Machsupport Forum

Mach Discussion => General Mach Discussion => Topic started by: Zaae on December 25, 2008, 06:21:55 PM

Title: Motors stalling, losing steps
Post by: Zaae on December 25, 2008, 06:21:55 PM
Hello all!

I have a smaller machine that has a set of 3 Keling  KL23H276-30-8B steppers on it.

I recently started doing some different machining that's requiring more speed than I usually run, but a problem that's always existed has now come back to bite me. Since I got the machine, it's always had this little glitch. You'll be jogging an axis, and as it goes along, it will suddenly make a very short 'stalling' sound, for lack of a better term. Normally the axis will continue on its way happily, but now I've been trying to ramp up the speeds and when it hits these 'spots', the axis starts losing steps (axis stops, whining noise from stepper like it's stuck)

This can happen on any axis, and in any location on the axis, however it seems to usually happen in the middle area, as if it's determined by how long the motor has been running. Unfortunately, the controller is some generic thing that doesn't appear to have brand name on it.

Anyway, I've been scouring the forums, and tried tons of tricks I've read, but can't get this to go away. As far as I can tell, it's not mechanical, everything moves nice an free, no binding. I'm running a 3.0ghz pentium desktop with nothing installed but mach and windows xp, though it's entirely possible it's the pc causing the problem I suppose, I have no proof either way.

I'm kind of at a loss here. The steppers seem to sail along flawlessly at high speed other than these glitches. I know I haven't covered all the bases as far as testing goes, but I thought I'd ask here, hopefully you guys can save me some time.

TYIA ~
Z

Title: Re: Motors stalling, losing steps
Post by: RICH on December 25, 2008, 07:07:26 PM
Zaaephod,
As the steppers speed increases torque decreases. You should test your particular setup to see where it will start skipping and set the max velocity such that it's approx 30 to 40% below the found skipping max speed. You need a
to leave some torque for cutting and some safety margin. You also can't have instant acceleration so ramp appropriately from start. Don't know what kind of drives you have but you may be able to increase the stepper torque by using a higher amp setting on your drives.
RICH
Title: Re: Motors stalling, losing steps
Post by: Zaae on December 25, 2008, 07:22:33 PM
I've done tons of testing with different velocities and acceleration settings, and it seems as though these steppers should be able to handle the speed. I've moved on to testing software and signals, as it really doesn't seem to be a mechanical problem. I've run the X axis until it stalled (took 8-9 full passes across the table, cutting air), then turned off the controller and the screw turns easily with my fingers, it's not even the slightest bit bound.

I should also mention that throughout the course of the day, I had the machine in 1/8, 1/4, and 1/2 step mode (recalculating steps, velocities, and acceleration for each) and none of that seems to have helped. Neither has pulse width, sherline, or anything else.

I just ran the Driver Test software, and I do see some spikes here and there. I'm going to go through the xp optimization again, swap out parallel cables, check grounds, and re-route some cables... it really seems like some sort of signal noise. If none of that helps I'll try the amp settings you mentioned.

Thanks for the reply on Christmas night !
Title: Re: Motors stalling, losing steps
Post by: RICH on December 25, 2008, 08:25:06 PM
Look up the specs on those steppers and see if you can find motor curves. That will give you prefomance
data at maybe two different voltages and wiring. It will show you speed vrs torque curves and that puts you into the
correct ball park very quickly. You should not be on the far end of the velocity for the motors.
It does not take much to miss a step. When missed you will know it and you back down. If they can be run solid at some lower velocity then work your way up. Yes, noise and a number of other things can cause problems. Some are easy to find others can be a PITA. So find some velocity anad acceleration value that's solid so you have a place to look for other problems if they exist.

My Christmas is a day of rest, tomorrow starts the travel to Bethlehem ( Pennsylvania   ;) ). Till then there is still piece on Earth.
H ;D H ;D H ;D,
Rich

 
Title: Re: Motors stalling, losing steps
Post by: vlmarshall on December 25, 2008, 10:09:59 PM
Take a look at this thread on CNC Zone, about stepper resonance problems and building dampeners to cure it.
http://www.cnczone.com/forums/showthread.php?t=32284

I had the same troubles you describe, on a little Sherline running a Xylotex board and 269in/oz steppers, until I built dampeners like the ones described in that thread. My maximum rapid speeds jumped from 20 IPM, and 12 on Z-axis, to 60+ ipm on all three axis.
Title: Re: Motors stalling, losing steps
Post by: RICH on December 26, 2008, 07:27:36 AM
Zaaephod,
How fast do you want to run?
How much torque is required to move the axis?
What is stepper rpm range works?
Start velocity slow and gradualy increase velocity until it misses steps, then try going up and down and note where
it seems not to miss steps. There is mechanical and electrical resonance.

I have attached a motor curve for the stated stepper. Note the torque values to speed.
RICH

 
Title: Re: Motors stalling, losing steps
Post by: DAlgie on December 26, 2008, 12:34:39 PM
Increase the power supply's voltage by getting a new power supply, this always works, but there is a limit on how much the stepper controls can take, a Gecko has a limit of 80 V, yours might be a lot lower than that I bet. The steppers are safe until they get too hot to the touch, usually around 120F is about it.
   DaveA.
Title: Re: Motors stalling, losing steps
Post by: Sam on December 26, 2008, 01:35:52 PM
Zaaephod, the problems your describing sound so similar to the one that I had. There were little "spikes" during travel. No certain time, no certain place, completely random. If your traveling fast enough, then the motor would stall due to the decrease in the torque at higher speeds. The problem drove me insane trying to figure it out. I mean, it WAS working just dandy a week ago. I KNEW it wasn't mechanical. I swapped computers. No luck. I took the break-out board off. No luck. I really didn't think it was my power supply. I bought some Gecko drives, and everything worked as smooth as butter. They outperformed those cheap combo boards by far, even when they did work correctly. So, if you have access to a good driver, you might want to try that.
Title: Re: Motors stalling, losing steps
Post by: Overloaded on December 26, 2008, 04:38:12 PM
One other thing to check is that the drives themselves are not heating up too much.
No heat sinks and/or poor ventilation can cause intermittent problems too.
FWIW,
RC

Easy enough to verify, just leave the panel door open and let a large fan blow in. Sheilded from chips, dust and debris of course.
Title: Re: Motors stalling, losing steps
Post by: Zaae on December 26, 2008, 10:51:10 PM
Thanks a bunch for all the replies guys, all of the ideas here give me some direction. I'll be trying each of these until I either go bald from pulling hair, or until the problem is fixed.

:)
Title: Re: Motors stalling, losing steps
Post by: simpson36 on December 30, 2008, 05:19:13 PM
Unless i missed something, you did not say what you are driving the Kelings with.

If you are using Geckos, I can tell you that if you have the resistor set higher than the motor spec, the motor will stall randomly. I found this out by accident when I hooked a 4 amp stepper to a Gecko (203v) that still had a resistor for a 6 amp motor on it. Stall, stall, stall. Calculated and changed the resistor and all was well.

Just today I posted another accidental discovery. My wireless network adapter causes the steppers to behave exactly as you describe. I  don't know what part of the electronics it is effecting, but unplugging the wireless adapter cures the problem.
Title: Re: Motors stalling, losing steps
Post by: Hood on February 05, 2009, 06:13:32 PM
Its been a while since I set up steppers but I am curious where you have the resistors? You say its between pin 1 and 5 on the motor, are you meaning the drive? and if yes is that the current set pins on the G540 as I am not familiar with them.
Hood
Title: Re: Motors stalling, losing steps
Post by: Overloaded on February 05, 2009, 11:07:49 PM
From Gecko:

RC
Title: Re: Motors stalling, losing steps
Post by: simpson36 on February 06, 2009, 04:53:25 AM
Couple observations:

First, you have the motor set up parallel which is 4.2 amps. The 540 drive specs at 3.5 max

Second, your resistor is off by a factor of 1,000

You might consider wiring the motors as series and note the 'K' (thousand) next to the resistor ohm spec.
Title: Re: Motors stalling, losing steps
Post by: Zaae on February 07, 2009, 10:45:22 AM
Just for the sake of helping others, I'm going to post my latest findings.

After speaking with the very helpful tech support at geckodrives, I learned a couple things. First off, Parallel mode for these motors is supposed to be fine, though if I were to keep it in parallel, a 3.3 ohm resistor on the set pins would have worked, because the G540 will limit its output to 3.5 amps anyway.

I was getting a reading of around 80 degrees C, and it was making me nervous. According to tech support, this is normal, and acceptable (up to 100 deg C), however for the sake of not burning myself on the motors during tool changes, and the longevity of the motors and drivers, I decided to rewire in series.

My latest problem was this mysterious ticking noise coming from the motors (all of them, on any axis), with a steady, repeating 'skip' in the motor about every second or so.  This skip was (and still is) causing stalling when the motors are run at moderate speeds. I did everything I could think of to the computer. It's a 3 ghz pentium, with bare-bones windows xp on it. I did all of the performance suggestions from the support area here, along with every other tweak and setting I could think of with NO CHANGE. I just could not get rid of it.

More or less by accident, we found out in the end that it has something to do with the jog keys. I haven't found a way around it yet, but if I give a motor a G0X1000 command, it will run smooth as can be, but if I hold a jog key down, I get the ticking (and stalling) which still needs to be sorted out, as I can't have the motors stalling during jogging over for a tool change. I'm going to try a specific keyboard driver rather than the windows system one, and see if that helps.


Title: Re: Motors stalling, losing steps
Post by: Hood on February 07, 2009, 10:54:48 AM
Try setting a pulse width of 10 and see if that helps, or try sherline mode, I seem to remember some people needing Sherline for the g540's.
Hood
Title: Re: Motors stalling, losing steps
Post by: Zaae on February 07, 2009, 01:35:24 PM
Hood, I tried the pulse width, along with, or without sherline mode, but then the motor just turns very rough. Gecodrive says to use a pulse width of 2, which does seem to be the best.

You know, the more I work on this, the more I think I've got some sort of voltage drop, or signal noise. While a jog key being held does cause minor twitching of the motor, there's still something else. I thought we had it figured out, until I let it run some straight line programs, 300mm one way, 300mm back. Sometimes it's within 5 seconds of starting the program, sometimes it takes 30 seconds or more, but I can hear the motor 'twitch' once in a while, and it usually stalls if there's any load on it. If I put the motor on the table and run the program, when the twitch happens, it actually jumps, like it tried to change direction, or stop instantly for just a split second.

I've been reading looking for how to hook up a capacitor to filter the power supply, but the numbers I was coming up with weren't in the realm of reality. Geckodrive says:

(80,000 * I) / V = C
Example: Using a power supply of 65V and 5A, the equation would look as follows:
(80,000 * 5) / 65 = 6153µF
So, for me it's like this:
(80,000 * 19amps) / 48volts = 31666µF capacitor ... I think I might have a hard time finding a cap like that around here ..

The last thing I thought of is line noise, but I have a spare motor with the factory wiring, hooked right up to the driver, and the twitch is still there.

EDIT: I wanted to mention that this problem has existed ever since my first setup of this machine. I started with a hobby cnc drive, and that did it too. I've tried a completely different computer with a fresh install of windows xp and mach 3. I bought this new G540 drive. I have a couple power supplies, ranging from nothing more than a rectifier and capacitors on a transformer to an vending machine power supply, and several others. I've tried unipolar, bipolar, parallel and series wiring.

I may go bald by the time I figure this out >.<



Title: Re: Motors stalling, losing steps
Post by: Hood on February 07, 2009, 01:51:42 PM
You can connect as many capacitors in parallel as you need to get the value required. So at the moment you have no capacitance at all?
Hood
Title: Re: Motors stalling, losing steps
Post by: Zaae on February 07, 2009, 01:59:26 PM
No, I'm using the vending machine power supply that is supposed to be regulated. Ooh, I found some 6800µF caps, I have 3 of those .. that gets me closer..
I appreciate your help more than you can imagine :)
Title: Re: Motors stalling, losing steps
Post by: Hood on February 07, 2009, 02:09:55 PM
9 caps wired in parallel is not a problem, I had more than that on a machine a while back, see pic, there are 5 large caps and 6 smaller ones.
However your current may be on the high side, how many axis do you have?

Hood
Title: Re: Motors stalling, losing steps
Post by: Zaae on February 07, 2009, 02:24:33 PM
I have 3, though the guy at gecko wasn't concerned with that, apparently the drive is supposed to limit the current. That aside, we had the same problem with the 10 amp 29 volt power supply.
Title: Re: Motors stalling, losing steps
Post by: Hood on February 07, 2009, 02:55:05 PM
Ok well thats what I was getting at, you have 3 motors so the most they will ever draw is 3 x your motors current but more likely 2/3. So your capacitance would be worked out on the motors current rather than what the power supply is capable of, however more shouldnt do any harm :)
Hood
Title: Re: Motors stalling, losing steps
Post by: Zaae on February 07, 2009, 03:13:36 PM
Ok, I hooked up 3 6300uf caps, which are functioning, but it didn't help the problem   :-\

They run SO NICE and so smooth for 30-60 seconds, then there's just a blip where they're apparently losing signal, or something. I've removed everything possible from the pc startup, and stopped every process that didn't cause the pc to have problems, and it just won't go away. Also for kicks I tried a new parallel cable too. I've tried the wire wiggle test too, no tell tale signs there either.

EDIT:
I don't know if I mentioned it, or if it helps, but if I lower the speed of the motor down to say, 300rpm(ish), it will actually stall, instead of just the usual little twitch I've been describing.
Title: Re: Motors stalling, losing steps
Post by: Hood on February 07, 2009, 03:37:19 PM
Do you have a scope? would be interesting to see the pulse.
Hood
Title: Re: Motors stalling, losing steps
Post by: Zaae on February 07, 2009, 03:45:42 PM
I do, though it's an old green screen, so I couldn't really share the results. I had two quick ideas to try, if they don't work I'll dig out the scope.
Title: Re: Motors stalling, losing steps
Post by: Zaae on February 08, 2009, 01:18:59 AM
I was unable to see any spikes or drops using the scope.

For lack of anything better to do, I (temporarily) took my wife's pc, which is one of few remaining here with parallel ports, and installed mach3 on that. After 30 minutes of testing, the motors hadn't skipped a beat.

I'm not sure how three completely different computers can cause the same issue, but some unknown, mysterious thing about them is causing it for sure. Unfortunately, I don't think I can steal my wife's computer, but it at least gives me a direction to run in.
Title: Re: Motors stalling, losing steps
Post by: Hood on February 08, 2009, 04:09:48 AM
Have you tried the optomisation steps?
Hood
Title: Re: Motors stalling, losing steps
Post by: simpson36 on February 08, 2009, 06:20:44 AM
Unless you are mis-typing, or I am missing something, you still are off by a factor of 1,000 on your set resistor.

For the 540, your set resistor should match your motor's draw amps times 1,000.  So if I remember right your motors in series draw something like 2 amps, which would call for a 2K (two thousand) ohm resistor.

I'm no expert in electronics, but it seems to me that a 3.3ohm resistor in this application is equivalent to not having a resistor on there at all. I can tell you from my experience with my Gecko 203v drivers that they are very sensitive to having the correct resistor. Bumping and stalling is the symptom of the wrong resistor.

As to your computers, you might check that there is no software polling the parallel port as that could cause the rhythmic bumping that you are getting.

Look for things like printer drivers, antivirus, spoolers, etc. that talk to the parallel port. Make sure your parallel port is set to the highest communication level in the computer's BIOS. If it is set for a printer, it will likely cause trouble.

Other things to watch out for: wireless anything, network, keyboard, Xbox360 controller, phones nearby.

Again, not being a electronics whiz, I would still have to second Hood's comment that the caps may be more effective on the drivers rather than the power supply. I have them in both places, calculated, again as Hood suggested, based on the motor draw.





Title: Re: Motors stalling, losing steps
Post by: RICH on February 08, 2009, 10:03:33 AM
The capacitor formula in reply#16 is a standard powere supply formula you will find in most electronic books.
The capcitor size found from the formula is a value, which if used, should provide you with DC ripple
to less than 10%. So less cap maybe more ripple in the DC and likewise more cap less ripple. So it acts
as a fiiter.

As far as steppers running hot....I don't like mine running above 120F ( my preference only )
80C  and above you can burn yourself and they should be guarded from a safety point of view.
Yes you can run them hotter. Motor winding insulation is one limit on how hot you can get them.
I know that if the temp gets to high they will start acting strangely.
Then if they are only warm, the motor isn't working to it's available potential.

The "ticking sound" ........you realy need to take a look at the generated pulse signal out of the
PP port and see what it looks like. If you have ringing or whatever on the signal out of the PP it can
create all kinds of problems. The only way to clean up a pulse signal is deal wiith the source of it.
If you can't find that source and cure it.......nothing downstream will clean it up......from trying homemade
clean up circuits / break out boards / different PP card , if it's generated by the computer before the PP,
they will probably not work ( my experience and what other knowledgable people have told me).

One solution is to have the pulse provided by using the SmoothStepper.

Just some info for your consideration as i think your not having much fun!,
RICH




Title: Re: Motors stalling, losing steps
Post by: Zaae on February 08, 2009, 11:39:11 AM
@ Hood ~
Yep, that was one of my first attempts was following the optimization guide.


@ Simpson & Rich

I've got you guys a bit confused about where I'm at in the troubleshooting procedure, and I apologize for that :) At this point I'm confident that the motors, driver, power supply, etc. are working correctly now. It's something about the signal coming from the pc.

I've done a lot of stuff over the last couple days, some of which I have, or haven't mentioned here, though all of it really isn't the problem. Since all of my efforts to remove / uninstall / stop whatever is causing the interruption haven't helped yet, I've started from scratch with a fresh format and reinstall of XP.

I noticed while digging around in the bios that this computer appears to have been used as a server for some business, as there's lots of stuff in there about security, backups, and all sorts of things you don't see in a normal desktop bios. It's entirely possible that the format and reinstall may not work, even though I've disabled all of the 'extras' in the bios, and anything that sounded like it might have an effect several days ago.

At this point, I'd respectfully suggest that you don't think too hard about my problem until I come back with more information, because I think we've found the problem.

:) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :)
Title: Re: Motors stalling, losing steps
Post by: kevinl on February 08, 2009, 10:25:15 PM
I am having almost the exact same problem. Here is what I posted to the Mechmate forum. Some additional things, I am running Oriental PK296A2A motors and using Gecko 203Vs. This is also being driven by an IBM 6221, which has an onboard parallel port. Is there something about the IBM parallel ports that MACH and/or the BOB doesn't like?

I'm stumped. I thought I had a grounding problem, but I've rechecked all the grounds and everything looks good. The symptoms are:

1) If I go very slow, there seem to be no problems, although I do notice an occasional "tick" from the motors.

2) Operating at 300 in/min and anywhere from 5-20 in/sec/sec acceleration, all motors will run smooth, with the normal high pitch whine.

3) They do not get hot, nor do the geckos

4) After traveling for anywhere from 20 - 100 inches, the motors will what I would describe as gear grinding sound and quit spinning. If I stop and start again, it runs smooth again.

5) All of the motors seem to be doing this. At first I noticed it on the X-axis only, so thought it might be a binding problem. I have dropped all motors and still get the behavior even under no load.

I'm guessing software setting or tuning problem, just not sure what exactly would cause this?

Under Mach 3 Config + Motor Tuning, there are two boxes labeled Step Pulse and Dir Pulse with units of micro-seconds? What should these values be?

Thanks
Title: Re: Motors stalling, losing steps
Post by: simpson36 on February 09, 2009, 05:40:24 AM
The correct settings for the 203v (which are opposite of all other Gecko drives) are found on www.geckodrive.com along with a bunch of other useful info about CNC mechanics in general. Definitely worth a read.

Two thoughts:

I wonder if one possible cause of a regularly spaced 'tick' might be the system adding or subtracting an extra step to correct for rounding if the drive ratio is something odd that slowly gets off-step.

Is there anyone who has used a third party add-in parallel port that is known to work with Mach3? That would be great info to post.

I have experienced the motors skipping/stalling/grinding in two instances:

A wireless network adapter very definitely caused the issue. Unplugging it from the USB port instantly stopped the problem.

The computer reaching 100% CPU utilization also caused the symptom. It is likely that any process that interrupts the CPU with polling or 'wait' type operations could also cause this. In my research on steppers, it seems to me that they cannot recover from  receiving a step command that is out of sequence with the previous command, so in addition to the obvious timing sensitivity, any lost or out-of-order-step commands are going to stall the motor.

I suggest as a general rule to go into the task manager (right click on task bar) and set the mach3 process to 'real time' which is the highest level of priority. (right click on the process) This *should* prevent other processes from suspending Mach3 long enough to cause a problem.

Make sure the PP is set in the bios to the correct communication type as required by your BOB . . presumably the highest setting.







Title: Re: Motors stalling, losing steps
Post by: kevinl on February 09, 2009, 06:56:46 AM
Thanks for the suggestions. Your statement, "I wonder if one possible cause of a regularly spaced 'tick' might be the system adding or subtracting an extra step to correct for rounding if the drive ratio is something odd that slowly gets off-step.", has me wondering because the "tick" does seemed regularly spaced. Can you elaborate on what might cause the system to add or subtract an extra step?  Thanks.
Title: Re: Motors stalling, losing steps
Post by: simpson36 on February 09, 2009, 05:52:59 PM
Comments on the 'tick' from motors:

Something I noticed about Mach3 is that manual jogging behaves differently than running Gcode. This was explained by others on this forum as a Mach 'rounding' process.

I can only speculate on this issue as the programmers did not weigh in on that thread, so anybody's guess is as good as the next.

The behavior though is not speculative as it is observable. If I set the jog distance to 1", the jog will be a few thou short and then make it up on the next jog, then be short again, then make it up again later. Yet if I enter Gcode to go to sequential coord's 1" apart, the error is not present and the movement is dead accurate.

So it would seem that Mach uses different methods with jogging and with Gcode moves.

This is only speculation on my part, but if Mach jogs my stringing short moves together, it would have to make up the shortfalls as it goes along . . which at certain speeds might manifest as a 'tick'.



Title: Re: Motors stalling, losing steps
Post by: Zaae on February 10, 2009, 02:23:43 PM
Hello again guys :)

First of all a GIGANTIC thank you for all your help and support.

I'm back to tell you that after several long, difficult cuts at top speed, I FINALLY have no missed steps.

My problem was all related to the computers I was using. If you're having a very similar problem, save yourself some headache, and try a computer with no less than 1.6ghz processor, with a separate video card (not on board), and use a fresh install of windows, or whatever OS you're using.

I still don't know what exactly was causing it, but after stripping xp down to the bare minimums, and following the optimization suggestions from the support section of this site, two of my machines have the exact same problem. I have read nearly every post on this forum, and several others that discuss skipping or stalling motors, and have tried every suggestion I've read, but in the end what finally cured my problem was a completely different computer. I went to the local surplus store, picked up a 2.6ghz 512mb ram pentium 4  desktop for $75.00, and even before the optimizing, the problem was gone.

A 333mhz pc would run smoothly, but it was too slow, it can't pulse fast enough for 10x microstepping drives and motors with 10tpi screws, so it didn't really answer any questions for me.

As for the little 'ticking' sound while jogging, this seems to be something about the keyboard polling or something, because it only does it for me on the slower machines, and only when using key jogging. The ticking sound didn't happen when it was just code running the motors.

Right now the rapids on the machine are ridiculously fast, I can jog at over 177ipm with fairly low acceleration numbers, or 145 with quick acceleration. Of course, cutting that fast isn't realistic, but when it comes to programs with lots of jogging, it saves a HUGE amount of time.

So, thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you all very much!

 

Title: Re: Motors stalling, losing steps
Post by: Hood on February 10, 2009, 02:36:41 PM
You need to get yourself a new keyboard, it seems to be repeating certain combinations of k, t, n, a etc ;D

Great you are sorted now :)
Hood
Title: Re: Motors stalling, losing steps
Post by: B.E.N. on March 24, 2009, 04:03:04 PM
Hello,

I have to agree with Zaaephod. I bought a CNC lathe from a vendor who offered a PC with it. I turned it down because we had a computer not being used that had W2K on it. I hooked it all up and proceeded try and learn. After clearing up a few things I always had a nagging intermittent problem with the steppers going crazy. Turns out the PC was a 550Mhz machine. The manual clearly says 1Ghz processor which I either missed or ignored. The frustrating part was things would run great for weeks sometimes then go crazy. I hooked up a machine with WXP and 1.2 Ghz what a difference.

To help convince me I was using the three finger salute to task manager and looking at processor performance, I was hitting 100% just running Gcode without running the steppers. The pulse frequency would drop out. The driver test would always look good.

Thanks for everyones help and I look forward to working with Mach3 now instead of dreading it. :D

What surplus store did find the $75 computer at? You might want to work on that keyboard.

B.E.N.