Messages

161

General Mach Discussion / Re: Noise Problem on a large machine

« on: November 08, 2014, 03:11:11 PM »

Sounds like you have done all the right thing with wiring and filtering. Possible the mini PC is the source of the problems. Can you swap it with another to rule it out?

162

General Mach Discussion / Re: Noise Problem on a large machine

« on: November 08, 2014, 09:58:24 AM »

What is interesting is the steppers move on their own which is usually caused by electrical noise. What type of VFD's are you using? If is one of those cheap low quality Chinese drives they don't meet UL, ANSI or CE standards for RF noise emissions from the inverted section. Essentially they are great radio transmitters. Even when the drive is energized but not outputting voltage to the motors the drive still is emitting RF energy at a somewhat lower level. Try to route all low voltage cables away from the drives and motor T-leads. In industrial machines have PLC's and controls are either in a separate cabinet or have a metal divider to minimize interference from drives.    

163

General Mach Discussion / Re: Noise Problem on a large machine

« on: November 07, 2014, 01:10:31 PM »

1) Remove the capacitors from the 3ph contactor contacts. I assume they are in parallel with the contacts. This is dangerous in the event a shorted capacitor can leave one phase energized. It's also not necessary from an electrical standpoint.   
2) Check the 230V, 3 ph line side with a voltmeter to make sure it's actually 230v between phases with the contactor open and closed.
3) Check the load side voltage of the contactor contacts to make sure you don't have a bad contact block. (See #2 above)
4) Make sure the ground connection from the star in the cabinet is going to a solid earth grounding point.

Sounds like either a voltage issue, loose connection someplace or ground looping.

164

General Mach Discussion / Re: Computer running Mach3 turns itself off

« on: August 29, 2014, 06:21:20 PM »

Sounds like a PC power supply problem. I had a Dell desktop running XP that started doing the same thing. Cooling fan was running and cpu heat sink nice and clean. Power supplies are fairly cheap on Ebay. Replaced it and no issues.

165

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Comments about Mach4 in Demo

« on: April 28, 2014, 08:51:26 PM »

Please feel free to post your stats to prove me wrong.

166

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Comments about Mach4 in Demo

« on: April 28, 2014, 08:45:55 PM »

Maybe for the 95% of Mach 3 users using a PP... that's why.

167

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Comments about Mach4 in Demo

« on: April 28, 2014, 08:40:28 PM »

Well... after the years of anticipated wait and Artsoft's much toted PR (and seems to be BS now) about the ALL NEW Mach 4 "Completely rewritten from the ground with less than 1% of Mach 3 code... what we have is a Mach 4 bug ridden flop! No plug ins, no parallel port option and the list of screwups is growing.  A piece of advice to Artsoft... don't quit your day job.

168

General Mach Discussion / Re: Tips for Homing/Alignment Recovery after Mach3 Errors

« on: April 18, 2014, 05:07:02 PM »

Not much info to work with.

How about tell us the type of PC, version of windows, is more than one program running with Mach 3, what are you doing when windows crashes, using an external motion controller, etc?? Have you disabled the pendant and see if the crashes stop? Try a clean reload of Mach? I would try V.062 and stay away from V.066.

I've never had Windows XP crash using mach 3.

169

General Mach Discussion / Re: Mach startup values are not consistant and "run from here" not working.

« on: April 15, 2014, 03:42:17 PM »

Anytime you stop in mid program, shut off the machine and pc then expect to resume from where you left off at a later time is asking for problems IMHO. In theory it should work but I know from experience the "Run from here" command is not always 100% reliable even under normal conditions. Its best to plan the job where you have the time to see it through to completion. Maybe one of these years Mach 4 will be released and all the quirks in Mach 3 will be fixed.   

170

General Mach Discussion / Re: Mach3 executing commands not issued

« on: April 15, 2014, 08:39:27 AM »

I would not use Mach V.066 it's known to have problems. Smoothstepper recommends using Mach V.062 and ESS driver v10pqd1f. The new driver has fixes for data transmission problems on older drivers. In the ESS config page change the precalculated (lower left hand corner) number to 1500 or 2000.

 I was using V.066 and the machine would glitch unexpectedly. Went back to mach V.062 and problem disappeared.