The random misbehaving of the Z axis in drill cyles is a VERY old bug That has come and gone several times over the years in various verisons.

Just a thought, (;-) TP

Hello TP

Thanks for the input.
If you could expand on your information I would appreciate it.
Especially the "gone" part.

Dennis

You may want to try older versions of MACh3 as some seem to not be effected.

Just a thought, (;-) TP

TP
Thank you,
That is a constructive suggestion.
Dennis

The random misbehaving of the Z axis in drill cyles is a VERY old bug That has come and gone several times over the years in various verisons.

Just a thought, (;-) TP

Just for information,
I have not had this problem on either my DSPMC driven mill which has done 1ks of g83 holes nor my PPort driven router which has about the same number of holes in G83 and lot more G81.
Is this know to only occur on the smoothstepper or has it been documented on any other motion controller?

I have also run several different versions of Mach3 and windows from w2k to win 7.

Mike

The OP is using the PP as far as I know.
Hood

We are using 2 parallel ports through a Apollo board provided by mach motion

We don't really understand  the concept of smoothstepper.
So we don't know if we have it, or if we are using it.
If we are using it, can we turn it off somewhere?

Thanks

You are connected to the parallel ports so you are not using a SmoothStepper. The Smoothstepper is an external motion controller which takes the place of the parallel ports.
Hood

Thanks Hood.
We can eliminate that then.
I have zipped up my entire Mach3 folder and sent it with the troublesome programme to Brett.
Dennis