Cheers Jazz,

You have been pretty thorough with your suggestions and I do appreciate you taking time out to give your advice. I will go over the machine tomorrow. take off the suspect axis stepper motor and move the gantry by hand to see if it is binding / any resistance present.

As for possible interference from the spindle? I did think of this before. So I've ran g code with the spindle powered off/and in the air and its still stalled. Its very random when it happens.. but it happens frequently enough to prevent me working on anything expensive or intricate. Possibly happens once on every other job. But its enough to ruin whatever I'm doing!

I will physically swap over the x and y driver boards and see if the fault does indeed transpose to the x axis as I suspect. I can barely live with the one problem. But with the Z axis losing its zero. Its a step too far!! boom tish ;-)

Going to also swap out my parallel desktop cable for another one I have and change/ ensure my desktop is in standard PC mode not acpi..

Then I will try the changing steps as you suggest and if that doesn't work after inspecting all cables etc?

I will replace/upgrade all stepper cables and shield the vfd cables. Earthing all of the screens.

Still not working? I will be delighted in swapping out the controller with the one you suggest.

Having these issues are a great way to get to know my way about the machine so I view it as a learning exercise in getting to understand how it all works.

Will let you know how it goes tomorrow. wish me luck!

thanks again for all the help

andy