Newbie help request on control of 4 Axis Table cuts wrong

[blithespirit]

Purchased a CNC table from China and the table looks solid, flat and moves with good smooth operation, controller is in a metal box and has little external relay for spindle which never worked, spindle powered from spindle switch funny enough!.

I am using Mach software with Vectric design software (V-Carve pro 6).

I designed a house sign to start and set a pocket cut to 4mm in 2mm passes for the main inset, used a 5mm endmill for the pocket and set up the correct endmill settings in V-Carve for passes and depth.

In V-Carve the modelling works great as you would expect. save out the code as G-code.mm file and load into mach3. set my home points on the wood to meet the measurement.
start cycle and off we go.............. well it goes to the start point hits 1.998mm in Mach3 software but drops at least 4mm into the wood. goes round the code but leaves non flat base with splints of wood missed and is no where near I set the measurments, ends up with 10mm depth off 2 passes with crossing over V-carve portions carving into the parts that are next to be cut.

Used the autostepper, set up as is approx .2mm out. nothing more and tried again, stepping seems to be fine when measured.

Question is how do I troubleshoot to find out what part is giving me the problem, is it the V-Carve, Mach3 code or the controller.

Any help is appreciated as driving me mad!

[Tweakie.CNC]

It may be a idea to check with Vectric that you do in fact have a properly licensed version of V-Carve Pro 6. http://www.vectric.com/WebSite/Vectric/company/contact_us.htm
There have been instances where non-genuine software, compiled from the trial version, have been sold or supplied with machines and these versions, intentionally, do not compile the GCode correctly.

Tweakie.

[blithespirit]

I got the Vectric direct ftom Vectric. dont trust anything I cannot register so purchased full versions.
Think it is probably controller, cheap chinese box.
I have 2 x  2.4 amp nema 23 and 1 x 3.5 amp nema 34 steppers plus 4th axis. could anyone recomend a decent controller please?

[olf20]

Can you manually move the machine, all axis's.
Try some simple gcode commands to make sure the machine will do
what it is being told to do.
Are you using the correct post processor for your machine?
As far as controllers Gecko's are the best!!
Just some thoughts.
olf20 / Bob

[blithespirit]

Manual movement through mach3 is fine, tried using mach3 code and straight G code. more I think the more it points at controller.
Will invest in a Gecko I think before I go bananas.

[olf20]

If you can manually move all axis, then I don't think its you controllers.
Have you moved your Acel and Velocity way down?? This has caused
some of us problems until we get our machines  tuned.
I started with Gecko's and had to turn my drives to suite
my machine.
olf20 / Bob