Welcome to SmoothStepper forum.

[Hood]

SmoothStepper can do 6 Axis.
Hood

[Perfo]

Splendid. I've emailed warp9 to get one on order. :-)

[jhicks]

Posted elsewhere under "happy camper" post but want to do whatever i can to thank Brian and greg for their support in helping me solve my missed steps and stalled motor problems. bottom line is we had terrible gremlins which stopped us for 5 weeks. Implemented smooth stepper and dialed it in.
Problems gone, motors hum, and cnc machine is singing happy tunes again.
Its a winning combination.

[Perfo]

It's the way forward I think. It wont be long before you wont be able to find parallel ports on a desktop PC either. They looked at me quite stupidly when I did a tour around the shops asking for a Laptop with parallel ports. "what's one of them ? ",  "what would you use it for ? " they asked. How can you answer a questions like that ? The youngster have probably never seen a printer connected to a printer port.

[Perfo]

Got mine on the 29th so less than two weeks from order to installed and I don't think you could ask for more than that. I followed the instructions on the warp web site and it install perfectly first time. Greg if you read this some of the links in the write up didn't work but no real problem as the usb driver and plugin was easy enough to find. Anyone else thinking of one be warned the customs dudes add £16 to the price for VAT then parcel force added £8 for their handling fee even with this it was still cheaper to order direct from Warp9td than anywhere else I found

[Perfo]

Quick question do I still need a charge pump with a smoothstepper? My thoughts are, as the smoothstepper remains dormant until the correct driver has established communications with it and the software is downloaded. It should be pretty bomb proof and thus highly unlikely to give spurious outputs on power up or PC problems. Are my thoughts somewhere near the mark ?

[Hood]

The SS is not active until you start Mach as the plugin is loaded every time. So you are correct
Hood

[jhicks]

Sad to report that in spite of SS implementation, it couldnt cure every disease.
It did improve some nasty problems and what I believe were windows conflicts but I still experience random motor stalls with spindle running.
Greg and Brian have done their best to help but it appears unrelated to ss. So dont count on it to cure noise or grounding problems but it seems once I cure those I'll be much happier again.
Anyone familiar with VFD noise interference that stalls motors while cutting or losing position and what to do to eliminate it?
Anyone see motors growl and move when spindle is running stationary and you hit reset command button?
Try it and see what happens with or without ss, with or without e-charge pump on.
I would be curious if more have this type of reaction.
Havent isolated noise source but spindle and vfd starting to get higher on the list of potentials.

[Perfo]

jhicks,  I haven't got any experience on small VFD but I have worked on some pretty big ones (several MW's) with once per rev probes providing feed back etc and we had a problem with spurious triggering of the input devices. This was eventually traced to the screening of the cables being earthed both ends over a fairly long run and thus setting up circulating currents in the screen that then appeared to act as some sort of transformer winding. Anyway If all your cables are screened try and keep them physically as far apart as possible and only earth them one end, I would suggest the controller end. You could also use some parasitic beads on supply cables etc (not on any high speed signal cable as it will distort the signal).

[Perfo]

Thanks for the confirmation Hood. I was pretty sure but I always think it's worth asking.