I am using ESS 285 and latest mach4 5036

for days I have been trying to get a PWM output on output 2-14 tied to the spindle output.  I did have it working some months ago but PC died and trying to get going again.

Does anyone have simple instructions??  I have watched every video out there and they all seem to be tied to a laser or much older plugins or they have the same questions as me....

got it working

back to another issue now with more detail.

i have one machine with two profiles.  One profile for a router running a VFD with analog 1-10v. I use a device that converts step frequency to analog out.  Another profile that is for a laser that requires PWM.  I use Vcarve for the gcode.  For the router I use spindle speed of 4000-24000 step/direction output and for the laser I use 0-100 PWM.  Some months ago it worked great.

Now with the 5036 and ESS 284 I get the attached error. Axis 6's motor 5 does not have a home switch....

So now again.  Are there simple instructions for setting up the spindle?

Thanks and please ask questions. phill

I figured it out.  I assigned a bogus inputs for limits.  Just seems silly that its not really documented and why do spindles need to be associated with all things an axis motor...

Hi,

Just seems silly that its not really documented and why do spindles need to be associated with all things an axis motor...

The problem is not that the spindle depends on the axis motor per se, but rather Mach4 in its totality requires any and all axes to be 'complete'

When Mach fires up it complies many chunks of Lua code together into one big 'master' chunk. If any little bit of that code is faulty or is missing
a particular and a required bit of data is missing then the 'master' chunk can't compile either....and that stops everything, spindle included.

The case for documentation is made again and again. All I can report is the sense that I have picked up from eight years of using Mach4.

NFS is a small company with few employees and their efforts are directed mostly and particularly those areas and projects that generate income for the company.
Any company large or small depends for its very existence on income, and documentation comes low on that priority list.

Firstly developing and maintaining accurate and detailed documentation is extremely time intensive. If therefore two or more persons were detailed to that task that
would take their efforts away from other areas of which we benefit. As an example just recently GOOMBA released a wizard designed to help people designing, building
and programming their own pendant. Its a great piece of work and addresses many problems that users have had over some years about this matter. Were he to immerse
himself in the never ending documentation task then we might never have seen this wizard.

Second issue is that no-one likes slaving away at documentation......and documenting a complex piece of software can in no way be turned over to muppets, the best
documenters are exactly the same talented individuals whom develop Mach4 in the first place.

It seems that even with the best will and intentions Mach4's documentation still lags the leading edge. Mind you I hasten to point out the Mach3 documentation is an absolute dogs
breakfast...all over the place, incomplete and in some cases just plain wrong. So while I to lament from time to time that Mach's documentation always seems to lag I take solace
in that its SO much better than what we used to have.

Craig