[Farmers Machine]

I have gantry oxy fuel torch with 2 X axis motors master and slave. Cam Soft Pro, Hewlitt Packard Desk top with XP and the 4 axis card with out additional encoder inputs, not the hot rod good one. After jogging the machine off of the work table, turning off the jog, at no exact time the machine will start to drift, some times slow some times about 1/2 of rapid. The Cam soft screen acts like a locked up computer with no response from mouse clicks or pushing the function keys on key board. feed hold on control will not stop it either. the DRO screen shows movement. you can push against the machine and stop its movement, so the motors are not being commanded to move, about half the time this stops the drifting, sometimes you have to physically stop the machine 3 times to make it stay. after it finally stops the little block pops up asking " Shut Down Control" If you click NO, the drives reenable and the machine starts to work properly again.
How is a good way to test if the Galil card is bad or the HP computer has lost its mind?
Lost in the woods
Thank You
The Farmer.

[Karl_T]

This is your production machine??

In my case I have a complete identical spare computer with galil and I/O cards all set to go. A swap only takes a minute if hardware trouble is suspected. Or swap one component at a time. I buy my hardware used off eBay so I have seen a lot of issues over the last twelve years I've used Camsoft.

The symptom you're seeing is just what happens when servo amps are enabled without a computer connected so the trouble is inside the box somewhere. My first suspects would be with the computer and operating system. Does task manager report programs running fine? will another small program like notepad run? Hard to say much more without the machine in front of me.

Karl

[Farmers Machine]

Discovered something new today. When I jog away to lift parts off of table, I would turn off the jog function. after sitting an hour or more the machine would start to drift. at this point there is no response out of the computer. Today after jogging away to lift parts, I left the machine in the jog mode all day and it was fine at quitting time when I jogged it back to its storage position. I checked the hibernate but it was set to not hibernate, I turned off the screen saver, so the control display was active all day, hope it is just something simple like this.
Thank You for all of your time and patience with me
Farmers Machine

[Karl_T]

I suggest you get in the habit of Estop your machine when you walk away. I have a hardwired Estop that kills power to servos, stops spindle, brings in brakes etc. Its also connected to a Camsoft input (#59 in my case). I use this input to put the control in a hibernate mode. Then a Reset brings it all back up.

You won't follow all this but here's my code to handle Estop and Reset:

<first lines in inputio.fil
'*************ESTOP****************************MUS T BE FIRST LINE OF INPUTIO*********************************
IF #59=0 THEN ESTOP:GOTO :INPUTIOEND 'run Estop.fil on Estop and don't run any of inputio
IF #59=1 THEN MESSAGE \141 : IF \141=0 THEN RESUME:[MACHINERESET]
...<rest of inputio>
:INPUTIOEND



<macro in macro.fil>

'*********************RESET THE MACHINE****************
[[MACHINERESET]]
PICTURE RESET.BMP;3700;7700
\141=1 '\141 flag for Estop reset message and RESUME
COMMAND SH
MOVING 0;\55: IF \55=0 THEN RESUME
'RESUME fixed [JOGBUTTONS] BUG from CHNC - needed to clear lockup from <esc> key, added MOVING 4 27 10 for bug in Galil JOG
IF #57=1 THEN #41=1 'release knee brake if air pressure present
IF #57=0 THEN #41=0: COMMAND MOD:MESSAGE NO AIR PRESSURE:MESSAGE KNEE DISABLED




<contents of Estop.fil>

MESSAGE Estopped, need reset
PICTURE E-STOP.BMP;3700;7700:
SUSPEND MACROS 'suggested precaution in manual

'[[STOPSPINDLE]] copy of macro below, MACROS not allowed in ESTOP.FIL
#34=0 'make sure CCW is off
#35=0 'make sure CW is off
SPINSTOP
LIGHT 4;OFF
SLEEP 1.0
IF #66=1 THEN #44=0:\122=0:LIGHT 10;ON 'if brake is in ON position, turn off brake release or brake on, flag for brake
\121=0 'flag for spindle off

#41=0 'drop power to knee brake release
#45=0:#46=0 'turn off coolant

\141=0 'reset flag for Estop message in inputio
IF \140=1 THEN MESSAGE . Estop.fil just ran