Hello

I hope somebody give me a hint how to solve my problem or which settings to look for.

I have XHC MKX-IV control card -> http://www.cdxhctech.com/html/eProduct/view_337.html

My CNC is not working properly all the time. Sometimes it losing Y-coordinates and machine think like actual position of spindle is 10-20mm closer to 0. This happen when I use auto tool zero or I manually insert custom coordinates instead. I know I inserted right numbers (usually I insert Z-coordinate by increasing or decreasing it by small amount (0,1...0,2mm) and when CNC starts job it cuts parts out from wrong distance on Y-axis.

Sometimes CNC stops between job and give error "Is the XPod inserted OK? It has ceased to respond." This was long time ago, last year I didnt get this problem.

And the worst problem which happened since this week and which I try to solve: sometimes one of the Y-axis motor stop working between job or even motors running on opposite direction which cause damage for CNC construction. This is serious issue which I tried to solve by downloading latest driver from XHC homepage.

I downloaded ver 2.3.9.8, made copy of original driver and pasted new driver to right location at mach3/plugins. Now when I start machine, call all axis home and using auto tool zero for Z axis I get Z-coordinate to use. But I lose this position in case I refer all axis to home again. It show me right coordinates but changes it to random value 3-5 seconds later after all axis are homed. Somehow mach3 take that "random value" from previous mach3 session, but it wont update that value between current session. I am afraid to damage table when I will use shorter tool and wanna use longer tool after that and by some reason I need to call machine to home and forget to autozero it.

My question is what causes Mach3 to change coordinates after all axis are called home without turning off machine? It is somehow related with driver because I tried to copy back old version of driver and coordinates are right after calling axis to home. Or which settings will be reset after driver change?

We are seeing so many reported problems with this far eastern control card your best option may be to replace it with a known reliable controller. Alternatively why not contact Alex He directly, he may have info on an updated driver etc. xhctech-alex@hotmail.com

Tweakie.

Thank you for reply.

Do you have suggestions which manufacturer to looking for? I have Yako MS-L Servo drives for Y axis -> http://www.yankong.com/EN/index.php/proview-60-26.html At the moment I am not at work to give models of other devices but I can give more info if needed.

One more question - is it possible to change strength of motors so CNC turns off in case some cutted parts move away from their original position (small parts) and goes between something? I know to use tabs, but I cut plywood and it is not so stable to have good tab all the time. And too strong tabs cause too much time to remove or may damage surface of playwoon when removing.
At the moment motors needed to apply too much power to make losing steps and even when it happens it mostly turns off only one motor and all other motors continues their job which is bad.

Do you have suggestions which manufacturer to looking for? I have Yako MS-L Servo drives for Y axis -> http://www.yankong.com/EN/index.php/proview-60-26.html At the moment I am not at work to give models of other devices but I can give more info if needed.

I can't recommend anything in particular, however, I use a Warp9 ESS with Mach4, a Warp9 USS with Mach3 and a Pokeys 57CNC with Auggie.

One more question - is it possible to change strength of motors so CNC turns off in case some cutted parts move away from their original position (small parts) and goes between something? I know to use tabs, but I cut plywood and it is not so stable to have good tab all the time. And too strong tabs cause too much time to remove or may damage surface of playwoon when removing.
At the moment motors needed to apply too much power to make losing steps and even when it happens it mostly turns off only one motor and all other motors continues their job which is bad.

You need to feed the servo fault condition back to Mach - that way Mach knows to pause / stop program execution if any servo has faulted.

Tweakie.

I am not sure if i had the mk4 of this card but the auto tool zero definitely did not work correctly on the version i had. it had all sorts of strangeness and it does not have variable 2002 (needed for g31) working correctly. even in firmware the update notes they suggest to use getoemdro(802) instead of variable 2002, which to me seems like they know it is an issue.  i contacted xhc twice and never heard back so i cannot recommend this card.d

i found also as you said it disconnects very often. this can be solved by using a very short usb cable it seems but that may not be practical depending on your setup.

for chinese usb contoller cards i had better success with the "leafboy77" card which is around 150 usd i think and the "steps" card which is much cheaper but has much much  less IO ~40-50 USD.

i also tried pokeys and it is reliable but i found you need to buy too many breakout boards to connect everything so i could not fit it in my control box in the end, but it has tons more features and seems to work well and is not that expensive. whether any of these work for your machine may require more research but i just wanted to chime in and say the xhc card is not that good from my experience.


s

I am thankful for each reply, specially if you have experience about that.

I thought about shorter usb cable, existing one is like 2m long. My boss ordered new one. Getting it soon.

I noticed this card have PE connection, but there are no wire connected to the ground. Is it ok to ground it?

Auto tool zero mostly works fine with original version of driver which came on CD, but all errors ever happened appeared time to time. MOstly it is working fine for 1-2 months and then for 1-2 weeks it sucks as fck. It happened few times that spindle is losing its correct position even while program is running.

I thought now also I should check which version of Mach3 is installed or reinstall software. Never know ...

PS! I know about that ********* related with china products. I got my personal experiences with these and all things I ever bought for myself stopped working in 1-2 months. I dont have any mood to order anything from china or hong-kong, waste of time and money.

Hi,
I came up with this answer a wee while back, the guy was asking about Mach4, but all of these do Mach3 very well indeed.

http://www.machsupport.com/forum/index.php/topic,36536.msg250481.html#msg250481

Craig

joeaverage, thank you for your reply, but at the moment it seems that motion card cant cause y-axis malfunction.

About what I tried now ...

 I installed latest version of Mach3. Nothing changed. And I removed latest mkx driver because I cannot it work properly.

Now I am 100% sure that right side is working properly and left side does wrong work. Today I switched Y-axis motors, but nothing changed, still left side makes problem. So motors are correct.

I saw that both y-axis drives getting their signal from same connection from motion card output, so it seems like something goes wrong between motion card output and motor output. I checked wires and all seems good. I suspect that drive cause it.

Today I switched all plugs from left drive to the right drive and from right drive to the left drive. I ran one job but nothing wrong happened while doing this job. Tomorrow I will run it again until I see which side goes wrong now.

Since I need to do some cuts my boss said I should connect both motors to the same drive. Is it ok to do it?

no, do not connect 2 steppers to the same drive, it will not work out well.

It is clear now left side motor's drive cause it.