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Strange 4th Axis Problem
« on: May 25, 2010, 06:25:01 PM »
Greetings all.
I've just set up my system with a 4th axis and straight away ran into a problem of stuttering movements and pauses of several seconds of the linear and rotary axes. I was using an HP laptop (2.8 ghz) and had been for some time with excellent results, but it seemed like the rotary axis tipped it over the edge, so I've changed to an Athlon 2500xp desktop computer, with separate video card and 1.5gb ram.
Running the same test file as I ran with the laptop, there was an immediate cure to the stuttering rotary/linear axes. What I hadn't done though was swap over the Mach3 license file to the new system, so I was actually running in demo mode with only part of the file being processed. When I did install the license file to the new system and re-ran the test file, which is about 9mb in size and consists of mainly X and A axis moves, all the stuttering returned, but not as severely as with the laptop. Removing the license file eliminates the problem again.
This one's got me stumped. Why would the license file cause this problem, other than allowing a larger g-code file to be used, but I'm not able to see a connection as 9mb (around 500000 lines) isn't that big anyway is it?


Thanks for any help.
Martin.

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Re: Strange 4th Axis Problem
« Reply #1 on: May 25, 2010, 06:34:06 PM »
Turn off the toolpath display and see if that helps.
Hood

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Re: Strange 4th Axis Problem
« Reply #2 on: May 25, 2010, 06:36:15 PM »
Oh thought I better tell you where it is just in case you are unsure.
Look on the Diagnostics page and its right above the Reset Button.
Hood
Re: Strange 4th Axis Problem
« Reply #3 on: May 26, 2010, 03:41:52 AM »
Thanks for the reply, Hood.
I'll check it out in the next hour or so. Is there any more info, such as the xml file, needed at the mo'?

Thanks.
Martin.

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Re: Strange 4th Axis Problem
« Reply #4 on: May 26, 2010, 03:45:39 AM »
I suspect it is just due to the large file and the way the toolpath is drawn in Mach. It is using up your resources and giving you the bad pulse. Gisabling the toolpath view will eliminate this and hopefully will give good movement. If it is the cure then afraid you will have to disable the toolpath for large files at the moment. When Rev4 of Mach comes out you should not get this problem.

Hood
Re: Strange 4th Axis Problem
« Reply #5 on: May 26, 2010, 05:02:02 AM »
It looks like you got it in 1 there Hood  ;D. I haven't run the milling machine yet, but the axis displays now update as smoothly as usual. While I was about it, I tried the problem file on the laptop, again with the toolpath display disabled and it looks like it's cured the problem there too. This means I can revert back to the laptop as I've got it set up nicely - a great result ;D

Thanks very much for sorting this for me. Get yourself the biggest Haggis you can find and send me the bill.

Thanks again.
Martin.

Offline Hood

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Re: Strange 4th Axis Problem
« Reply #6 on: May 26, 2010, 01:54:21 PM »
Haha will send you the haggis as well, cant stand the bloody things ;D

Hood