Machsupport Forum

Mach Discussion => General Mach Discussion => Topic started by: bobmorey on November 01, 2011, 04:57:35 PM

Title: Intermittent E-stops
Post by: bobmorey on November 01, 2011, 04:57:35 PM
Hi All,
I have a new Novakon NM200 that I have experienced two intermittent sudden E-stops and two sudden loss of power to the motors and spindle.  The NM200 has a Vista or 7 PC as the OS.  I run two other machines on Win XP and never experience this problem.  Two Estops had the message "Driver Watchdog triggered".  The machine is equipped with limit switches but I do not use them, nor was the table near the switches.  Also the motors were not being taxed at all when the E stops occurred (1 during retract, the other machining foam).  The two power downs did occurr while machining, the motors and spindle just stopped and I had to power down the pc completely to reset everything.  A real pain when machining a 3 hour part.

Novakon suggested uninstalling Mach3 which I did and installing the latest version (3.043.022).  But the sudden E-stops started happening. 

For now I dissabled the limit switches in pins/ports because I don't really need them, I also unchecked the "enable driver watchdog". 

BTW what is "Driver watchdog" and why would I want it?  What driver is it watching?

Any other troubleshooting suggestions?  ???

Thanks, Bob
Title: Re: Intermittent E-stops
Post by: BR549 on November 01, 2011, 05:00:43 PM
Turn OFF the watchdog it is not needed.

(;-)TP
Title: Re: Intermittent E-stops
Post by: bobmorey on November 01, 2011, 05:21:16 PM
Thanks, what is "driver watchdog"? -Bob
Title: Re: Intermittent E-stops
Post by: BR549 on November 01, 2011, 05:32:24 PM
The watch dog is an enternal monitor that keeps a watch on things. On some systems it is TOO sensitive and will trip on things that do not effect Mach3 running properly.

(;-) TP
Title: Re: Intermittent E-stops
Post by: bobmorey on November 01, 2011, 06:37:16 PM
Thank you for the reply.  Hopefully dissabling the watchdog will help.