Help please. Dip switches and mach 3 settings

[Radu_Andrei]

ok. i cut the power to the drivers, and changed to 1600 (on, off, on, on), and tried again, and now it moved half the distance, example move 50, and it did 25, and mach 3 set it to 320. typing in mdi the same thing, it moves the right distance typed in but somewhat faster.

in motor turning, the "steps per" is set by this test, velocity 600 mm per minute, acceleration 50, G's 0.0050988, step pulse, dir pulse both to 0

[Clive S]

ok. i cut the power to the drivers, and changed to 1600 (on, off, on, on), and tried again, and now it moved half the distance, example move 50, and it did 25, and mach 3 set it to 320. typing in mdi the same thing, it moves the right distance typed in but somewhat faster.

in motor turning, the "steps per" is set by this test, velocity 600 mm per minute, acceleration 50, G's 0.0050988, step pulse, dir pulse both to 0

Ok you are now moving the correct amount. You now have to alter the vel. 600mm is slow try 1200mm then 2400mm . You have to ajust the vel. and accc. for your specific machine.

The vel. is the max the machine can do. Ie if you set the feed rate with your settings (600mm) it will be clamped to that. So if you say f2000 it can't go any faster than 600

Did you watch the vid?

[Radu_Andrei]

I did watch the video. I.ve seen it a month ago when I first installed mach 3, but did it again to see what I.ve missed.
I attributed the frame shake related to a gantry hard stop, with a sign that I.ve reached the speed limit on the machine, on the Y axis for example.
If it could accelerate and decelerates slower while running a g code, it could travel quite faster, but I don.t know if it.s possible. And honestly it.s not a requierment for me, as I.m not into large quantity production, but rather in custom or special products approach. For example, the first projects that I need are plexiglas stencils used to decorate some furniture with a traditional motif.

There is a guy called Roger Webb on youtube which does some decorative wood projects, and the cutting time for a 50 by 50 cm sculpture ranges between 2 to 4 hours in 2 cuts. I.m aiming for that, and I don.t think that is a high expectation but do correct me of I.m wrong.

I.ll test some speeds, but what am I looking for? How else can I know the max the machine can do?

[Radu_Andrei]

Problem 1

So I installed a new earth connection and it was all great, until something weird happened. Up till midday, jogging the cnc went just fine, then after that for a couple of hours it worked like shit, meaning that the steppers were running in such a manner that the ballscrews was shaking, and even stalling a couple of times, all 3 of them on all 3 axis, and testing it in the evening again, it works fine again. I.ve reduced once again the driver setup to 800 steps, assuming that maybe the 1600 was the problem, but no. It does not matter.
It. been a bit stormy in the evenings, and sometimes the lights were flashing in the workshop, but not in relation with the performance of the machine. Strangely enough, it was working just fine when the light were flashing. (it may not be the correct word, but I mean, the lights were changing their intensity at short intervals of time), and around 1pm, when it was sunny and nice, the cnc was taking the piss.
This was yesterday. Today, I.ve tested again, and jogging it, it worked fine for a few minutes, and after that, the motors changed their noise and the shaking occured again. Like it shakes the ballscrews and so the whole gantry. Sometimes, pressing reset in mach 3 it makes the problem go away for a minute or so, and then it happens again. Then exiting mach 3 and coming back later, it seems ok again, for some time. The steppers sound fine and smooth, and just like that they change their noise and have a jerky movement. On and off, without any patern I can notice so far.

So at least we.ve excluded the ground problem. What else can cause this? Fluctuations in the electrical voltage? amperage to low set for drivers (4.9A Peak, 3.5A RMS set now, next setting is 5.7A peak, and on the steppers it says 5.6A, but the driver can go up to 7.8A peak, 5.6A rms)?

Problem 2

I wired up the vfd, I change Parameter 1 and 2 to value of ..2..(for communication port control), then wired the 4 control wires like posted before ..the gnd pin goes to ACM, the 0-10v to V1, 1st relay pin (5th in order) to DCM, and 2nd relay pin to FOR., and then in mach 3, in motor outputs, I enabled the spindle, step pin 1, dir pin 0, dir lowactive and step I tried in all ways, step port and dir port both to 1, then in output signals I enabled output 1, port 1, pin 17, active low not checked, then spindle setup, relay control with disable spindle relay not checked, motor control with ..use spindle motor output.. and ..pwm control.. both checked and pwm base freq to 100, then in spindle pulleys, nr1 max speed 24000.
And it does not work. It does nothing when i press spindle cw f5, although the relay clicks on, and the voltage at terminal 0-10v is 9.54v The vfd just shows 0000000 on the screen.
What have I done wrong?

[Clive S]

Re Prob 1. I would suggest that it could be the power supplies I think yours are regulated type and if the mains is fluctuating that might be why your motors are giving you grief. If you can get hold of a toroidal power supply you might find the problems go away as the caps would help to smooth it out.

[Radu_Andrei]

Hi Clive. I.ve just encountered today a very suspicious thing, which makes me think the issue is in the pc, or pc setup thing. Running drivertest.exe in mach3 folder, I get mostly a flat line, system excellent message and some pulsing to fast and pulsing to slow sometimes. But running the same exe, and having the mach3 open, and simply moving the mach3 window on the desktop, without pressing anything, the drivertest.exe goes wild, huge spikes all over, and always displays pulsing to slow. As soon as you stop moving the window, it.s returning to normal.
You can see in this video what I.m talking about. Sorry I did not hold the camera still.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFY8...ature=youtu.be

Also here it is the exact behaviour of the cnc. Please skip at minute 1.05 to see the issue.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWlV...ature=youtu.be

In device manager, under My Computer it says ACPI x32. There are some articles that say I should change that to Standard Pc. I don.t have this option, so I guess I should reinstall windows. Others say that changing that creates problems and windows might not load anymore.
I.m a bit confused about all this but I.m strongly inclining to believe that here lies the source of all my problems.

[Radu_Andrei]

Hi. Could you please tell me what do I need or I should look for in a pc, in order to make it work with the cnc? Are there any specifics, motherboard, video card, x64 with additions or x32.
This pc I have, receives the windows installation only via cdrom, and this does not work ok all the time, as the installation did fail a couple of times before making it work.
I have another pc, a bit better, but still old, dual 3ghz, 512 vram, 8gb ram, but the paralel port thing did not exist on it, so I had to buy a separate one.
Should I troubleshhot the existent pc or buy a new one? And if yes, which one?