Machsupport Forum
Mach Discussion => General Mach Discussion => Topic started by: No Lemon on March 25, 2014, 08:42:16 PM
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I have been using my plasma table for about a month now and decided to upgrade my computer with a faster and bigger computer.
I reinstalled all the software and setup Mach 3 with all the information off my old PC. The one thing that is different is the new PC has a separate card and cable for the printer port. I am running XP on both machines. I went to device manager and got the io range for the lava parallel PCI port (e000-e007) and entered that in the port address for port 1.
Everything seems to work except for turning on the plasma cutter. I can move x,y and z manually with the keys on the keyboard. I can run a g-code file in mach3 as long as I don't try and cut. The problem is as soon as I turn the torch on manually or the g-code file turns on the torch the PC looses communication with the bob. The dro's in mach3 still move if I move the x,y,z with the keyboard but no movement on the table. It does not activate the reset button. I have to reboot the computer and then everything is ok until the torch is activated again.
If I hookup the old PC everything works fine and I can make cuts manually or with mach3.
Any help would be great and very much appreciated.
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There would seem to be a noise issue and it looks like your new computer is more prone to it than your old one.
How to cure is a hard one as there are so many things that could be the issue but generally making sure all cabling is shielded and properly grounded is the way to go.
Hood
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Is your plasma and your controller plugged into the same circuit?
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Is your plasma and your controller plugged into the same circuit?
If you asking about the ac power then no. The plasma cutter is 220v and the controller is 110.
There would seem to be a noise issue and it looks like your new computer is more prone to it than your old one.
How to cure is a hard one as there are so many things that could be the issue but generally making sure all cabling is shielded and properly grounded is the way to go.
Hood
All the cables are shielded and grounded. I ran a separate ground from the metal being cut to the box where all the electronics are mounted and no change. I am going to try a separate ground from the new PC to the electronics box and see if that does anything.
Thanks for your responses.
I hooked up my old computer again just to see and it works perfect.
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I changed computers to one with a built in printer port and it's working. I'm guessing it was something to do with the separate printer card?
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Maybe it could be your PCI card was 3.3v rather than 5v and thus noise was more of an issue with it.
Hood