Surprising cause of Lost step in a G201

[dmauch]

I have a customer for whom I build a 7A system using G201 about 5 years ago. He said it performed flawlessly. He then decided that he also wanted to use the same control box on another machine but it had a very high steps per unit. Over 120,000. We chatted and I told him that I could send him some G901 rate multipliers and set at the full step or half step wheveer he prefered. I shipped him the G901's and he installed them on his G201's leaving the covers off so that he could easily change the jumpers for the full step or half step mode.
He called and said that he was now having problem with random loss steps that he never had before. I spent about an hour with him over the phone trying to figure out what could have caused this problem. Finally, I asked him to describe exactly how he installed the G901 is the G201's and how he reassembled everything. That is when I found out that he left the covers off. Not sure if that was the cause, I had him reinstall the covers and the problem went away immediately. He was somehow getting cross talk from one driver to the next. The reason I posted this is that at one of the CNC shows I went to I have seen g210;'s installed in systems that didn't have their covers installed.

Dan Mauch

Camtronics, inc. -- CNC with Dan Mauch