Machine consistently pausing briefly, after 15-20min in to a job?

Hiya,

I've stepped in to moderate this thread, now split, the off topic portion of this discussion can be found and continued here: Windows 10, is it better than the rest?.

Sorry for any inconvenience, please feel free to continue this discussion.

.Me

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Originally Posted by m_c

Just to clarify, are you running code from the memory stick, or copying it to the PC before running?
I have heard of a few times where running from memory stick/external drives that has caused problems.
There are settings where USB will go into a low energy/power saving mode after a set time of inactivity, and if it does, it takes a little bit longer for Mach to read the next chunk of code, which can cause it to stall briefly. Copying the file to PC should eliminate that issue though.

Also, as Jazz mentions, ensure all the power settings are set so the PC is always on. On modern PCs, you usually have to create a new power plan with everything set to always on (Control Panel -> Power Options)

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Im not to sure how mach 3 works? i have been loading the file from the memory card in to mach3, i kinda assumed it was then in mach3 and not still reading from the stick. could this be the problem!

i obviously missed a bit of chat on if i should upgrade to windows 10 but not knowing much about pc's its a little hard to understand it all the pros and cons. at the moment I'm thinking if its working and probably not the problem maybe leave it as is.

I'm not sure of the exact workings, but Mach will certainly read the entire file when you load it to check for errors and generate the tool path, however I doubt the file will be cached anywhere, as the memory requirements for large files would be too high (probably not by modern PC standards, but certainly for PC standards when Mach3 was originally written!)

I suspect after the initial run through of the file, the trajectory planner will then re-read the file as required to create the necessary motion buffer. It'll be the continual opening/reading/closing of the file that could cause issues, if the USB device was to enter low power mode.

If this is your issue, it should be easy to test. Simply copy the files to your hard disk, and try running them from there. If everything starts working smoothly with no glitches, then you've most likely found the problem.

I copy all G-Code to a folder on the desktop and run from there, if I have a file open in Mach3 and try to copy a new version into the desktop folder the copy fails reporting the file I have open in Mach3 as being in use by an application.

- Nick