HELP! We are half through our biggest job (600 sheets of 18mm ply) and Mach 3 is starting to behave erratically.

There are 2 symptoms:

1) The 2 X drive stepper motors appear to go out of sync when returning to fixture zero causing the X carriage to jerk violently and derail.

2) Intermittently, starts cutting a file too early (ie short of X destination) on the X axis all the while making bad noise??

Can anyone help this operator. This happens about every 4th sheet?

Look forward to any suggestions. Thanks.

Loose wires, failing drive or motor? Carefully check both X axis motors and drives, and all wiring that they use.

Thanks Gerry

The one other main issue is when tracking to fixture home, that's when the X axis plays up. So will do the checks and report back.

Thanks for your speedy response.

With it being such a large job, my guess would be mechanical.  Parts tend to wear out, although it could also be loose wires like Gerry said.  But motors and mechanical wear would be where I start after checking those wires.

Highspeed