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Totally lost
« on: September 21, 2012, 05:32:07 PM »
I converted CNC Bridgeport,

Mill is set up with Mach3 a USB Smoothstepper and cnc4pc BOB and dugong servo drives.

I kept the original servos and encoders.

The machine has worked great for 9 months then we had an issue with an over travel on the Z axis and killed a servo drive. Hood and Brian helped me out in a different post dealing with the axis issue, but now I have a different weirdness.

Replaced the servo drive and the mill ran for a day and then started doing weird stuff, you could load a gcode program and you could run it several times then it would just stop or it wouldn't run at all. Had to shut down mach and restart and then the same result.

Read some posts and saw several folks had similar weirdness with noise issues. So I bought a ESS and installed that hoping that if it was a noise issue that would take care of it.... NOPE got worse.

Other funny thing was that my Z axis steps were still the same in my motor tuning but the spindle was moving twice as far as it should have DRO showed 0.250" and the spindle moved 0.500" changed the steps to get back to the correct travel.

So I thought maybe something got corrupted in Mach, I downloaded the .066 version non lockdown (Warp 9 suggested .058) but I could not find that on the download page.

As it stands now the mill will let me move all the axis with the jog keys, I tried to do a quicky NFS small program just to test it out, it loads the gcode press start and it gets to the 4th line and just sits there.

Any suggestions would really be greatly appreciated

Thank you,
Ted

Offline Hood

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Re: Totally lost
« Reply #1 on: September 21, 2012, 05:41:11 PM »
What do you have the toolchange option set to in General Config?
Is there any message in the error line at the bottom of the screen?
Not sure what the G40.1 is all about but doesnt seem to stop Mach as I just tested.
Hood
Re: Totally lost
« Reply #2 on: September 21, 2012, 05:54:23 PM »
That is strange. I had a program loaded in lathe that refused to see the last line with M30. When I opened the editor (notepad) the M30 was scripted but when I hit save changes the Gcode display on the Mach screen in lathe did not show the line at all...basically not showing??? Could only get back to top of program by hitting rewind. Can you do a "start from here" if you move to another line or is it just stuck until you reload/re-start from scratch?
Re: Totally lost
« Reply #3 on: September 21, 2012, 05:56:34 PM »
Hi Hood,
Stop spindle wait for cycle start, if it makes it that far it does what it's suposed to and then hit cycle start and it runs the code.

No error message it just stops, can't do anything until you hit the stop button. Hit the stop button and the Spindle retracts to safe Z.

It will let me rewind the code but nothing will move after that, I usually have to shut down mach to be able to even jog again.

Hi Allstar,
Tried that as well nothing, see above.

Thanks,
Ted

Offline BR549

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Re: Totally lost
« Reply #4 on: September 21, 2012, 06:02:17 PM »
Sounds like a corrupt XML . Trying reconfiguring from scratch to build a new XML.

Just a thought, (;-) TP

Offline Hood

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Re: Totally lost
« Reply #5 on: September 21, 2012, 06:05:01 PM »
If you press Start does it still do nothing?
Could be as TP suggests but if you want to attach your xml I will have a look.
Hood
Re: Totally lost
« Reply #6 on: September 21, 2012, 06:10:18 PM »
Thanks BR,
I had considered that, but was trying not to blow my whole weekend, oh well, seems like I know were I'll be.

Should I delete the entire Mach 3 folder and start from scratch or is there a short cut that will work.

Thanks again,
Ted

Hi Hood please see attached.

Thank you,
Ted

Offline Hood

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Re: Totally lost
« Reply #7 on: September 21, 2012, 06:17:20 PM »
Your xml seems to be working fine here.
Not sure what the problem could be if there are no error messages.
I just had to  use a SS as I dont have a ESS here so it could be somthing to do with it.
Hood

Offline Hood

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Re: Totally lost
« Reply #8 on: September 21, 2012, 06:23:34 PM »
Just a thought, when it stops look and see if there is any flags in the ESS monitor page, maybe a clue there.
Hood
Re: Totally lost
« Reply #9 on: September 21, 2012, 06:28:29 PM »
Hi Hood,
Thanks for that suggestion, I'll try that tomorrow they are locking up the shop right now and want me out the door....

The funny thing is I'm really not sure what is causing this, if It was the hardware I figured something would not work.

I really don't know enough about the software other than enough to get into trouble.

If nothing in the ESS monitor,... Do you think a fresh install is the right thing to do at this point...?

Thanks again,
Ted