Gecko 540 Stepper Motor Roughness

[grossmanator]

I'm just getting into CNC and I recently bought a K2 CNC 2514 router. Here are the specs of what I am using:

K2 CNC 2514 Router w/ Colt Bosch Router
KL23H276-28-4B Keling Stepper motors
G540 driver
48V DC 7.3A 350W Regulated Switching Power Supply (Off Ebay)
Dell Laptop with Mach 3

I have hooked everything up and the steppers run well, however every once in a while the steppers run rough (maybe missing some steps) for a split second. I would say that the problem occurs every 5-10 seconds and lasts for about 1/5 of a second. This problem shows up on every axis and on every motor and happens whether the stepper is mounted on the router (loaded) or not mounted (unloaded). The problem doesn't happen simultaneously on each axis though. I am thinking that it might have to do with the mach 3 control and the fact that I'm using a laptop.

mach 3 running speed = 25 Khz
steps per inch = 20000 (0.1 TPI lead screw with 200 step steppers 10 microsteps)
IPM = 35
Acceleration = 10
dir pulse = 2ms

any ideas or people who have seen similar problems?

thanks,

- Will

[Dorsal]

Within the Mach3 directory there's a file called "drivertest.exe". Find it and run it and test the quality of your parallel port signal. I had a nearly identical problem trying to run Mach3 from my Dell D800 laptop, and learned the parallel port quality was horrible!
I bought a SmoothStepper and cured all the problems.
In other words, in my opinion your problem is signal quality, from your computer. Run that file and take a screenshot (Alt+Print Screen) of the window while the test is underway.

By the way, the cheap parallel port emulator cards will NOT work, save your pennies and get what you really need They provide enough signal to run a printer, but not a CNC card. Go to http://www.warp9td.com/index.php to read up on the cure.

[grossmanator]

I've tried running the driver test file and it says my system is excellent. I see a smooth black line at 25 Khz. When I drag the window around with the cursor during the test (to simulate CPU load), I do see some small bumps in the line, but the systems still says excellent.

[Dorsal]

Is that a smooth thin black line, or so many small interruptions that the signal is never actually clean?
Try telling your virus scanner to scan the hard drive, then run the test. Your symptoms are too periodic to be just a coincidence.
Do you have some "autosave" or "Autoscan" feature running in the background?

[Mariss Freimanis]

Please try "Sherline Mode" in Mach3. It may straighten out the funny behaving drive.

Mariss

[grossmanator]

First I want to thank everyone for their responses. Second, I figured out my problem. I actually wasn't losing steps. My motors were performing admirably. My problem was the moving gantry on my CNC machine. I think the springs on the leadscrews are compressing as the steppers turn, and then somehow they uncompress very quickly at certain times and make a loud noise. I took this noise as step losses because i am a noobie and didn't know better.

On another note, has anyone experienced this problem before?

thanks again all