Good evening all,
I'm talking about a 3040 bench router (from China) that has been working hard and well over the years.
Gecko drivers, Mach3, WindowsXP, VCarvePro CAD, manual spindle motor.
I have noticed that during a cut and I press the space bar, the machine eventually stops in X and Y (after emptying the look-ahead buffer). I then click on the Stop icon in Mach3 and the cutter raises to the Safe Z value I had previously set. All good.
At this point I can turn off the spindle, turn off the drivers to allow the steppers to cool down, or otherwise leave the machine to attend something else without worrying about what is going on while I'm not there.
But when I start up the machine to continue cutting, I would expect the cutter to be lowered back into its previous -Z setting before X and Y movements take place, but no, the X and/or Y steppers move whilst the cutter is being lowered back into the job.
This omits part of the cut so that on the next lap, the cutter has to cut twice the amount of material. This is a bit savage on a 1.5mm end mill in polycarbonate!
I've noticed this tends to occur more on a straight cut on either the X or Y axis, and not on a curve or angled cut line.
Does anyone have any ideas on how to prevent both lateral axes from moving until the previous target -Z value is reached?
Is there a setting within Mach3 that I have overlooked?
Peter