe the results via halscope & similar helpers - physical scope, etc) until it does what you want Maybe these things will need a better description in the User Manual. Can you check the docs for 2.3 and see if they represent the ideas presented above? Maybe you have some suggestions where we can improve things. (big warning signs, etc ;) I think the main warning sign should read: Stepconf is a helper program that (for some cases) generates a usefull configuration for emc2. If you're not lucky enough to be inside those general cases (maybe 80% of users should be), then you'd have to set up your configuration the traditional way (which implies reading and understanding a lot of things in the ini file). <snip> > Seriously: After all my efforts I am inclined to exclude all other causes > of the misbehaviour than stepconf. Is it really true that nobody ever > reported problems with the "test axis" function of stepconf? Maybe it has > been fixed in 2.3? I have the impression that it must be a minor bug when > counting the pulses because there is a connection with the microstep > feature. I haven't heard of people using "test axis" to test the functionality of an emc2 config. Using emc2 is so much more versatile (you can specify dwells, feed rates, etc). There have been some fixes for stepgen for 2.3 (for example it can generate non-double step configs, like the one you needed). > I am aware that expositions now have caught all the attention of the gang. > But when NAMES and EMC expo are over, please someone would have a look at > this? NAMES is really unrelated to this topic. The EMC Fest, however, is a place for developers (and not only) to get together and look together at certain things that need improving. Most likely stepconf (or derivatives) will be looked at with that occasion. Regards, Alex ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
