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General Mach Discussion / Re: Parallel port woes, again. Help wanted, again
« on: February 18, 2017, 06:33:25 PM »
Issue resolved (I hope).
I tried to run Mach3 again a few days ago and I was back to the issue of only having two of the three connected axes working after having a full day of fully functioning CNC happiness the day before. I did all the usual things to no avail and then out of desperation I disconnected my machine controller and took the cover off to peer inside. Everything looked reasonably clean so I removed all the axis cards and blew everything out with compressed air including all the edge connectors that the axis cards slot into. I also blew down the axis cards themselves and reinstalled everything. Would you believe that all is now normal? I am now thinking that there was a buildup of metal dust or some wayward piece of microscopic swarf that was shorting something out. After I got my machine controller I did take the precaution of fitting fine stainless steel mesh to all the cooling slots on the top of the case but there are some rather largish holes on the rear panel of the case and some unprotected slots on the underside where I am guessing dust and chips could be sucked in by the cooling fan. My son used to work in a shop that made hydraulic cylinders and he was constantly complaining about metal dust building up on the speaker and microphone in his mobile phone. Evidently this dust just floats around in the air where it will stick to any magnetic objects or settle onto horizontal surfaces to be picked up by other surfaces. Once you get a critical thickness layer it becomes conductive and therefore damaging to electrical and electronic equipment.
So, for now at least I think I have a reliable CNC machine running again. Yay!
I tried to run Mach3 again a few days ago and I was back to the issue of only having two of the three connected axes working after having a full day of fully functioning CNC happiness the day before. I did all the usual things to no avail and then out of desperation I disconnected my machine controller and took the cover off to peer inside. Everything looked reasonably clean so I removed all the axis cards and blew everything out with compressed air including all the edge connectors that the axis cards slot into. I also blew down the axis cards themselves and reinstalled everything. Would you believe that all is now normal? I am now thinking that there was a buildup of metal dust or some wayward piece of microscopic swarf that was shorting something out. After I got my machine controller I did take the precaution of fitting fine stainless steel mesh to all the cooling slots on the top of the case but there are some rather largish holes on the rear panel of the case and some unprotected slots on the underside where I am guessing dust and chips could be sucked in by the cooling fan. My son used to work in a shop that made hydraulic cylinders and he was constantly complaining about metal dust building up on the speaker and microphone in his mobile phone. Evidently this dust just floats around in the air where it will stick to any magnetic objects or settle onto horizontal surfaces to be picked up by other surfaces. Once you get a critical thickness layer it becomes conductive and therefore damaging to electrical and electronic equipment.
So, for now at least I think I have a reliable CNC machine running again. Yay!