CS-Labs

[black8898]

Hope this is Ok to put this here if not I am sure that Dave will remove it.
A few months ago I purchased a motion control device from CS-Labs in Poland which I was very pleased with the build quality of the unit is very good and it works very well that is if you do not use MSM, when the problems first arose I contacted Dave and as usual he worked very hard trying to solve the problems but not surprisingly the problems were not with MSM but with the plugin supplied with the controller so contact was made by myself to start with to inform them of the problems which to cut a long story short they insisted that the problem was with MSM so several test were done by Dave and the results confirmed that the problem was with the plugin supplied by CS-Labs, Dave contacted them to explain these problems as he is far more knowledgeable about these thing than I am and the reply from CS-Labs was that they could not even get MSM to run using the PP which as you all know is not the case it works faultlessly using the old fashioned PP so after trying to explain to them how to install it properly they still could not install it to get it to run, now after constantly getting on at them they seemed to have installed MSM correctly and they seemed to be getting the problems that I have got but they still insist that it is not their software that is causing the problem but for sure it is and now they are not willing to do anything about it which after spending several hundred pounds with them is very hard for me to swallow so basically I am telling you that if you are using MSM and you want to continue using it as you are now without the problems that I have encountered I suggest that you stay well away from CS-Labs and their range of motion controllers as the plugin they supply with them is not compatible with MSM.
Also I must thank Dave for all his hard work which has been very time consuming to say the least it is only a shame that CS-Labs are not as helpful and as willing as Dave is and has always been to help his customers, it just goes to show that some companies/people are just money orientated they take your money and any problems are not their fault they are someone else's i.e. they pass the buck.
Many many thanks to you Dave all your help was very much appreciated.
Thanks
Alan

[mmoe]

I don't work for CS-Labs or anything like that, but I have helped install their IP-M controller on a friend's machine and have purchased their IP-A with additional I/O modules for my own machine. I've been looking into more concise or well organized GUIs for Mach that are compatible with the CS-Labs contoller, which lead me here. I'm not sure I would consider this fair criticism given the fact that I have not found any particular information on the CS-Labs website indicating they claim to support MSM and just like any other 3rd party component, it's always buyer beware in terms of compatibility when there are more than one 3rd party products being used. If you buy a separate 3rd party MPG, I'm sure you would not be entirely surprised if it were difficult or impossible to make compatible with yet another 3rd party controller. Each product was only designed to work with Mach3, not each other, which leads to greater potential for conflicts. It is also not a problem that appears to be isolated to this one vendor of motion control hardware but rather a significant percentage of controllers in one way or another, and has been addressed in the following thread, which predates your complaint:
http://www.calypsoventures.com/forums/v ... p?f=6&t=62

While you feel your experience with CS-Labs customer service was poor, I feel it important to relay that my experience has been quite the opposite. It's simply too good of a product to turn people off of it who may have priorities different from yours. While I like the MSM interface, my machine utilizes analog servos and there are few controllers that can work with this older tech and mach3, the CS-Labs IP-A being one of the few. My priorities are that the machine function well under mach3, followed by finding a better interface (and I don't feel that I must use MSM, sorry to the vendor). Prior to purchasing the controller, I inquired about my specific servo drives/servos to be sure they would be compatible. Rather than just saying yes, they asked for more information, and any manuals that may be available after they had already spent some time googling the servo models on their own and came up empty (which I can verify is accurate that there is no info available). I scanned the servo drive manual in and forwarded it on to them, after which they studied it and gave a very specific reply to the information supplied. I do sympathize with you, but I suspect that if you had asked them if MSM was compatible before purchase, they would have done their best to verify if it is or is not. They also seem to play it safe and I'm sure that they would have recommended against purchase if they could not verify compatibility prior to your purchase. I know that in my case they did not just say that it should be fine, without first looking into the facts. The conflicts in the code between MSM and their plug-in may be necessary for their plug-in to work with Mach3 sans MSM. All I can attest to is that I have not encountered any issues with their software or hardware when run on straight Mach3, which is all they claim on their website FAQ and specifications (they do mention one screen product, but I'm not sure if I should mention here as perhaps it's a competitor). While your comments may paint an accurate picture regarding compatibility between CS-Labs controls and MSM, I don't think it paints an accurate picture of the product, which I believe is one of the best mach3 controllers available, based on my experience installing and running it.

[black8898]

Thanks you for your comments but at no time have I disputed the quality etc. of these units, also the reason for topics that you have pointed out on this website regarding other units like the IP range of controllers and the comments made by CS-Labs about certain screen-sets is because of the two problems that I encountered so it was felt that from Calypso Ventures point that they should let people know what works and does not work with most of the controllers on the market and MSM, now I am no computer/software expert far from it but I will try my best to explain things and if I get this wrong then I apologise to Dave Bagby, MSM is written using the same scripts as Mach3 as far as I know there is no difference but CS-Labs cannot for some reason see that, for people like those programmers etc. at CS-Labs you would have thought that after the various mails that have been sent to them showing them where the problems are that they would have been prepared to take a look at it instead of blaming everyone else then these people could not even install MSM on their computers all they kept saying was that it would not even work using the LPT now there are a lot of users of MSM around the world using this software/screenset and a lot like me who are not computer experts but we managed to install this on our computers without problems so why cannot computer experts such as these not install it.
So I have no dispute with the quality and the way the IP controllers work just the inability of CS-Labs to take a serious look at their plugin which has been proven to have two bugs in it which if they were interested in they could sort out bun they are to blind to see what is in front of them, that is my complaint and nothing else.

To Dave Bagby
Again I apologise to you Dave if I have said anything out of place here did not intend to, my original topic was just to warn people that if they wanted to use MSM not to buy one of these controllers.
Thanks
Alan

[DaveCVI]

Gentlemen,

I do not mind discussion of products that MSM users have direct experience with. Part of the value of an online forum is to share your experiences so that other MSM users may benefit.

OTOH, I see little value in flame wars. A protracted exchange of "I love vendor A" and "I hate vendor A" (I realize that this paraphrased simplification is over stating what both you have posted) is of minimal value. Should the thread take that course, I would probably lock it.

What I will address are the technical facts of the current situation with CSMIO controller and MAch3 and MSM.
Even though building and running a CNC machine is inherently a technical topic, I find that few mach3 users have a good grasp of how the various parts of a mach3 control system are related. In this thread, I see this manifesting itself as "MSM is incompatible with CS-Labs". The true situation is not that simplistic. In fact, there is no way that MSM and a CSMIO controller can be directly "incompatible: as nothing in MSM (or any other mach application program) even knows anything about a CS-labs CSMIO (or any other motion device marketed for mach3) controller. There are no interfaces between those two entities.

Ah, but, then how come "they don't work correctly" when used together you ask?
One must understand that a CNC controller based on Mach3 is a system that consists of multiple components. A Mach3 control is a system wherein the components use defined interfaces to Mach3. Each component must do it's task correctly or the overall system will have a problem.

I have written up some slides to help educate folks about how Mach3's layered system; and how the upper layers are dependent on the lower layers. As this information is of general interest and is intimately related to what systems CVI will support MSM on, I have posted the slides in this thread:
http://www.calypsoventures.com/forums/v ... p=336#p336

Please read that document before continuing to read the rest of this post.
OK, you've absorbed the overall layered structure of a Mach CNC control?
Good, with that context in place, I can now describe the current (as of this post) technical situation with the cs-Labs CSMIO controller implementation....

The CS-Labs CSMIO controller is not "incompatible with MSM" nor is "MSM incompatible with CSMIO".

The CSMIO controller is "incompatible with Mach3 systems" - in the sense that it does not implement the default expected behavior for a Mach3 system (as compared to the behavior of Mach3 when using the Mach3 Parallel Port motion driver).

The attached pdf file illustrates this using the same layer diagrams referenced in post link above.

The changes made by CS-Labs to the CSMIO controller create non-standard MACH3 system behavior and this happens to negatively impact a key feature of MSM: The MSM Auto TLO features do not work on CSMIO controls being run with the latest CSMIO plug-in. The same hardware works correctly with earlier release plug-ins. This implies the problem is not in the hardware boxes, but is in the plug-in software.

While I hope that CS-Labs will eventually recognize the technical issue (and correct it), they have stated explicitly to CVI that they do not intend to change this.

Note that this is not a MSM specific problem. Any script that attempts to do a probe operation during a M6 cycle (i.e. any script or screen set doing tool measurement via probing as part of the tool change) will fail as the CSMIO controller plug-in will put the system into Estop.

Reality is that all products with a software component have some bugs. If you are only interested in using the portions of a product that do not cause an issue for you, then you will probably be happy with the product.

Unfortunately, because of the nature of the current bug in the CSMIO plug-in, and CS-Labs statement that they do not intend to fix it, this is not a temporary problem that is likely to be fixed in a future CSMIO software release.
In addition, MSM users are highly likely to be frustrated by a CSMIO controller as every attempt at ATLO by MSM will fail due to the CSMIO (incompatibility with Mach PP semantics) bug.

Therefore, CVI has had to take the position that we do not (can not) recommend that MSM customers use a CS-Labs CSMIO controller.

Dave