[legendarysoundd]

Hey guys I've been having a problem with Mach3for a few days now that no one can seem to help with nor does it even really appear on the internet that on random movements in Mach3one of the three motors will lock up and make a screeching sound while the other two drag along their path. I was informed that the issue may have been my OS becuase i was on win7 so now I'm on winXP on a dedicated machinethat has never even connected to the internet and has nothing on it but Mach3, minesweeper, and windows media player (exaggeration for effect I've only installed Mach3but really not even internet drivers) and on my drivertest.exe i get a consistent "System Excellent"and I'm running at 25khz kernal speed, with all of my motor tuned velocities quite slow yet the problem persists. Fairly often on any given motor movement one more freezes begins to make a high pitched whir and the rest of the movement drags along until the program is manually stopped. Please help :drowning: any and all incite is appreciated

[ger21]

What kind of machine is this?
What motors and drives are you using?
What are your velocity and accel settings in motor tuning?

I don't put much stock in the System excellent message in the Driver Test.
Imo, the Driver Test will tell you if you have a serious problem, but you can still have issues when it says it's good.

Open Task Manager and see if the CPU usage goes to 100% when you have issues.

[legendarysoundd]

Hey again Ger21 well the machine is a chinese mini-cnc 3040T-DJ and we are using the stock motors that it comes with of which have never had problems in the last 4-5 months with minimum 30 min max of 5 hours of cuts happening every two days. As to the vel 1800 and acc 200 on both x & y and 700/100 on the z axis all set to mm also i have tried to both raise and lower these settings to have each rate with the same issue occurring. Also as to the CPU usage it spikes to 100% when the program opens then between 15-30% when a cut starts and at the motor lock it only reaches a max of 2% usage. the only difference in the set-up however from the last few months to now is the computer although its supposedly a more powerful version and much less software filled version of our previous machine. Thanks again for the consistent assistance Ger21 i hope this info helps you help us because we are pulling out over hair over whats going wrong.

-Brad

[ger21]

Unfortunately, these issues can be extremely difficult to troubleshoot, as many different things can cause these issues.

Is it all of the motors stalling, or the same one?
Different locations?
Are you sure nothing is loose mechanically, or binding anywhere?

[legendarysoundd]

I know it's not easy because we tried fixing the issue ourselves for several days and have rarely even encountered any stories with even a similar issue. Its never more than one motor at once and it has yet to be the z axis. It is either x-axis or y-axis but both sporadically have the issue it happens in different locations and can happen on a horizontal movement vertical movement or bi-axial movement but only to one motor. Everything is tight and in order mechanically as I've taken the motors off twice each lubricated and put them back on double checking screw tightness.


-Brad

[ger21]

Can you try a different PC?

[louieatienza]

Check the connectors for rhe motors as well. This actually happened to me once before and it happened to be a loose fitting Molex connector. Ended up shorting an axis on the drive board.

[wildseyed]

It could also be an intermittent open on one or more of the stepper wires. Perhaps if it is possible, you can decouple the XY motors from the pulleys, and issue a really long move on each axis. Them while it is going, move the head around the table, and see if the motors stall in any area. Since they are no longer under load you may want to have a second set of hands to put some resistance on the motors.

[rockcliff]

intermittent and random is difficult to pinpoint, it could be anything, normally I start swapping out parts for known good ones, until the issue stops, but if your limited on parts, start with the easy free / low cost stuff first.

As well as doing what others have mentioned

I would also
Uninstall Mach3 port driver, then Re-install a fresh copy of Mach3
try a New Port Cable

[legendarysoundd]

It's the only PC that we have with a PCI port and not running Mac os or windows 8 also the motors are all well connected, cleaned and properly set as I've taken each one off twice now. And I've tried single movements as well as unimpeded movements seeing as we're 5 months into a business project I've been cutting our principal material which is a soft plastic but all the new cuts have been only through air. And the issue only started on the new computer even though the driver test has 0 issue and I've re-installed mach and gone as far as re-installing windows but the parts themselves worked fine then from one day to the next the issue arose.

[rockcliff]

Mach3 and the parallel port is all about the timing, and to have reliable motion, the pulse stream must flow out of the port perfect, so anything that disturbs the timing will cause issues,

if the pulse stream is interrupted, even for a split second in between a ramp up, ramp down cycle, the motor can stall, and can't recover, as it tries to start again,, sometimes lowering the speed will help,

I'm not sure what OS your using, but it's best to turn off, uninstall, stuff like auto updates, networking, anti-virus,

[legendarysoundd]

I'm running windows xp pro 32bit and as best as I can see(by using the drivertext.exe because I don't know a better way to test) I've lowered the speed to a crawl and as for the computer itself it literally is running nothing besides mach3 and necessary windows/Microsoft programs but my last guess is that it may just be the computer for whatever reason. It seems as the motor is locking up but if immediately stopped and started it works fine.

[rockcliff]

I'm running windows xp pro 32bit and as best as I can see(by using the drivertext.exe because I don't know a better way to test) I've lowered the speed to a crawl and as for the computer itself it literally is running nothing besides mach3 and necessary windows/Microsoft programs but my last guess is that it may just be the computer for whatever reason. It seems as the motor is locking up but if immediately stopped and started it works fine.

Not all PC's like Mach, for sure try a different one, preferably one with an integrated port

[astrohog]

I had same problem I am using windows xp. Try setting motor config at: 2000 steps Velocity:100 Acceleration: 13

Start there and adjust velocity and acceleration up and down When the motor sound right you will know. then use set up to get correct steps for amount moved.

Hope this helps. Neil