Topics

1

General Mach Discussion / Z axis motor going crazy (need help)

« on: June 19, 2017, 09:23:36 PM »

I have had my machine for a year now and have been running it a lot though out the year. I have had not problems till a few days ago my z axis motor started to act up. It basically will go up sometimes then it will go down! then it will got down when is is supposed to go up then up when it is supposed to go down. Then it will work fine for a split second then do it again.... I re-wired everything so it is not the wiring, I then went into motor tuning and turned everything way down and it is still going crazy. Is my motor bad? do I just need a new motor? has anyone else had this problem?

2

General Mach Discussion / problems with Zeroing my machine. TRIED EVERYTHING NEED SOME HELP!!

« on: October 12, 2016, 10:07:39 PM »

Alright at the beginning on this year I build a cnc machine using the gecko g540 and mach3. I got it running and it has been running just about every day with no problems! I just recently build another machine exactly like the first one but with this on I am having a heck of a time. I have it all set up and started to run my first program on it and it started to fade of to the right of the work piece about 1/4 of an inch. I stopped the program and zeroed my machine and when it went back to zero it was off about 1/4 of an inch from where it should have zeroed. So I have check and made sure that my rails are good and not binding or anything then ran it again and the same thing happened well then I check my bearings and my pulleys and made sure the belt was good and not off. After this I ran it again and it still did the same thing! So I thought it might be my stepper motor so I had a new one laying around and replaced it with that one and ran the program again. It didn't make a difference it did the same thing it was off about 1/4 of and inch when I went to zero it. I have checked the motor tuning on mach3 it should all be the same as my other machine because I just copied the xml from that machine to the new one. I am just out of ideas! I have no idea what it is doing and why it is doing it. Could it be mach3? has anyone else had this problem?

3

General Mach Discussion / Got a new computer now my machine wont work.

« on: May 03, 2016, 12:29:34 AM »

Alight so I have mach3 and am running my cnc mill with a gecko g540. I have been running this with an old xp computer and wanted to upgrade to a better computer that is running windows 10. So I bought one and whiched everything over to the new computer and had no problem installing mach3 and I imported my XML file so that all the setting would be the same. But when I open up mach3 and go to move the machine nothing happens! I have tried everything! I have changed the parallel port mode in the bios to EPP and then to ECP and then to PS/2. Non of this worked so I tried messing around with the ports in mach3 but nothing seems to work! when I start up my computer I can here the motors engage but when I open up mach3 nothing! I have been working at this all day and can not figure it out. Does anyone have any ideas?

4

General Mach Discussion / Need some advice!

« on: April 22, 2016, 08:35:52 PM »

I am trying to cut 1\2 thick baltic birch plywood all in one pace. I am able to do it with my feed rate at 30in/sec and my RPMs at 2700 without breaking the bit but it just seems to have a little bit of burn marks. Here is the link to the bits that I use http://www.amazon.com/HQMaster-Carbide-Router-Acrylic-Hardwood/dp/B010NI39WO. I am trying to do this because it seem to get less blow out and burs when you only do one pass. This will save a tone of time with sanding afterwards. So the question is if I got a 3 or 4 flute bit would I be able to do this much easier? Any bit suggestions?

5

General Mach Discussion / Hot Stepper motors

« on: April 21, 2016, 05:59:43 PM »

So I own a x carve cnc machine and run it with mach3 and a gecko 540. My motors are 2.8A/phase and I have added the  2.8K 5% 1/4W resistors to the gecko 540. But my motors are still getting hot. They will run for about 30 min. and get hot to the touch. Is this normal? they sound alright. Is there a setting on mach3 that I am missing that might cause this problem? Any help would be appreciated, thanks!

6

General Mach Discussion / Z axis motor is going crazy

« on: February 10, 2016, 10:46:43 AM »

Alright so I am running my machine with a gecko G540 with mach3. I had it all set up and have been cutting things out for about a month now until today when in the middle of a cut my Z axis stepper motor started going crazy. I stopped the machine and have been trying to figure out what the problem is but cant figure it out. when I want to move the Z axis up it will move down for a bit then move up and it does the same when I try to move it downward. I have read about others having this same problem and the advice that was given to them was to change the pulse width to 15 and if that doesn't work enable sherline mode. Well I cant find the pulse width anywhere! in motor tuning there is a step pulse and a dir. pulse but there is now pulse width. what ones is considered pulse width? step pulse or dir pulse? and where do you enable sherline mode? I have been watching the movies and reading the manual on the machsupport website but I cant find anything that can help. So if someone would help me figure all this out it would be super nice I am sure its not to hard.