Mach4 show remaining run time?

1

I was wondering if it’s possible to have Mach4 show remaining run time on the screen or anything.

Not sure what’s possible, so any help is appreciated!

2

Remaining lines of Gcode in the file would be something you can add to a screenset. I usually just look at my Gcode window slider and see how far down the slider is and figure out what fraction of 100% it is, and then look at the elapsed time to that location and you can make a pretty good guess as to how much time is left. Then again, I guess you could program that method into the screenset as well.

3

Your new screen set working great BTW

4

Cool. I haven’t seen any hiccups in it either. I guess it’s safe then :smiley:

5

I forgot about this post until Brian reminded me. I added this to my lastest screen to give an idea of remaining time. Most of the code for the runtime tracking came from someone else who generously shared with me.

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I also added some maintanence variables So you can track machine and spindle hours, and how many units your axis’s have traveled.

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The screen can be found here.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1PgdKhPpO7yG4azVI-r0rvJkq_A81_dOO?usp=share_link

Feel free to use the screen, or export any parts you want.

2 Likes
6

Brian I will have to get with you on how to update the screen in mach4. I am not familiar with how to update Mach yet.

7

Its very easy mike, just dload jim’s screen set, go to mach4 hobby dir, go to screen dir paste the screen file into the screen dir then go run mach4, top right next to file is VIEW click on it the select load screen, it will then list files in the screen dir select jims set and you are good to go.

8

Thanks Brian I loaded the new screen tonight. I like it!

1 Like
9

I’m glad to have the Maint tab for run time stats. Cheers to Jim Neeb!

10

Thank you everyone! This works! Have no idea you could modify the screen! haha

11

Hey Jim, I don’t know if this is from the screen set, but when I hit HOLD to pause the job for whatever reason, then to resume I would hit the CYCLE to continue. Now when I hit Hold and then cycle start the program ends, just as if I had pressed the Stop button. One of these days I’m gonna have to learn how to CODE so i can have a better understanding of these things…

13

I’m a bit late to this party, and Jim’s got a good idea on the percentage remaining based on GCode lines. I was thinking of adding some code to store the total run time on a previous cycle of the same GCode, and then I’d know exactly how long it takes to compute an accurate time remaining. Tormach’s PathPilot does this, and it is pretty handy!

14

Good catch Brian. I stopped using feed hold because I changed my stop button to do a feedhold then stop so it doesn’t require re-homing. So I didn’t check the hold feature (because I didn’t think I changed anything for it). However, it did break the feed hold, and badly because it hangs up Mach 4 on my machine.

In the meantime, go back to version 4, or use the stop instead. I’ll see if I can fix it soon.
Jim

15

It’s amazing how much tweaking you can do!!

16

Hey Brian,

I found the bug (easy), and fixed it (not as easy). Also added two hotkeys to change the Inc Jog setting Ctrl-1 for 0.001", and Ctrl-2 for 0.010" (thank you Corbin for the inspiration on that!).

The new screen and updated documentation are here as always: Public CNC Docs - Google Drive

jim

1 Like
17

Hello all,

Really appreciate this, I am still really knew on this. Is there somewhere that helps teach how to change the screen? I am hoping to change the relay 1 from Air assist to dust collector. Maybe other things also once get a clue how to do it.

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Thanks,
Mike