Messages

6791

General Mach Discussion / Re: New people welcome !! Come in here and introduce your self!

« on: March 15, 2011, 05:50:15 AM »

Hi Trickey,

I never got a 'welcome aboard' when I joined the forum and I am feeling a bit left out here 

Tweakie.

6792

General Mach Discussion / Re: Is is possible that some motherboard does not work with Mach3

« on: March 15, 2011, 05:45:32 AM »

Hi Jeff,

That motherboard sounds good.
I don't suppose it's any help but my initial VFD / PC problems were caused by an earth loop. The machine frame is connected to earth and the heatsink of the VFD is bolted to the machine frame. Disconnecting the incoming earth to the VFD solved the PC problem (it now gets it's earth from the machine frame and the shop radio works again, without any 'wailing' at start up   ).

Tweakie.

6793

General Mach Discussion / Re: Limit Switch Trips

« on: March 14, 2011, 09:23:53 AM »

Glad to hear you got it sorted. 

Tweakie.

6794

General Mach Discussion / Re: Limit Switch Trips

« on: March 14, 2011, 09:15:49 AM »

I am on to a solution now and its not electrical noise as such.
At fast traverse there would appear to be a slight tight spot on the X axis which is causing an error signal on the closed loop controller. Turning the Jog speed down and running the table around a bit has got some oil into to the right places and reduced the trip frequency.

Paul,

It depends on the way your machine has been wired, but from what you have described, I doubt Mach would be able to detect this error has occurred. This being the case, the limit trip would be unrelated to the following error you are observing.
Very curious this one.

Tweakie.

6795

General Mach Discussion / Re: Am I loosing steps?

« on: March 14, 2011, 09:04:47 AM »

I don't think you need to use your best (or favourite) PC - A second user one would perhaps do.

Having said all this I have an old Dell Inspiron which works just great, but perhaps this is the exception. 

Tweakie.

6796

General Mach Discussion / Re: Limit Switch Trips

« on: March 14, 2011, 06:53:29 AM »

Paul,

It's not the button that generates the electrical noise - it's the wiring between the button and the input on the controller which can pick up the electrical noise.

Tweakie.

6797

General Mach Discussion / Re: Limit Switch Trips

« on: March 14, 2011, 06:31:22 AM »

Hi Paul,

Welcome to the forum.

My first guess would be electrical noise. Do you have an E-Stop fitted or any other inputs ?

Try increasing the debounce setting to 2000 and see if the machine still misbehaves.

Tweakie.

6798

General Mach Discussion / Re: Am I loosing steps?

« on: March 14, 2011, 03:18:25 AM »

That odd tick from a stepper is the symptom of lost (or additional) steps. On my machine one lost step would equal 0.003mm and you would be hard pushed to notice a few of those as an inaccuracy.
It is not recommended to use laptops with Mach unless a separate motion controller (such as Smooth Stepper) is used. There are many reasons why laptops cause problems and you could be lucky and locate the problem early on or you could be chasing this forever.
I would suggest you either get a SS or use a machine dedicated PC then use your IBM for internet / programming etc.

Tweakie.

6799

General Mach Discussion / Re: Impact/Laser engraving - something going wrong

« on: March 12, 2011, 12:30:23 PM »

Just to tidy up loose ends and for those that follow, this problem has now been resolved in the later version of the plugin.

Tweakie.

6800

FAQs / Re: new computer

« on: March 12, 2011, 12:22:10 PM »

Thanks Dan,

It's always nice when final outcomes are posted as there are many that follow, sometimes years later.

Tweakie.