Machsupport Forum

Mach Discussion => General Mach Discussion => Topic started by: HimyKabibble on July 20, 2011, 09:41:19 PM

Title: Well..... That Was Weird....
Post by: HimyKabibble on July 20, 2011, 09:41:19 PM
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.
Title: Re: Well..... That Was Weird....
Post by: HimyKabibble on July 23, 2011, 02:19:34 PM
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.
Title: Re: Well..... That Was Weird....
Post by: BR549 on July 23, 2011, 04:31:58 PM
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


Title: Re: Well..... That Was Weird....
Post by: ger21 on July 23, 2011, 04:41:30 PM
Probably a bad .xml?
Title: Re: Well..... That Was Weird....
Post by: HimyKabibble on July 23, 2011, 04:46:11 PM
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.



Title: Re: Well..... That Was Weird....
Post by: BR549 on July 23, 2011, 05:35:07 PM
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
Title: Re: Well..... That Was Weird....
Post by: HimyKabibble on July 23, 2011, 08:09:53 PM
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.
Title: Re: Well..... That Was Weird....
Post by: BR549 on July 23, 2011, 09:22:43 PM
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

Title: Re: Well..... That Was Weird....
Post by: RICH on July 23, 2011, 09:28:59 PM
Quote
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
Title: Re: Well..... That Was Weird....
Post by: HimyKabibble on July 23, 2011, 09:44:27 PM
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.