I'm going to include a link to a youtube video I made. I was hoping someone might be able to help me out.

The video contains two clips illustrating two different problems.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAli9uwbFV4"]See video here[/ame]

In the first part of the video you'll see the machine cut 3 holes. After each cut the machine should raise to safe height and move to the next cut, but on the third hole if you watch close you'll see that the machine only lifts about halfway up to safe height and the Z motor makes this grunting noise and then moves off to the next cut. The trouble is, Mach thinks it made it all the way up to safe height, but it didn't. The DRO may read .75" on Z, but it's actually only at, say, .25" which means when it lowers for the next cut, it will lower the torch the full .57" to pierce height which is now actually .32" below the material surface. If that's on a cut that isn't going to index that's a problem.

Any thoughts on that? It's really a pain and this thing does it all the time. It's always on Z when it lifts to safe height. It's intermittent so there's no telling where it will do it.

The second clip is more troubling. It shows the machine moving to safe height after a cut and then heading for the next cut, but halfway there the control box triggers an emergency stop, error trips red and stops the motors, but Mach doesn't get this message. It's bad enough that it triggers the emergency stop to begin with, but the fact that Mach doesn't get the message only compounds the problem. As you can see in the video, Mach thinks everything is still hunky dory and keeps running the program. Even though the motors are stopped and the torch is .75" off the material, Mach still tries to fire the torch and I have to go shut that down. This screws up the tip, first of all, and secondly, the DROs in Mach are all off now and I have no idea where the torch is. I can't simply reset the control box and start everything back up because I've lost my concordance. The tip and that piece of metal are just trashed now.

Sometimes the control box will do this without anything running at all. Mach's not running a part file, the torch isn't firing, there's no other software installed on the machine, no network cards, no wireless devices, it's a stripped down box with Mach and sheetcam on in and the only thing running is Mach. The control box is on and all the sudden it will just trigger red like you hit the emergency stop button.

What does that sound like? What component or conflict would most likely be the culprit? I don't know the electronics well enough to know the path information takes. If the torch isn't firing a plasma beam, I don't know what other sources of noise would screw things up with it just sitting there. The motors aren't turning, the torch isn't firing. I dunno. Any thoughts?

It's been doing this for over a year so all options are on the table. I'll start buying and replacing cards and parts if I have to. I just need to fix it so it's reliable and I don't care how that gets done.

The table was build by PlasmaRoute CNC out of Ada, Oklahoma and the electronics were supplied by candcnc. Near as I can tell, the control box electronics look like Tom's PlazPack-1A but mine has g203v geckodrives. The plasma cutter itself is a Cutmaster A40.

Thank you.