Machsupport Forum

Mach Discussion => General Mach Discussion => Topic started by: SuperMesna on August 18, 2012, 07:12:20 AM

Title: cnc mill "stottering"
Post by: SuperMesna on August 18, 2012, 07:12:20 AM
hey guys

I installed the newest demo version of Mach3 yesterday on a Dell D800 running Windows XP. My mill is a small 3020T made in china. After a few hours I had the settings completed. After that I tried to cut a few demo images like that scorpion Ive found somewhere. Excellent cuts indeed.
The only issue I have is that during every process the machine is "stuttering". All 3 motors would run for for like a second and than stop for a a blink of an eye. You dont really see is but you can definately hear it.
Could it be that the parallel port settings on the laptop need to be changed? such as boud rate and so on? I didnt mess with them yet.

any help is very appreciated
regards
Peter
Title: Re: cnc mill "stottering"
Post by: Hal on August 18, 2012, 09:26:31 AM
As stated in many places, Mach3 and laptops may not play well together. Some people get lucky, but most do not. Most laptops need an external control board.

Hal
Title: Re: cnc mill "stottering"
Post by: Hood on August 18, 2012, 02:40:44 PM
Parallel ports dont have Baud rate, that is serial you are thinking of.
As mentioned it could be because its a laptop, run the driver test and see how good the graph looks.
Also have a look on the diagnostics page and see what the Time in Int says and the Frequency.
Hood
Title: Re: cnc mill "stottering"
Post by: SuperMesna on August 19, 2012, 04:25:45 AM
hey

i did the driver test and it says "pulsing too fast". I had set the parameters on 25kHz, however the value in the box "pulses per second" is about 15000. i dont really know how to read this result...
Anyway after that I did a fresh install of Windows XP with nothing installed except Mach3. But it still says "pulsing too high"
is there anything I could try to do?
Title: Re: cnc mill "stottering"
Post by: Hood on August 19, 2012, 04:33:45 AM
You could try the optimisation steps detailed on the downloads page. The other option if you are determined to use a laptop is use an external controller such as the SmoothStepper or possibly even the Pokeys if you only require 25KHz.
Hood
Title: Re: cnc mill "stottering"
Post by: Hal on August 19, 2012, 10:26:48 AM
Hood,
Can SmoothStepper run the blue contol box that comes with these routers?
Title: Re: cnc mill "stottering"
Post by: Hal on August 19, 2012, 10:34:36 AM
Never mind I just read the manual. Sounds like the best choice is an external control board.