Hey,
Can stepper motor over heat? and then miss steps?
The other thing is that I didn't  make my machine like some of you I bought mine so I'm not too sure how things work in the other stepper Controllers, but mine gets very very hot too hot to touch is that normal?  To me that doesn't sound normal.
What do you think?
Thanks,
Greg

Stepper motors can get hot, some say too hot to touch is OK but I prefer them just a bit cooler Are your motors hot all the time (even when idle) ? or just after a lot of use?
Check that the resistor for current limitation is the  correct value( on the Geckos) for your motors. Also check that the voltage is right, it should be no more than 20x your motors rated voltage but also it must be  under 80v for the geckos.
Hood

Hi,
Thanks for the timely reply.

The controller box is too hot to touch when idle but not the stepper motors, they are only hot after using them.
I left it on by accident over night and I am supprised that the box didn't catch fire thats how hot it was.

Would the resister have the ratings listed on them?

I will check the voltages like you suggested and post them here later but my machine is running right now so I will do it when it's done.

In my enclosure the machine, material, motors were all very hot, so I added fans to vent the heat and everything is much cooler. In the controller box I added vents and fans and so far it is cool to the touch.
 
I am using Mach2, I dropped my acceleration to 1.0 and my velocity to 1.0 so it wont miss steps for now, I will try to raise them to see when I get it to start to miss steps. The worst thing about low settings is that it pauses when contouring and the cutter is slightly burning the wood that I am cutting so I need to up the acceleration to so that won't happen.

I have Surestep stepper motors 276 oz-in, 2.8a, 1.1 ohms what settings should they be able to run at?

Thanks,
Greg

The control box would get hot as the transformer is in an enclosed space, you have done the right thing by venting and adding fans.
 The resistors will probably be the type with the colour code bands, for 2.8 Amp motors I would think you want approx 36K resistor which would have Orange Blue Orange as the first three bands. I dont see any resistors in your pic, they are possibly there and just that your pic is too small to see them, they should be across the current set terminal s on the Geckos. If they are not present you will be putting 7Amps to your motors and they will get hot.
 I would also suggest you move to Mach3 as it is much better than Mach2 and you should see a performance boost, your computer however will have to be half decent. If you do go to Mach3 you can keep Mach2 installed and refer back and forward to it for the settings you will need to input for ports/pins etc.
Hood

Hi,
Here are a few pics for you so you can see a bit clearly, even though I changed my acceleration and velocity down to 1.0 the z axis still screwed up when cutting the job I am working on right now. I dropped the acceleration to .75 to see if this wont happen anymore. The biggest problem is that the company I bought the machine from says it can run way faster than that. I don't see what the problem is?
Thanks,
Greg

Unfortunately none of your pics show the connector on the geckos to see if there is a current setting resistor in place
 I notice the capacitors are 35V but I cant see the transformer specs so I am  presuming your geckos are only getting supplied with 35V or less which will not be the best for speed.
Hood

Hi,
I have downloaded mach3 but haven't yet tried to convert the settings,so all I have to do is take the Mach2 ports and pins settings and plug them in to mach3 ports and pins settings?

Do steppers have a max amount of pulses that it can recieve? Could it be a setting that might be too high for the steppers that I am using? So if the feed is to high it tries to read more g-code and then starts to miss steps?

Thanks,
Greg

You look in Mach2 and see what port is used, what pins of that port are used for which function etc and take a note of them. Then shut down Mach2 and open 3 and go into the ports and pins (from config menu) and enter all the numbers you noted from Mach2. You should then be able to run your machine on Mach3. You will also have to enter the motor tuning specs such as steps per unit, accel etc but you should get that from Mach2 also

Mach has a max amount of pulses it can send out (actually its the parallel port that has the max) but dont worry too much about this Reading of the G code has nothing to do with the steps in the way you are thinking.

Do me a favour and look at the geckos and look at the terminals at the end and see if there is a resistor connected between the last two (the ones that say current set) if there is what are the band colours?
Hood

The image is a little fuzzy but you can see the colours, is that what you were hoping to see?
I am going switch over to Mach3 because again the z lost it position. You would think that changing the settings to move slower that it wouldn't happen anymore so that's why I think it's more thant the acceleration and velocity settings.
Thanks,
Greg

That resistor is OK, its a 5 band code which works out to 36.5Kohm which is near enough.
 You may need to mess around with your acceleration and velocity to find your sweet spot but going to Mach3 is the best way as its easier to set up and gives better results in my opinion. Just in case you didnt know there are  videos on the downloads link at the top of the page, there is one on Mach3 setup which is well worth a look.
Hood