Hi,
I have had a Heiz S-720 machine for a couple of years and I'm pleased with it on the whole except for an intermittent reliability problem which has persisted from the start. The machine generally runs smoothly and reliably, but from time to time a stepper motor will stall mid-program meaning I have to throw away material and waste time re-machining parts. Sometimes I can use the machine for several hours without problems, but on other occasions I may try to run a program several times without success which is very frustrating. This is my first cnc machine and I have no prior experience so I don't know if a degree of unreliability is to be expected or if there is a problem with the machine or setup which can be resolved.
I was initially lead to believe that the controlling PC was causing the problem, but I have now tried using 3 different pc's and they have all performed the same. I am using WinPC-NC software which was supplied with the machine and I am wondering if this could be causing the problem. In particular I have noticed that on odd occasions the steppers will start instantly at full speed rather than following the gentle acceleration which is pre-set and I suspect that this could be causing the stalling at times.
I have noticed that Mach3 control software seems to be favoured by many here and I am wondering if this might perform better and help to solve this problem. It's difficult not knowing what is causing the problem and I don't want to waste more time and money replacing software and hardware unnecessarily so I'd be really grateful for any advice to help resolve this problem or identify the cause.
Many thanks,
Richard.