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« on: April 15, 2014, 08:02:59 AM »
The toolpath view does not show the expected path while my machine is running... let me explain what I am doing.
My machine is in an industrial environment as a station on an assembly line for wood burial caskets. Each casket gets a few holes drilled into the top edge where the lid will mate. The trouble is that we have 50+ different length/width combinations that go through this machine. Each casket also is not in the same location in the machine (could be rotated with respect to the machine X-Y axes). When the upstream operator pushes a casket into the machine, I use the probe function with a laser sensor to detect the edges (and therefore the dimensions and location) of the current casket. Based on the information collected I calculate where to drill the holes.
Since I am doing a LOT of geometry and using a LOT of conditionals, my entire program exists in a macro that I call from the G-Code program. Because every single run cycle is different than the previous cycles, the toolpath view only shows a few of the first moves and nothing more. The first few moves are the same for each job, but after that the moves are dependent upon what I have found.
I have read in the forums about issues with macros and have tried to incorporate what I have learned. As stated previously, the machine does operate correctly for most cycles using this macro setup.
The computer was purchased new for sole use with this machine. It has nothing running on it other than Mach and whatever came with it from the manufacturer. I have not yet tried to re-install Mach but I guess it can't hurt so I will.
I considered the effect of communication interference due to my environment (lots of power tools) but I find it hard to believe that interference is causing multiple axes to move oddly AND changing the feedrate simultaneously.
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