Hello Guest it is March 28, 2024, 01:16:26 PM

Author Topic: Minimum PC requirements vs real life (Newbie)  (Read 23176 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Re: Minimum PC requirements vs real life (Newbie)
« Reply #20 on: July 09, 2015, 11:39:21 PM »
You are correct Gerry regarding older systems like yours. They had Error correcting built into the memory and did not utilise low level interrupts to put everything to sleep. My Old HP machine was P III and worked brilliantly. However the new machines are worse than laptops in regard to turning of stuff in the background utilizing "shared" interupts. IT's so they can reduce power usage and be better for the environment ;-). Also today's ram is not error correcting as it used to be, although all Server boards have the ability to use error correcting ram. Hence the reason newer systems will produce problems that old systems wouldn't normally see when used in this way.

Wes
Re: Minimum PC requirements vs real life (Newbie)
« Reply #21 on: December 21, 2015, 04:14:02 AM »
Hi ITguy,
how did you get on? Did the customer buy the solution you advised and does it work as you hoped?

Craig
'I enjoy sex at 73.....I live at 71 so its not too far to walk.'
Re: Minimum PC requirements vs real life (Newbie)
« Reply #22 on: July 05, 2016, 10:05:52 AM »
Wow, time flies; thanks for checking in!
This project got pushed down the list over the last number of months but the PC is in (HP Z230, i7, 8GB RAM) and I managed to cobble together a box for my Ethernet Smoothstepper with a decent power supply along the way.

We started again a few weeks ago and ran into all sorts of problems and bizarre behaviour; we'd get the router to move for a couple of minutes, but as soon as we encountered an error, we were dead in the water until I reinstalled Mach 3 and the ESS plugin from scratch.

Fast forward to yesterday, after a lot of testing, I determined that the Zenbot table doesn't like the Mach 3 defaults and the Zenbot provided XML doesn't play nicely with the ESS plugin, so I manually entered the parameters from Zenbot's ports and pins config and home/limits config, and set A as the slave for Y, suddenly I have almost a functional CNC machine! X and Y behave beautifully, no problem finding home or running g-code, but the Z axis if still giving me grief. When RefAllHome with Machine coord selected, the Z axis moves downwards looking for the home switch which of course is at the top of the Z-axis travel.

Later today I'll go over the Z config, comparing the Zenbot parameters to the Mach 3 parameters to see if I can clear it up, but if anybody has any ideas, I'm all ears. It sure feels good to finally be able to prove that I'm talking to the router finally and not running around in circles!
Re: Minimum PC requirements vs real life (Newbie)
« Reply #23 on: July 19, 2016, 02:14:39 AM »
Hi:) In config ports and pins at the Z Axis under direction active change the check mark or Red x to the opposite of what it is and that will change the direction of the motor or change the wires to the stepper motor for direction or if it is Ac servo change the two outside wires will change the direction of the motor keeping in mind that the wiring of the encoder could be the problem. ;D
Re: Minimum PC requirements vs real life (Newbie)
« Reply #24 on: July 19, 2016, 02:45:46 AM »
In motor home and soft limits there is a place to reverse the direction right beside the Z limit on the left side of the page. Hope this help there is always a fix in this program or a way around the problem.
Re: Minimum PC requirements vs real life (Newbie)
« Reply #25 on: July 19, 2016, 09:31:06 AM »
Thanks Christopher,

As it turns out, vibration from the Z axis stepper motor and gravity are the only reason the cutter was dropping; I could move the cutter up and down without too much difficulty even with the Gecko controller powered on. We finally took it apart and discovered that the shaft wasn't being engaged by the controller. The DB9 connector on the Z axis cable was wired wrong, with the black wire hanging and the green wire on pin 3 instead of 8. Either this created a problem for the G540 or Murphy's Law is just not finished with me yet; After re-wiring the DB9 connector and swapping some things around, I found that nothing connected to the Z-axis serial port would spin. About 30 seconds after that the controller shut down for good.

Right now I'm waiting for a replacement G540 and an extra serial cable to be safe. Hopefully things will start to make more sense in a few days. ... And I thought computer hardware was a pain!!

Bruce