Hi all,

So just to make it easy and understandable i'm going to post the same message as i've put into the ticket I opened;

I'm running a retrofit EMCO120 with a Pokeys57cnc controller and Mach4 Build4612. The machine is equipped with a 8 slot tool changer, this is controled with an arduino and a custom pcb to control the DC motor and read the sensor positions. In order to know which tool to load, the arduino receives a signal from mach4 over Luars232. Overall this functions fine, sometimes there are no problems and I can run the same program more then 10 times without any shutdowns. However, at other moments Mach4 shuts down after 5 minutes and does this 3 times in a row and then it will work for an hour again just fine. What does seem to cause an issue is that it always shuts down at the moment a tool change takes place. So the program will run a first cut and then have the M6 command to change a tool. The toolchange will always complete but during the toolchange the program shuts down. What I mean with that is that the arduino will still take care that the right tool is in place so I know it has received the correct signal from the PC. The pokeys board is connected to the PC with an ethernet cable and the arduino is connected with a USB cable. Also, the machine is equipped with a touchscreen interface. I tought that maybe there was a mismatch with the communication between the USB of the arduino and the touchscreen but I've run some test without the touchscreen and the problem is still there.

Are there any known fixes for this problem? Any help will be greatly appreciated.

I've also added the M6 macro and a recent crash report, maybe this can clarify things.



--> To clarify, this crash does not happen with the supplied  'empty' M6 script.

I got this answer from them;

If the default M6 doesn't exhibit the behavior it's due to your custom programming which I can't really help with.

However with a random crash of this nature I would immediately assume you're having a memory error, or trying to access data that isn't available when you're checking.

Soooo, it's unfortunate that they could not help, and I've also spend a lot of time already trying to solve this issue but without success. I'm wondering if somebody also has run into this issue and successfully solved this. Or even if you didn't run into this problem but might have a clue whats happening please share it with me.

Thanks for the response!