Hello everyone! Im still kind of a newbie and could use a little help . I'm having a couple of issues I just can't seem to work out or find any information on. This system, 3.0 GHz dell running win XP sp3, licensed copy mach3, Leadshine MX3660, UC 100, 7 amp 48v power supply.
When I set this up 8 months ago, it was running perfectly until a month ago when the X axis motor would stall during rapid moves. Either jogging or while running a program .  I was using the MDI to test motor tuning while running a line of code. The MDI will execute single lines of code 5 or 6 times before it freezes  up mach and nothing works. Interesting that if you try to zero a DRO after this event it gives a error message " No Zeroing While Running " an indication that mach is trying to execute the command but can't for some reason. Some times using the reset will clear the problem but usually you have to close ( end session) then reopen mach to clear the issues.
The " Set Steps Per Unit" on the setup tab dose the same thing as the MDI. It Also isn't working correctly. If you run the Steps Per procedure, then verify the know distance via test indicator and compare it to the DRO. The DRO will read .006 - .010 higher than the actual distance traveled. run the Steps Per porcedure again and when it asked distance to move, in this case 6.0040, it moves 6.0041. Re verify as described earlier and its reading .006 - .010 higher again. Its clearly loosing steps somewhere. but the loss of steps would also be seen during the second calibration and wasn't .
The other thing it been doing is after you Ref All Home and use the Go To Zero to return to your WCS zeros. The Y&Z axis will return to their respective zeros on the DRO but the X axis will not. It will stop between .0158 - .0163 on the DRO every time. This event only happens after the Ref All Home is used. Interesting note here that I currently have my steps in the motor tunning set at 8000. If I reset it to 4000 steps and rerun this event. The DRO will stop at .031 - .033. Reset the steps to 2000 and the DRO ( stop ) values will double again.

My attempts at repairs have included reinstalling mach3, reinstalling the NC100 drivers. Installed .net framework 2.0.,
Adjusted motor tunning and mirco step values, uninstalled all antivirus,internet and wireless networking, reinstall win XP pro Sp3. The repairs seem to have helped the motor stalling . but all the other problems remain unaffected. I also have fresh installs of mach3 and The UC100 drivers on a different PC running win7. The MDI , Calibration and DRO issues remain unaffected on the different PC.

This has got me stumped. This system had worked perfectly all summer. Not sure why it would just suddenly go down like this.

If anyone has some suggestions or can help me figure out how to fix this silly thing would be greatly appreciated.
Or if you have similar issues and I'm sure everyone would like to hear about them .


Thanks for reading my novel.

Thanks for reading my novel.

Misery loves company.  I am not a guru and therefore offer you no solution.  However, we have been there with some of the issues you describe.  I don't recall that our DRO issue matched yours exactly, but the stall and on one day, off another does match.

Not only was stalling an issue, but we have a slaved drive gantry wherein one of the slaved drives would simply reverse and thus stall the gantry.  It took some time to figure out that it was more than a simple stall.  Replacing the drives cured the issue . . . for awhile.  I am using the old drives on another project and they do or cause some strange stuff.

Then several months later, just as you describe, things went south again with stalling as you describe.  It happened immediately after installing a new app.  We did absolutely everything you described, including formatting the HD, in an attempt to resolve the issue.  It may have been Gerri who suggested the fault was in the computer.  Because it is a nice expensive panel mount industrial tochsceen we had IT check it out.  IT found nothing wrong . . . twice.  We executed your procedures two more times and still no change.

We replaced the computer and the problem went away.

Also, during the aforementioned, we did experience odd error/use messages and DRO readings.  We did not delve directly into them because they vanished with the computer change.      

Thank you for the reply C30232.

I suspected it might be computer after a fresh XP and drivers install didn't affect the problems.
To verify my suspicions I installed mach3 and the motion controller drivers on a different computer running win7. The problems remain unaffected even on a different computer.
I don't believe two computers running different operating systems could be at fault when both computers display identical problems. That's what has me stumped and why i posted on this awesome community looking for some help.
 I'm now looking at the motion controller or  motor drives causing some kind of feed back. Since these are the only common I haven't looked at in detail. If the drives or motion controller prove to be the root cause of the computer problems. I suspect the cause of the failure could be from high frequency feed back from my syncrowave 350 tig welder. If I remember correctly the problems with the CNC system developed around the same time I had a small tig welding job to do. I'm not sure if or how this kind of feed back would affect a CNC system.