Machsupport Forum
Mach Discussion => General Mach Discussion => Topic started by: HimyKabibble on January 08, 2012, 07:12:43 PM
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I'm about ready to take a big hammer to my mill.....
I'm about at the end of my rope. I've been plagued for many months with flaky behavior - spontaneous changes in fixture offsets, and other equally unpleasant random events. These are real, verifiable bugs in Mach3 and/or the SmoothStepper. I've been working with Brian and Greg off and on for months, tracking down and fixing one issue after another, but the last few issues are still eluding us. At this point, I've installed so many different special debug versions of Mach3 and the SS and ESS plug-ins, I don't even know what I have any more. Today, I decided to try something drastic, in the hopes of restoring some semblence of sanity to things - I decided to wipe the existing install, and start over from scratch. So, I spent about a half hour writing down every single setting, moved the old install aside, did a fresh install of the latest Dev release, and the latest ESS plug-in, then manually re-entered all the configuration settings. When I got done, things are actually worse!
Now I can't get the spindle to come on at all. With all the same settings, the PWM seems to come on, but the FWD/REV relays don't seem to be working. Even stranger, the Z axis moves backwards! I have to flip the polarity of the DIR to make it work correctly! If I use the XML from the old install, all is well. How is this even possible???
The two XMLs are attached. There will be some minor differences, as the old one has a lot of "cruft" in it, which I've tried to remove. But all the settings that are actually needed are, at least visually in the GUI, identical, unless I'm completely losing my mind (which, at this point, should not be ruled out....).
Regards,
Ray L.
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Welcome to the real world (;-) Fought those type issues for a long time. Things are much better now.
Ray please be carefull what you ask for on the NET. Some people make take it wrong(;-)
(;-) TP
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Terry,
This thing is going to be the death of me.... Greg compared my two XMLs, and neither of us can find anything to explain what's happening. All the differences are very minor, most just differences in configuration of unused I/Os. It's a complete mystery....
Regards,
Ray L.
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If you need any help Ray then you need to be more specific about your problem. ;D ;D
Tweakie.
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You seem to be using the SS on the Old but not the new so cant really compare spindle settings.
Hood
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Ray,
Don't know what is wrong. About two weeks ago i tried using my lathe and for the life of me couldn't get the motors to move.
Was using the same xml which had worked for a year or two. After being frustrated for two hours I just created a new xml
and the problem went away. Never had a corrupted or bad xml.
Maybe start simple with a fresh xml and just add items one at a time and see what is causing the problem.
RICH
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You seem to be using the SS on the Old but not the new so cant really compare spindle settings.
Hood
Hood,
No, I'm using the Ethernet SS on both. See the ESS section of the XML - the SmoothStepper section in the old one is vestigial.
Regards,
Ray L.
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Maybe start simple with a fresh xml and just add items one at a time and see what is causing the problem.
RICH
Rich,
That's exactly what I did that landed me here. I didn't copy anything from the old install, but set everything up new.
I've seen XMLs get corrupted several times in ways that caused very odd behavior, but never could figure out why. A few months back, I had one that caused the offsets to get screwed up, and neither Greg nor Brian could figure out why. I just had to revert to an older version, from about a week prior. I've read of quite a few people on here having similar problems from time to time. The XMLs seem to be rather "fragile".
Regards,
Ray L.
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If you need any help Ray then you need to be more specific about your problem. ;D ;D
Tweakie.
I thought I made that pretty clear - brand new install, brand new XML, all setting match the old install exactly, but now the Z axis moves the wrong direction unless I flip the DIR polarity, and I can't get the spindle to come on at all. Copy over the old XML (containing identical settings!), and everything seems to work. How can that be?
Regards,
Ray L.
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Only difference I see regards the spindle is the frequency you have the spindle setting at, doubt that would affect anything though. I am curious though, you have massive numbers in for the filtering, do you really need that? Most I ever needed was 1.43 on if I recall the MPG when using the SS.
How are you coming on with the Kflop, thought you were switching to it?
Hood
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Only difference I see regards the spindle is the frequency you have the spindle setting at, doubt that would affect anything though. I am curious though, you have massive numbers in for the filtering, do you really need that? Most I ever needed was 1.43 on if I recall the MPG when using the SS.
How are you coming on with the Kflop, thought you were switching to it?
Hood
Hood,
What filters are you referring to?
I am still working on the KFlop, and it's getting close. I went ahead and started writing my own CNC Controller app for it, written in c#, which is coming along very nicely, but I just don't have a lot of time to work on it. Most of it is now working, but I have a lot of details to clean up. A screenshot of the main page is below, along with one of the toolpath display I intend to integrate into it.
Regards,
Ray L.
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I am talking about the filtering in SS/ESS config, you have 2000 for the first 4 and 500 on the last 3. I found whilst testing things out in the SS a long while back that 50 affected the E-Stop quite dramatically so what 500 and 2000 are doing I dont know. Maybe things have changed since I did the testing but I am not aware of it.
Hood
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I am talking about the filtering in SS/ESS config, you have 2000 for the first 4 and 500 on the last 3. I found whilst testing things out in the SS a long while back that 50 affected the E-Stop quite dramatically so what 500 and 2000 are doing I dont know. Maybe things have changed since I did the testing but I am not aware of it.
Hood,
Yeah, when I was writing down all the old settings I was also surprised to see that, as I don't recall ever setting any filtering - my machine is very "quiet". I have to wonder if that snuck in as part of the dozens of new versions of Mach3 and/or SS that I've installed over the last six months, in trying to debug the problems I've had. That's exactly why I wanted to do a clean install, and make sure I wasn't carrying over anything that might help explain the problems. I don't see how that filtering could explain anything I'm seeing however.
Regards,
Ray L.
Hood
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Well all I can say is I have just tested setting my MPG/Encoder filtering to 2000 and if you have a MPG I dont have a clue how it works because mine wouldnt if I wound at anything more than very very.................................... very slow. If its having that effect on the MPG what its doing to the others may be similar.
Hood
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Well all I can say is I have just tested setting my MPG/Encoder filtering to 2000 and if you have a MPG I dont have a clue how it works because mine wouldnt if I wound at anything more than very very.................................... very slow. If its having that effect on the MPG what its doing to the others may be similar.
Hood
Hood,
My MPG is connected to a ModIO, not the SS, so it's not affected.
Regards,
Ray L.
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Hood,
BTW - I only have home/limit switches on my Z axis, not the other three, and no spindle sensor, so those big filter values really should not have any affect on anything of consequence.
Regards,
Ray L.
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Shouldn't, well they will on the Z but who knows what else they will affect, Do you not use a probe of sorts for tool height setting? Thought you did but maybe I am thinking of someone else.
Anyway no point in have the filtering so high even though it is very unlikely to be the cause of your present issues.
Hood
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Hood,
Yes, I use probing quite extensively. I've zeroed out all those filters. Brian helped me get the spindle going. I have a VFD, so the spindle control is two relays and a PWM. The PWM was the problem because I hadn't set the motor tuning for the spindle axis. But I completely don't get the relevance, or meaning, of "Steps Per" and "Velocity" for a PWM spindle.....
The Z axis is still backwards, and both Brian and Greg are scratching their heads over that one.
Meanwhile, I finally got motivated to finish up the last few nits to get the KFlop going using their CNC controller app, and I believe it's now ready for prime time. All seems to be working properly now on that front. I think tomorrow I'll take it out for a maiden voyage, and see how it goes.
Regards,
Ray L.
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Never had anything otherthan servo spindles under Mach control so afraid I dont know anything about PWM.
Hope Kflop works out for you like Mach does for me :)
Hood