Mach 3 Kernel Speed Setting and motor tuning

[jimskeet]

Hi guys
I have a PC running windows 7 with an Intel pentium processor at 3.5Ghz and 2GB or RAM.
At the moment my kernel speed is set at 35.000Hz
I have for of those motors
Leadshine Technology Co., Ltd.
to drive my axis on my Gantry cnc mill. One one Y and Z and two on X axis.
The motors are rated up to 3000 rpm and my ballscrew has a 5mm pitch which means my theoretical max velocity would be 15000mm/min.
The machine is new, and it is set up a little conservatively. The max velocity at the moment for X and Y is 5300mm/min and acceleration is at 350mm/sec2.

I would like to ask what how kernel speed affects the performance of the motors. And how do I know at what setting does the kernel speed need to be?
Also how much do you suggest to raise the velocity and acceleration to a level that I won't have any performance issues? How do I fine tune them to get the most out of them?

Thanks in advance for any help!

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[ger21]

I would like to ask what how kernel speed affects the performance of the motors.

It has no effect, as long as you don't need more steps/sec than the kernel speed can provide.
The default for your drives it 2000 steps/revolution.
35Khz gives you 35,000 steps/sec. That's 2,100,000 steps/min. Divided by 2000 steps/rev, you can get 1050 rpm max at 35Khz. That's 5250mm/min.
If you want to go any faster, you'll need to increase the kernel speed.
As you increase Kernel speed, Mach3 uses more CPU cycles, and at some point, it may become unstable. How high you can safely go varies from PC to PC.

[jimskeet]

It has no effect, as long as you don't need more steps/sec than the kernel speed can provide.
The default for your drives it 2000 steps/revolution.
35Khz gives you 35,000 steps/sec. That's 2,100,000 steps/min. Divided by 2000 steps/rev, you can get 1050 rpm max at 35Khz. That's 5250mm/min.
If you want to go any faster, you'll need to increase the kernel speed.
As you increase Kernel speed, Mach3 uses more CPU cycles, and at some point, it may become unstable. How high you can safely go varies from PC to PC.

Thanks for the response. I have monitored the CPU usage while mach was running through thee task manager and it was very low. 5-10% So I guess there is enough processing power left to increase the kernel speed if I want to?
Also is it a matter of simply chosing a higher kernel speed value or do I need to change any settings? Like motor tuning or anything else?

[ger21]

You may need to change the motor tuning after changing the kernel speed.

[jimskeet]

You may need to change the motor tuning after changing the kernel speed.

When you say motor tuning you mean the steps per unit? Meaning it will need a different value which I will get again by calibrating each axis? or just to re-enter the values I have now?

[ger21]

No, Steps/unit never changes.

You may have to redo the velocity and acceleration settings. If you change to a lower kernel speed, they can get bumped lower.

[jimskeet]

No, Steps/unit never changes.

You may have to redo the velocity and acceleration settings. If you change to a lower kernel speed, they can get bumped lower.

Great. Thanks a lot for clarifying this!
On the matter of how to set the best velocity and acceleration values for my machine do you have any advice? Should I just increase the values slowly and see how it works? And how do I know I have gone too far with velocity or acceleration?

[assadi]

Hello,
Can you please help me settings the right kernel speed ?!
step per mm is 64.08
Velocity 15240mm per min
My rack and pinion system is based on a pinion with a 1" pitch circle. The total linear distance traveled per revolution of the pinion is thus 3.14159" (79.796mm). With the 3.2:1 reduction, this means that the distance traveled per motor revolution is 3.14159 / 3.2, or 0.9817" (24.935mm). The stepper with 200 steps per revolution, this means I have 200 / 0.9817" = 203.718 steps per inch (8.020step per mm), With 8x microstepping , I would have 1629.74 steps per inch (~64.08 step per mm)... So what is the correct kernel speed i should choose ?!
Appreciate your help

Sent from my ONEPLUS A3000 using Tapatalk

[ger21]

25Khz is all that you need.

At 15240mm/min, you have about 976,579 steps min, which is only 16,276 steps/second.
25Khz will give you 25,000 steps/second

[assadi]

Thank ger21...
25khz not working !!! The motor move very slow and make a lot off noise, now i set the kernel to 45khz i have a fast speed but I'm not happy with the noise... Recently i changed the pc (the old one with Windows xp & 2 parallel port - one on the motherboard and one pci card), now i have new pc with windows 7 32bit and 2 parallel card (one is PCI and one pci-express)... On win xp the motion was smoother with less noise... What could be the problem ?!
New pc :
Gigabyte motherboard GA-B150M-HD3
CPU intel Pentium processor G4560, 3M Cache, 3.50 GHz
RAM 4GB 2133Mhz DDR3
1gb video card


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[A_Camera]

Hello,
Can you please help me settings the right kernel speed ?!
step per mm is 64.08
Velocity 15240mm per min
My rack and pinion system is based on a pinion with a 1" pitch circle. The total linear distance traveled per revolution of the pinion is thus 3.14159" (79.796mm). With the 3.2:1 reduction, this means that the distance traveled per motor revolution is 3.14159 / 3.2, or 0.9817" (24.935mm). The stepper with 200 steps per revolution, this means I have 200 / 0.9817" = 203.718 steps per inch (8.020step per mm), With 8x microstepping , I would have 1629.74 steps per inch (~64.08 step per mm)... So what is the correct kernel speed i should choose ?!
Appreciate your help

Sent from my ONEPLUS A3000 using Tapatalk

Run this simple software. It will calculate everything you need to know.

[ger21]

It sounds like the new PC just doesn't run Mach3 as well.
Run Drivertest.exe in the Mach3 folder, and see if you get a flat line, and a steady pulse rate close to the kernel frequency.

[assadi]

It sounds like the new PC just doesn't run Mach3 as well.
Run Drivertest.exe in the Mach3 folder, and see if you get a flat line, and a steady pulse rate close to the kernel frequency.

driver test ever say "pulsing too fast" !! What that means ?!


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[A_Camera]

Thank ger21...
25khz not working !!! The motor move very slow and make a lot off noise, now i set the kernel to 45khz i have a fast speed but I'm not happy with the noise... Recently i changed the pc (the old one with Windows xp & 2 parallel port - one on the motherboard and one pci card), now i have new pc with windows 7 32bit and 2 parallel card (one is PCI and one pci-express)... On win xp the motion was smoother with less noise... What could be the problem ?!
New pc :
Gigabyte motherboard GA-B150M-HD3
CPU intel Pentium processor G4560, 3M Cache, 3.50 GHz
RAM 4GB 2133Mhz DDR3
1gb video card


Sent from my ONEPLUS A3000 using Tapatalk

It's not possible to tell from this post. Anything can be wrong, maybe the PC is overloaded, maybe just some wires, maybe the parallel port, maybe the card... plenty things can be wrong.

[assadi]

It's not possible to tell from this post. Anything can be wrong, maybe the PC is overloaded, maybe just some wires, maybe the parallel port, maybe the card... plenty things can be wrong.

Thank you, i know anything can be wrong buy I think I'm not the first one who have this problem ... So suggestions to solve this issue are more than welcome 😁 appreciate your help

Sent from my ONEPLUS A3000 using Tapatalk

[ger21]

See if you can change from ACPI to Standard PC in the bios. Newer PC's tend to have a lot of settings that can interfere with Mach3. It's almost impossible to know exactly what the problem is. See if you can find the old XP Optimization guide.
Also, this thread may have some info:
Getting up and running in Vista

[assadi]

See if you can change from ACPI to Standard PC in the bios. Newer PC's tend to have a lot of settings that can interfere with Mach3. It's almost impossible to know exactly what the problem is. See if you can find the old XP Optimization guide.
Also, this thread may have some info:
Getting up and running in Vista

How to change from ACPI to Standard PC in the bios... !! This new bios is totally new for me (gigabyte F20 Bios) !!! I also can't find the EPP/ECP*parallel Mode in this version of bios

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[A_Camera]

How to change from ACPI to Standard PC in the bios... !! This new bios is totally new for me (gigabyte F20 Bios) !!! I also can't find the EPP/ECP*parallel Mode in this version of bios

Sent from my ONEPLUS A3000 using Tapatalk

RTFM... sorry but unless you are lucky enough to find somebody here who can spoon feed you that is the best way to go.

[assadi]

RTFM... sorry but unless you are lucky enough to find somebody here who can spoon feed you that is the best way to go.

believe it or not before asking i tried to read the manual but nothing ... Help can also be link/video.... Not just spoon feed

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[ger21]

How to change from ACPI to Standard PC in the bios... !! This new bios is totally new for me (gigabyte F20 Bios) !!!

You may not be able to. You can sometimes change it in Device Manager, under Computer, but it may require re-installing Windows.

Did you read through the thread on the Machsupport forum?