EzCad 2 freezing up while marking, but strangely at around 10:30AM

[Daniel James]

Hello,

Has anyone had any experience with EzCad 2 freezing up while marking, but everyday at repeatable times? The software seems to hang and the laser will sometimes continue to burn in one spot at just past 10:30AM, usually 10:33 or 10:35.
I've tried running it on a windows 7 laptop instead of the usual win10 desktop pc but ezcad still hangs. Neither pc was connected to the internet so I'm guessing it won't be trying to update the software. I've checked the windows error logs and it shows that ezcad exe hangs but doesn't provide useful info, nor does it show any other program schedules to update at that time.
It doesn't appear to be anything like a power spike at 10:30AM either as we ran the laser marker from a puresine wave backup generator and we still got the problem.

My work colleague discovered that if we set the clock back to say 10:29, start the marking process and wait, it will freeze again between 10:30 and 10:35AM. But at any other times of the day it will run fine. Although I have heard of our laser marker operators reporting that it regularly hangs at some specific times in the evening too.


Any ideas?

Regards,

Daniel

[John Lifer]

Ideas? It is just ezcad 2 not being able to properly utilize memory. I don't normally hit the limit and have it hang, freeze or crash, but it does on both my desktop and my laptop once in a while. I tried engraving 24 detailed items a while back and had to cut back to I think about 12 before it would stop hanging up. It's all about the program.... There is a version that has been altered as it supposedly helps, but it really didn't in my case.

[Daniel James]

Ideas? It is just ezcad 2 not being able to properly utilize memory. I don't normally hit the limit and have it hang, freeze or crash, but it does on both my desktop and my laptop once in a while. I tried engraving 24 detailed items a while back and had to cut back to I think about 12 before it would stop hanging up. It's all about the program.... There is a version that has been altered as it supposedly helps, but it really didn't in my case.

It is nothing to do with memory utilization as far as I can gather. The laser has to be marking between 10:30AM and 10:35AM for the fault to occur. If the software is idle and not marking during this time it won't freeze Ezcad. But when the laser is marking, the galvo head will stop and burn in one place and Ezcad freezes, it doesn't matter whether the program has just started/been running all night, whether or not there is a single text element on the screen or many objects on screen. I have now tested this on a 30w, 50w, 60w & 100w JPT lasers with Ezcad3, Ezcad2.14.10, 2.14.11, 2.14.16. Win7, Win8.1, Win10, DLC cards, FBLI-B-LV4. All sorts of configurations. The bug is evident across the board. It could be the driver files. Even on the patched version that adjusts memory allocation and can be run without the laser switched on. I'm convinced it's something coded into Ezcad that does it. I find it really strange that no one else has noticed this.

Would be interesting to know if Lightburn crashes even with their reverse engineered code and custom driver files.

Spooky.

[Daniel James]

I wrote a piece of c# software a while back that skips 10:25AM and goes to 10:40am. It solved the problem but its not the best way to do things. If anyone wants it, please PM me.

[Steve Utick]

Would be interesting to know if Lightburn crashes even with their reverse engineered code and custom driver files.

Spooky.

LightBurn offers a 100% fully functional 30 day trial, so why not download it and give it a shot? I've been running LightBurn on my Fiber laser, including Beta versions and have never had a crash yet. Love LightBurn, it was a very welcome addition to my Fiber Laser.