Hi Everyone,
Built a plasma cutting table, using Mach3, MP3000 from Candcnc with associated Mach plugin, Gecko G203V drives for the stepper motors.
I have a rather strange problem which I believe is not caused by Mach or its MP3000 plugin. Lots of people with this system and never heard of this problem. The MP3000 has opto-isolation, buffering, etc.
Mach is online (not in reset), but is idle (no gcode running) and when I click various tabs and buttons in Mach can hear one of my stepper motors nudge. It's exaclty when I do the clicks on screen items.
However, I also discovered when I was just standing there that these rogue step pulses also happened without me clicking on the screen. I looked close up at my gantry stepper and could see the shaft turn ever so slightly when I heard the dreaded nudge. Roughly every 10 seconds.
Doesn't happen when I put Mach in reset but I've been told the MP3000 pulls up all its outputs when Mach is in reset.
So I'm guessing I've got some driver / service / program in XP causing this or it's just some hardware problem.
All in one motherboard MSI G31M3 V2, socket LGA775 , P4 3.2 Ghz, built in parallel and serial ports, (tried an independant graphics card and set this in the bios as primary graphics adapter but problem remains). Have a 2nd parallel port installed in one of the PCI slots, unused and just sitting there if I ever need it.
Mach driver test always seems to be excellent at 100 khz
Formatted hard disk, installed XP in standard PC mode, did the recommended XP optimisation for running with Mach. No other programs besides Mach3 and the MP3000 plugin.
Any suggested process of elimination, bios settings, disabling drivers, services, processes, etc. What about trying the PCI parallel port instead.
Does anyone think this is a hardware issue and maybe I'd be better off changing the motherboard out.
I'm guessing a few people will say noise but the fact it happens exactly the instant I do mouse clicks rules that out a bit, would you agree.
Thanks,
Keith.