G-rex issues

[redbull1]

to start I'm not an electronics expert, so I purchased a Gerber AR 600 cnc router, ran it about 4 months before the main board went bad. A friend with a waterjet company recomended someone that could retro fit my machine, we got that done, he used a Keiling Technologies package, with one exception, he used a G-rex or G-100, because of the Cat 6 connection, this worked fine for about a year, but every once in a while the machine is cutting fine and just stops, the Mach 3 screen reads e-stop fault. First it started doing this while cutting, then it started doing this during travel, and jog, it does this at random, sometimes I have to turn it off and re-start it to get it to do a whole cut job, somedays it doesn't have any issues, I e-mailed Gecko and they gave me a load of bull about it being software related, if it was software related it would stop any time it did a certian function, it doesn't it all random, sometimes it will finish a cut file the spindle will raise & stop and when I try to jog the machine I get an e-stop fault, I have put 2 & 2together and since this item is no longer produced or even on Geckos site I'm willing to guess that this is the problem, my problem is that I'm sorta stuck with an ethernet hookup it would take a good amount of time to switch over to a parallel setup, does anyone have any suggestions.

[dmauch]

It sounds like the problem is with electrical noise on the the Estop or possibly on the limit switches. I have run into this on quite a few systems other than the G100. I have a G100 but haven't used it in years. The the input pins are not optically isolated. If you are brave try this. First write G code file that will safely move all the axes away from any possible obstruction and try in the G code to replicate what has been causing the ESTOP. Run it not caring if the Estop faults but to prove the G code is OK. Next disconnect the Estop wire from the Pin on the G100. You may have to change the state in the config file also. Then run the G code several times. If it faults and is giving an estop error then it sound internal. CaLL Gecko drive and tell them your results. If it doesn't fault then reconnect the wire from the estop and if necessary restore the original state of the config file active high or low. It sounds like you either need a .1 cap from that pin to ground or an opto isolator

Dan Mauch
Camtronics, inc. -- CNC with Dan Mauch

Originally Posted by redbull1 to start I'm not an electronics expert, so I purchased a Gerber AR 600 cnc router, ran it about 4 months before the main board went bad. A friend with a waterjet company recomended someone that could retro fit my machine, we got that done, he used a Keiling Technologies package, with one exception, he used a G-rex or G-100, because of the Cat 6 connection, this worked fine for about a year, but every once in a while the machine is cutting fine and just stops, the Mach 3 screen reads e-stop fault. First it started doing this while cutting, then it started doing this during travel, and jog, it does this at random, sometimes I have to turn it off and re-start it to get it to do a whole cut job, somedays it doesn't have any issues, I e-mailed Gecko and they gave me a load of bull about it being software related, if it was software related it would stop any time it did a certian function, it doesn't it all random, sometimes it will finish a cut file the spindle will raise & stop and when I try to jog the machine I get an e-stop fault, I have put 2 & 2together and since this item is no longer produced or even on Geckos site I'm willing to guess that this is the problem, my problem is that I'm sorta stuck with an ethernet hookup it would take a good amount of time to switch over to a parallel setup, does anyone have any suggestions.

[Larken]

It wouldn't be hard to change it for a smoothstepper control with USB. Probably save Gecko some support grief in the long run.
There is a lot of support for the SS from CNC4PC and Mach support.

You would keep all the motors and drives, any just change the control board. Is that a stepper or servo ?

LK