I really need help from the Pro's!

[ianrobertson]

In 2007 I obtained an older but mechanically new router table and changed all the electronics etc. I bought a new controller and steppers etc from Bob Campbell as well as a new computer based on a recommendation from Art. It is a Sound Logic board with Gecko G203 drives and 640 oz motors. It also has a spindle control board installed but I am not using it as I currently use a plain router that I turn on and off with a relay. The version of Mach3 was 2.58. I never got to running well enough to put it into production but now our proprietary production machine is down. I am trying to get this one running and then change over the proprietary router to run Mach3 so as to have common G files.

Problems:
Jerky motion and loss of position. The router will run okay for a while and then make very jerky curves and lose position as well, not necessarily related. A file I have been testing has one drill point and it will feed a the correct rate and when run again it will feed very slowly, feed is unpredictable. I may have the motors configured wrong and when that is fixed I hope to be able to hold accuracy. The x and z are direct drive (~10 tpi) and the y is a belt drive with about a ~3:1 ratio. I use Rhino, VM and XP Pro.

What I have done:
I added ram to a total of 2.5GB from .5, no change.
I optimized as be the info on the support page, no change.
I upgraded to V3.043, noticeably more predictable, after several hours of running the jerky returned, restarted Mach3 no change, rebooted and jerky gone for now, computer on overnight jerky back in the morning, restart Mach3 and jerky gone with no reboot???

What I need:
I have attached my xlm file, can you good fellows who know a lot about Mach3 please look at it and see if you can find any problems with the config and motor tuning? Any ideas about what is going on with the jerky coming and going, as well as feed speeds? I have been without cnc for several weeks and my backlog is becoming a big problem for us! Any help will be very greatly appreciated!


Ian

[Hood]

Set the kernel speed down to 25KHz, very few computers are happy at 100KHz and there is practically no benefit of using more than you need. You only require about 5KHz so as the min in Mach is 25KHz use that .
Hood

[ianrobertson]

It says 25000 in Mach3, I posted the wrong xml file. I seem to be unable to edit my original post so here it is.

[Hood]

xml looks ok from first glance.
What time in int and also pulse frequency do you have on the diagnostics page.
Have you run the driver test and what does it look like?
Hood

[ianrobertson]

The time in int is 6-10 avg around 9 this changes constantly, pulse frequency is 25003, driver test says System Excellent, avg interval 40, pulses/sec 25002

[Hood]

Sounds fine, time in int is fairly high but should not be a problem at 25KHz.
When things start going wrong have a look again as it certainly sounds like something is interfering with the driver, also have a look at CPU usage when the slow down happens.
Hood

[ianrobertson]

Thanks Hood, I will have another go at it after lunch.

Ian

[ianrobertson]

Well I don't know why but it had a good run for about three hours yesterday, no problems. It was only out a couple of thou after three hours of running, good enough for what I was cutting. I will be watching it VERY closely, these intermittent problems are very annoying!

[dar303]

Maybe some kind of interference from other machines running in the area? In that case try some power filters and ferrites on signal cables etc.

[ianrobertson]

I remember others complaining about bad power in this area although I don't know if it has ever affected me, but I do have a ups on the way that is supposed to give perfect clean power.