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General Mach Discussion / Wierd Start Stop Motion

« on: August 09, 2009, 11:21:09 PM »

After I installed the latest version of Mach3 I started getting a wierd start stop motion.  It did not do this before.

In motor tuning the motors move smooth as silk.  Likewise I can jog smoothly.  However, if I run a program I get this wierd start/stop motion.  Same if I tell it to go to zero.  It will run for about a second, come to a complete stop and then continue after a half second pause.  Any ideas?  It will haltingly pulse its way through the program otherwise normaly.  Rapids seem about the right speed and feed rate seems right --when it is moving.  I can't figure out why it is coming to a stop.

All 3 axis stop and start at the same time.

PS: I did a "Restore Settings...." which took me all the way back to raw default settings, and I am still getting this weird motion.

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General Mach Discussion / No motor motion, running out of troubleshooting

« on: May 29, 2009, 07:01:03 PM »

I'm a noob, so I hope the solution will prove to be simple ...

I have done all the trouble shooting I can think of and still have no motion.  The motors power up, I can't turn them by hand, but nothing happens when I try to move the motors in the tuning mode or with the on screen jogging.

My set up:

XP SP3 Laptop with a MosChip based card
Mach 3 2.0.047
CNC4PC BOB
Gecko 251
36V powersupply
Keling 285oz/in bipolar motors

Mach 3 Settings

Going to the Hardware Manager, The LPT(3) resources gives me two sets of values:
FEE8-FEEF
FEE0-FEE7

I have used both FEE8 and FEE0 in the Mach settings, but no love.  Otherwise the port settings screen has only Port 1 enable checked, nothing else is checked, and I have left the speed at the default 25K.

Motor Out

X, Y, Z are enabled using pins 2/3, 4/5, and 6/7 Port 1.  Active low settings are turned off.

Tuning

On my X and Y axis, they are set to drive a 0.752" diameter pulley reduced 3:1. The 251 cards are 10X micro stepping cards.  The math is a little complicated, but I end up with 2539.7 steps per inch.  So far I have used that value as well as just using the default 2000 steps per inch.

On my Z axis I have 1/4-20 thread screw.  2000 microsteps per revolution x 20 revolutions per inch gives me 40,000 steps per inch.

I get NO MOTION AT ALL.  I don't know what else to check.  The diagnostic page looks normal, EXCEPT that I have a RED at Enable 1.  I don't know what "Enable 1" is, and I notice that in the set up videos Art's screen shows no red for any of the outputs.

I don't know what else to test. 

Any help is appreciated.