Machsupport Forum

Mach Discussion => General Mach Discussion => Topic started by: rweatherly on November 14, 2009, 08:57:23 AM

Title: Sudden stop
Post by: rweatherly on November 14, 2009, 08:57:23 AM
I was machining a small detailed piece and the machining suddenly stopped.  The file size is about 4 meg, with 320,000 lines of GCode.

I seem to remember something about the display being a problem, but I have been machining similar files without a stop.

Is there any way to find what makes Mach3 stop?

Are newer versions better? (I am running version R2.0.047)

Thanks,

Richard
Title: Re: Sudden stop
Post by: Tweakie.CNC on November 14, 2009, 10:14:25 AM
It would be helpful if you could provide more details.

Was anything shown in the Status box after the stop ?
Was it an e-stop or limit switch triggered (Reset flashing) ?

Tweakie.
Title: Re: Sudden stop
Post by: rweatherly on November 16, 2009, 01:12:04 PM
Sorry for the delay in replying.  I did not take note of any warning messages if they were there.  All I saw as the reset flashing.

When I had problems like this some time ago, I rec'd the following message from Art:

"Turn off the watchdog in config/general. If the CPU gets too bogged down
that error can occur, you may want to also turn off toolpath display if a
file is longer than 20 megs or so."

Anyway I keep the display on and turned the watchdog off.  So far I have done 2 similar items without a problem.
Title: Re: Sudden stop
Post by: Tweakie.CNC on November 17, 2009, 03:00:30 AM
I used to have a similar problem cutting lithophanes which have large files (320,000 or more lines of code) and found that the issue was related to a refresh of the LPT port. I never did discover if this was a Mach related or computer related thing but my cure was to reconfigure my limit switches and e-stop to 'push to make'. Not everybody will agree with this strategy but it worked for me.

Tweakie.