3D Feeds

[Bob Savage]

Bob I know nothing Wincnc or camaster, but if your photo of the sail fish shows what I think it shows, it could possibly be noise as well, though on my antique Digital Tool machine, if I get noise it just stops, but then again I am running Mach software.

What type, size steppers, drives etc. does the machine have? Are you running screws, belt or rack?

Mike

Hi Mike,

The topic of noise did come up. In the "above and beyond" support I mentioned above, the Camaster tech that came to my shop looked at the electrical config and said noise was not a factor. I've got a sub panel with dedicated circuits for the CNC controller, the computer and the router motors. All the other tools in the shop are on another circuit and my cyclone is on its own circuit.

Sorry, it's been a while so I forget the size of the steppers, however, installing a slightly larger motor on the Z axis did minimize the issue, albeit not completely resolve it.

My machine has a ball screw.

[Mike Heidrick]

Tell me about your Z stepper to screw coupling? Got pictures of that setup?

[Bob Savage]

Tell me about your Z stepper to screw coupling? Got pictures of that setup?

Not handy but I can shoot one for you. On a related note, this mechanism is going to be replaced as a troubleshooting step so it may be moot at this point.

[Bryan Cowan]

Bob I know nothing Wincnc or camaster, but if your photo of the sail fish shows what I think it shows, it could possibly be noise as well, though on my antique Digital Tool machine, if I get noise it just stops, but then again I am running Mach software.

What type, size steppers, drives etc. does the machine have? Are you running screws, belt or rack?

Mike

Mike,

I'm also running Mach on my CAMaster and every so often while running a cutting operation the computer freezes and the machine stops dead in its tracks. 7 times out of 10, it will unfreeze in 15-50 seconds. Other times it will never unfreeze and I need to hard boot. I've tried two different computers and still get the same result.

Of course, everything in the garage is running off of one breaker and that could cause the problems. Is this similar to your issues?

Bryan

[Rob Wright]

Have you optimized your machine for Mach3? I have an old machine that is completely clean of everything. No internet, messenger, virus scanner, defender no printers installed, etc....

Mach3 doesn't play well with background process such as the screen savers and virus software. Also - look at turning off windows update etc. There is some support documentation on mach. http://www.machsupport.com/downloads...timization.txt

My machine PC has Mach3, notepad, and that's about it on it. I cleaned as much of the junk off of it as I could. I have a separate PC for design and GCode generation.

hope this helps

[james mcgrew]

rob is absolutly right about a clean uncluttered computer that stays alive thoughout the file run, wincnc runs on a separate daughter board and is autonomus

[Bryan Cowan]

Have you optimized your machine for Mach3? I have an old machine that is completely clean of everything. No internet, messenger, virus scanner, defender no printers installed, etc....

Mach3 doesn't play well with background process such as the screen savers and virus software. Also - look at turning off windows update etc. There is some support documentation on mach. http://www.machsupport.com/downloads...timization.txt

My machine PC has Mach3, notepad, and that's about it on it. I cleaned as much of the junk off of it as I could. I have a separate PC for design and GCode generation.

hope this helps

No, it's not bare bones, but close. Considering it's the only PC in the garage, I need it for g-code and occasional surfing of the web. I have read the Mach3 Optimization and implemented as much as possible.

I actually found it freezes up less (if at all) if I have internet radio on in the background. I can only seem to remember it freezing when it's just Mach3 running.

Sorry to hijack your thread, Bob

[michael turner]

Mike,

I'm also running Mach on my CAMaster and every so often while running a cutting operation the computer freezes and the machine stops dead in its tracks. 7 times out of 10, it will unfreeze in 15-50 seconds. Other times it will never unfreeze and I need to hard boot. I've tried two different computers and still get the same result.

Of course, everything in the garage is running off of one breaker and that could cause the problems. Is this similar to your issues?

Bryan

Bryan not similar at all. Every time I had an interruption it was cause by noise getting into my limits or my limit wiring. Most of the time this was high frequency caused by vibration, or actual noise of the cutter in the wood. I.e., long 1/4" mill used to drill holes 2" deep in hard wood will produce a shrill noise that can be picked up as rf noise if your debounce is set to a bare minimum....which is where I always tried to keep mine.

Your problem sounds like something running in the background of your pc. Regardless of what the guys at Mach used to say, I never, ever used my pc for anything while running a program, and I did the optimization of my os, which happens to Win 2000 Pro. I like it much better that XP for running Mach.

Mike

[Gerry Grzadzinski]

Yes, you should not be running a web browser or anything else while Mach3 is cutting. And I agree, it's probably some other software interfering, or maybe some power saving features are not turned off?

I run Mach3 on a 1Ghz PIII and never have any problems like this.

Back to the original topic. You're losing steps on the Z axis. Lowering the acceleration be 25% or so should fix it. If not, cut it in half, that's what's usually recommended by the Mach3 developer.

I had the same problem with my first 3D carving. I had been running my homebuilt machine for a few months with no problem, and the first 3D I did lost position on the Z axis. Lowered the accel and it never happened again.