Machsupport Forum
Mach Discussion => General Mach Discussion => Topic started by: HimyKabibble on July 20, 2011, 09:41:19 PM
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Today, I used my mill for the first time since early 2010 - Just making a simple fixture plate of 1/2" 6061. A tiny bit of milling, and a bunch of drilling. Halfway through peck drilling one of the holes, Mach3 spontaneously E-Stopped, leaving ALL FOUR DROs completely whacked - miles from their correct positions! Never seen anything even remotely like that before! Re-zeroed, and ran the rest of the program with no problems.
Regards,
Ray L.
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I'm learning to hate Mach3 all over again.... When I last used this machine, about 18 months ago, it was working perfectly. I used it yesterday with no significant problems. Today.... nothing BUT problems! When I first turned it on, I could not get continuous jog mode to work correctly - no matter what feedrate or FRO setting I specified, it ran at full G0 speed - 200IPM. Nothing I did would get it to work. Neither would it execute MDI moves. Yet jogging otherwise worked fine. Exited Mach3, re-started, and now it was working. Later on, part-way through a program, it was peck-drilling. After making a plunge, it decided to no longer move the Z axis (quill). Naturally, this did not do the drill bit a whole lot of good. Again, I exited, re-started, and picked up where I left off (with a new work-piece, since the first one was now ruined). The jog problem re-occurred. Re-booted the whole system, and tried again. Now Z probing was not working! The DROs would count, the Z servo would madke an unusual noise, but no servo faults, and the Z axis did not move. Neither could I execute any MDI moves, again! Yet I could jog all axes with no problems whatsoever! Re-booted yet again, things seemed to be working, until late in the program, it decided to stop moving X/Y. Again, no servo faults, no E-Stops, no indication of any problems. At one point, I tried to jog X, and it moved Y AND Z instead! At several points during the day, I found one or more (usually all) DROs totally whacked spontaneously. In one case, they were reading completely bogus values, UNTIL I did a jog, at which point they all instantly snapped back to the right values!
Some days, it just doesn't pay to go out to the shop at all....
Regards,
Ray L.
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Ray Now you know why my Mill lives on the Dark Side . 2+ years now and not even the first broken drill bit. It runs faultless and perfect every day and it is still on the same computer that I ran Mach3 on so that ruled out the Hardware from end to end. It is a software problem.
Been there done that one for years, (;-) TP
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Probably a bad .xml?
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Ray Now you know why my Mill lives on the Dark Side . 2+ years now and not even the first broken drill bit. It runs faultless and perfect every day and it is still on the same computer that I ran Mach3 on so that ruled out the Hardware from end to end. It is a software problem.
Been there done that one for years, (;-) TP
Terry,
But I haven't touched *anything* in the controller in 2.5 years, since I first built it.... I just swapped out the SmoothStepper, and it seems to be acting better now (hardly perfect, but better...) - at least I managed to get the parts made. Though it did spontaneously FeedHold twice while running the program. And, at one point it spontaneously re-set the Z DRO, mid-program, causing it to try drill a 1" deep hole 4" deep. And at one point I set Single-Block mode, hit CycleStart, and it took off running the program, WHILE SingleBlock was blinking! I really think I'm going to take a look at EMC....
Regards,
Ray L.
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Ray just do it and never look back you will be a happy CNCer again. It is not the prettiest girl in town but by FAR it is the best cook.
(;-) TP
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Ray just do it and never look back you will be a happy CNCer again. It is not the prettiest girl in town but by FAR it is the best cook.
(;-) TP
Terry,
My *only* two reservations are I've built a lot of "infrastructure" around Mach (LOTs of custom macros to automate common functions, custom touch-screen screenset, tool-length comp macros using the knee, etc.), and I'd have to give up my SmoothStepper, which means slowing my machine down considerably. But I am going to give it a try.
Regards,
Ray L.
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Ray(;-) I felt the same way at first as I have about 5years of cool mach functions and programs already developed BUT for the most part they are useless if the machine is not dependable (;-) I did a LOT of research looking for a dependable Low cost Control solution for the Small Job SHops.
It HAD to be stone dependable
It had to DO standard Gcode Functions, Subs and conditional a MUST
It had to do rigid tapping
The dark side has features that macheteers can only dream about.
I am not sure I understand the speed part ??? How fast do you need a knee mill to go?
(;-) TP
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my Mill lives on the Dark Side
Mine also as it is collecting some dust from sitting idle, but, Mach never faults when fired up even after a long time.
I am not going to the dark side since we all know that the force there is evil. >:D
If you don't believe that then ask Yoda! ;D ;)
May the force be with you..... :)
RICH
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Terry,
Actually, with EMC, I don't think speed would be an issue, and that was the primary reason for getting the SmoothStepper for Mach3. I"m going to give EMC a try tomorrow - the CD is burning as we speak....
Regards,
Ray L.