Problem- Z dac overflow error

[D DAY]

bridgeport ez trak ver 5.002 software i am new to cnc and new to this machine when i start it up it asks me to home the axis so i hit the 3 key (move abs) then the + key run and the z axis moves a small amount down then i get error message (Z dac overflow)
thanks for any help
p.s. does anyone have any tutorials for EZ trac

[machintek]

Probably not seeing the Z home switch or a encoder missing the marker pulse. What you are not telling us is which VERSION of machine you have.
Z axis ball screw on the side of the head?
Z axis ball screw in front of the head using only a linear scale?
Z axis ballscrew in front of the head using a linear scale and a rotary encoder on the motor?

George

[D DAY]

it looks like a
Z axis ball screw on the side of the head like i said i am new to this

[machintek]

Do you have a full size keyboard that can plug into the back of the CRT?
You need to get to DOS, then PFM.exe, then tuner and see if the scale is counting and if the Z home switch is working correctly.

George

[D DAY]

the only way I could get the machine into dos mode was to reboot it with a disk in the A drive but when i did that and tryed to run pfm.exe it said the drivers wernt loaded so I tryed to run EZ_LOAD.exe and that didnt work ether is there a way to get into a dos mode from the ez trak main screen

[machintek]

You are looking for a black screen.
I believe with version 5, I would go to utilities, then to comm. At this point I believe the screen is black.
Now do a CONTROL C, hence the full size keyboard. The response should be TERMINATE BATCH JOB, answer Y for yes. You should be in DOS. If not in the root directory, do a CD\ and ENTER. When in the root directory type PFM.exe and enter.
Cursor down to TUNER and press enter.
From this page you can watch the home switches, jog, home, run a program, etc.

George