Hi,
Perhaps this is still a computer issue?
I believe you are correct. That you have tried two different PC's with the same result rather shakes my
confidence in that conclusion however.
What most people don't realise is that Mach3 is really in two parts.
The first part is a Windows application. It is a GUI, Gcode interpreter and trajectory planner. It will run on just about any PC,
32 bit, 64 bit, laptop, XP through to Windows 10. Its not a difficult program to run at all.
The second part is Mach's parallel port engine. It takes numeric trajectory data (from the first part) an converts that into
pulse streams. It uses interrupt driven timers to do so. Windows however makes VERY extensive use of the interrupt system for
its own purposes. As a result Mach's parallel port struggles to get CPU service and has to almost 'shoulder Windows out of the way'.
That Mach's parallel port runs at all came as a huge surprise to many programmers, and to my knowledge no-one other than
Art Fennerty was ever able to get it to work.
Some of the consequences of that history is that Mach's parallel port engine is VERY
VERY sensitive to the hardware of the PC
on which it is to run and also very sensitive to other software and/or services installed on it. Certain operations cause Mach's parallel port
to stutter and stall, screen refreshes particularly. For this reason you are recommended to run a good video card so that screen refreshes
don't interfere with the smooth running of Mach's parallel port.
That you have tried two PC's and neither run the parallel port properly could just be bad luck. There used to be a list of things that you could
do to your PC to help, although I have not seen that list for some years.
The other alternative is an external motion controller like an ESS. I have one and have used it with Mach4 for five years, its great.
While I never had a great deal of trouble with Mach3 and Mach's parallel port I found that when I switched to the ESS that the smoother
and stutter free motion allowed me to run my stepper 33% faster without losing steps and my machine never stutters. To be honest I
think anyone trying to run Mach3 on a parallel port is being foolish. An ESS is not much more than a good stepper and driver....can anyone
seriously use the excuse 'an ESS costs too much'?
I have also worked with the settings for Amps. torque and steps. Thanks
Don't bother with all that. Set the current to the rated current of your steppers, and set the microstepping to 8 microsteps per full step,
ie 1600 steps/rev and leave them there. Fiddling with those settings will get you no closer to solving the issue of Mach stuttering.
Craig