I am using a minimum amount of I/O for a 5 axis mill. Inputs are E-stop, XYZ limit switches and probe for a total of 5. Outputs, PWM, start, stop, 5pulse, 5 direction, 1 enable (all 5 axes on one enable) for a total of 14.
The program was simple and short. I had run it several times successfully when it acted up. It merely drilled 3 holes at 120 degree spacing around a center hole. Code was as follows starting at the center hole 0,0. I start the spindle then run this code from the MDI window.
f1 (plunge speed for drilling)
g16 (polar mode)
g0x.425y0 (first hole location)
g1z-.4 (drill first hole)
g0z0 (retract)
g0x.425y120 (2nd hole location)
g1z-.4 (drill 2nd hole)
g0z0 (retract)
g0x.425y240 (3rd hole location)
g1z-.4 (drill 3rd hole)
g0z0 (retract)
m5 (stop spindle)
The error it started giving out of the blue after I had already run it a couple of times was 'no real number where a real number should be in line 0', or something to that effect.
As I said before, I put a g0x1, g0x0 at the top to see what happened and it moved the x axis to 1 and back, then gave me the error again and stopped. The f1 should not have been line 0 anymore after adding the other two lines at the top, but what do I know?
What gets me is it did the same thing after I copied those lines to the clipboard, restarted mach and pasted them back into the MDI window.
I've not had a chance to get back out to the garage and try typing them all in from scratch after a startup.
It's these sporadic, unexplainable things like this (and this is not the only one) that have me concerned about Mach 4. It has features I definitely like better than Mach 3, but this unpredictability has me concerned that I may not have done the right thing when I purchased the license. Maybe if I rolled back to a more thoroughly tested version, I would be better off.