[canman77]

I really don't see how it could be the Smoothstepper.

And just confirm that the motors are locked up when the PC is turned off. The drive needs to be enabled and holding the motors in position.

OK, so I have the machine plugged in again, back on the original circuit. The motors are locked up and holding position. Nothing is connected to a computer. So far, no weird noises. I need to run a few more errands this afternoon so I’ll hook the computer up later and see if that introduces the clunking.

While I’m here, do I need to be concerned about the driver getting hot? After a while the enclosure I have the electronics in gets warm to the touch, which means the driver is getting pretty toasty. Is it rated for that kind of heat or should I be looking at a solution to this?

[ger21]

It should have a fan on it I would think. It's going to get just as hot, if not hotter, when it's actually running the machine.

[canman77]

It should have a fan on it I would think. It's going to get just as hot, if not hotter, when it's actually running the machine.

I should clarify...the box gets hot after being on and running the machine for an hour or so. But regardless, I’ll gut my previous electronics box and use the fan. More updates to come in a few hours.

[canman77]

Update time. Before, when I had the electronics plugged in on an extension cord into the house, the clunks seemed to happen pretty often. The first and simplest thing to try was to put the machine on a different circuit. We have a surge protector in the laundry room which tells us if the outlet is grounded or not. The ground light is green, so I figured I can at least see if maybe a bad ground was the issue. I'm inclined to think it was the issue.

I have the machine plugged into the laundry room outlet (known to be a good ground) as I'm typing this. Mach3 is running and I can jog the machine around. I haven't heard one clunk since I've powered the machine on. Very interesting. Makes me a little nervous about the grounding in the rest of the house. What I don't know is if that will change after running a job. Before, it seemed like I'd only get the clunking after the machine had run some gcode and I had jogged the gantry back to its corner. I don't see how that would make a difference, but just an observation. I'm sure I just didn't notice the clunking before I ran the gcode.

So, I'll jog the machine around a bit and leave it on for a good chunk of time and see what happens. Problem *potentially* solved!

EDIT: Scratch that....the machine still makes the funny clunking noises, but they're much smaller/quieter now. I wonder if Windows 7 would resolve the problem. I mean it really isn't a huge problem since I'm not losing positioning, but it would be nice to eliminate any concern.