Hi all; new member, 1st post.

I've been cramming as much info as possible from this great forum for the past few weeks.  What a fantastic group!  I'm positive you guys could solve any problem.  Matter of fact, could ya'll take a few weeks and fix our economy?  Should be a piece o' cake for you fellers!

Anyhoo, I installed a webcam on my little CNC lathe to use for a very fiddly, precise setup procedure.  It installed fine, Mach 3 (Demo version) recognized it and opened up a video screen perfectly.  Awesome!  By the way, the job I'm trying to do will pay for a license when it's finished...yay!

Only problem is that I thought I would be able to watch the video image and jog the tool into position at the same time.  Unfortunately, as soon as I switch to the video screen, the jog keys stop working.  I close the screen and the keys work again.  Is that normal or is there a way to get them both to work together.

Thanks!

Dont have a camera to test out but it may well be the case as recently Jogging was stopped from working if Mach lost focus, ie if the screen is not active jogging would stop. This was because if you were jogging and minimised Mach or had some other application over the top then the axis would keep jogging, even if you released the key, until Mach screen was again the active screen.
Hood

Ahh, OK thanks.

I just downloaded CentreCam and am going to load it onto an old laptop so I can monitor tool position in real time while it's being jogged into place.  I have to precisely widen a circlip groove from .026" to .036" with a new radius in the bottom corners.

At my age it's hard to even see that tiny of a job!

You could try Klaus's plugin it may work.
I will see if I can find the old webcam here and test it out to make sure that is the problem.
Hood

Thanks!  That'd be great to see if your camera & video window does the same as mine.  (Only if you get a spare moment of course.)

I read a little bit about Klaus's plugin during my initial searches here.  I'm not sure I've progressed far enough down the Mach noobness trail to attempt it unless it's dead easy.  When it comes to computers, I can screw up an anvil!

Afraid I cant find the camera, had a tidy up here at home and now cant find anything

Installing the plugin is dead easy, download and run the file then in Mach go to Config menu then Plugins then enable it, restart Mach and your done.
Hood

I hate to admit it but once again, I'm a dunce! 

All I had to do was click the reset button and the jog functions work fine.  Thanks for the help!

Now onward to other challenges.