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Author Topic: Huge motion steps overflows  (Read 1687 times)

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Offline cncnc

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Huge motion steps overflows
« on: April 24, 2017, 03:45:17 PM »
Hey there,

I was up to configure Mach4 for my CNC machine and hit on some troubles with "motion steps overflow".
As a controller I'm using a Pokeys57CNC v1.1 via Ethernet and the newest Mach4 version (no third party screen installed, just the Pokeys plugin).
As long as I ran just one axis everything was fine. But as soon as I drove two axes simultaneously and stopped at least one of them I went into some problems. By the moment I stop one of the two axes, Mach4 gives a fault alarm of motion "steps overflow". According to Mach4 the system is losing several hundreds or even up to a few thousand (!) steps. Sometimes even the stepper driver (Leadshine EM 806) gives an alarm signal back to Mach4 after stopping one Motor which I set up to trigger the emergency stop. This doesn't happen when starting the motors. I don't have a clue where this behavior comes from. First I thought the problem is maybe caused by too high back EMF which my power supply capacitor can't handle and which disturbes the control signals, but it seems not to be the actual number of driven motors but the number of driven axes (no matter how many motors are driven) because my Y axes is driven by two motors (slave mode via hardware, Mach4 doesn't know that Y is a dual motor axis).
Motor parameters are 500mm/s² acceleration and 10000 mm/min rapid speed, so nothing special here and according to my calculations it should be an ease for the pokeys to handle. This phanomena applies for both high and low speed.
I also recognized similar problems while incremental jogging. When I try to jog any axis with low speed (<5% of max) in 1mm steps in negative direction, it won't do anything. Error alarm "motion steps overflow (160)" (160 steps per 1mm) pops up. In the opposite, positive direction on the other hand jogging works perfectly fine.
Another minor problem which doesn't really apply for this topic is that I can't change the step size at incremental stepping. I have different values in the settings, but pushing the designated incremental step button won't change anything, it sticks at 1,000.

Any help and/or suggestions are very welcome, cheers!
Re: Huge motion steps overflows
« Reply #1 on: April 24, 2017, 10:24:52 PM »
This has to be a problem the Pokeys side of your system.  My system uses different hardware and software but the plugin installation did most of the work for me.

Do you have the newest plugin for Mach4, following the instructions for setup etc.

There is possibly a conflict between the Ethernet connection and the Pokeys controller.  Windows needs to be properly configured to see the Ethernet port etc.  That is done by the Pokeys installation I think.

I have just learned that there is not a file listing how to optimize Windows in Mach4 like there was in Mach3.  However, get rid of everything you don't need including antivirus software.  Turn off automatic updating of Windows plus no screen saver and no power saving.  Don't use the internet with this PC for now.  Might need to reinstall the Pokeys plugin.

I am not an expert, but I have enjoyed working with Mach3 for many years on a few systems and recently switched to Mach4.  The new environment and hardware is definitely a step up but of course the learning curve can be steep.  I am currently climbing...

Hope that helps.  I know the feeling.
Keith

Offline cncnc

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Re: Huge motion steps overflows
« Reply #2 on: April 25, 2017, 05:20:44 PM »
Thanks for your help, Keith.
Yes, I have the newest plugin and configured everything properly. First I connected the Pokeys via USB, but ultimately swapped it for Ethernet because I had some other connection problems.
I used my MacBook via Bootcamp but maybe that didn't work out quite well. I'm gonna switch to a native Windows PC and will report afterwards if the issues are still existent or vanished.
Thanks again, at least I have a starting point now!
Re: Huge motion steps overflows
« Reply #3 on: April 25, 2017, 07:26:07 PM »
I hope you get it figured out.   Someday soon you will look back and feel good about the accomplishment, once it works!