About ready to pull the plug on Mach and go to stand alone system but wanted to make one last attempt to solve issue before making the change. I have pretty much exhausted all of my ways of getting assistance as no one knows why or does not reply to request for assistance. I have spent a lot of days and hours trying to figure this out in the last year and a half. We all know the definition of insanity and I feel like I am headed that way. I have reached out to Newfangled solutions, CNC4pc and Dave Gatton (machine designer) in the past as well as those who have not replied to my request for help. It is frustrating. I am technically savvy being a licensed aircraft mechanic, professional flight engineer and commercial pilot .
CNC Machine is a Gatton designed diy CNC router. Current cnc control is diy stepperonline systems using 542T drivers and nema 23 425oz motors with a UC100 motion controller. To test motion controllers I have tried three different units. Computers are currently Lenovo laptop with Windows 10 and Dell laptop using Windows 7.
1) The following is an example of what a test run produces: G-code generated in Vectric is for a 10" circle profile cut on .75 inch material. Using 10 passes to cut .5inch deep. No tabs. Results at end of run are as follows. New zero (machine) is approx. 2.5 inches off in BOTH X&Y axis and also off in z axis. The amount of offset is derived by jogging router bit back to the original zero and reading the DRO for the travel required to return to the original zero point. Considering the 10 passes there is .25 inches of consistent change per pass. I also get similar results with runs with less passes. Test are air cuts to save material and remove load from the equation.
2) To eliminate the possibility of this being a mechanical problem, I have conducted test running rectangular patterns using DRI commands which results with zero returning to the original start position after a series of passes. Seems that the drift only occurs when running g-code with MACH.
Problem started after I had to replace defective, no longer supported xylotex controller with the diy build using Stepperonline drivers.
Motors are tuned to 6400 steps/ and velocity of 200 with pulse of 5/5 using 1/2-10 5 start lead screws.
Retightens all couplers, all wire connections, separated signal cables to reduce possibility of signal bleed.
Everything worked great on xylotex using original XP desktops and now laptops.
At 68 this is just a hobby and I do not want to invest another $700 into a Masso CNC controller if I can get Mach to work with my computer correctly.