Mach3 anyone find it unreliable

[RonCooper]

does anyone find mach3 unreliable? I am thinking of converting my Anilam 1100 to Mach3. I've heard of it doing some funny thinks like crashing a mill into the table out of no where type things? Also I was also thinking of going the EMC route seems a lot cheaper option since I have -+10VDC servo motors already.

RLC

[lovebugjunkie]

Been using it on my hobby cnc for over 2 years with never a problem with Mach3 itself. I did have one PC that caused Mach3 to do some extended moves once started, but I tracked it to a rouge .dll that had nothing to do with Mach3. (other than to make it act strange)

After that I did a clean install of XP and only enable what I needed to run Mach3 in XP and BIOS. Have never had that problem since.

[Arbo]

I've been running it a long time, with loads of 8 hour jobs and a few double that. Not a single issue due to Mach.

[msimpson99]

If you are having reliability issues the first place I would look is your PC.

I have loaded and tested Mach3 on over 20 machines ao various shapes and sizes. I build all my own machines so I know exactly what parts work and what parts cause problems.

For instance many Gigabyte (brand) mother boards play havic with Mach3. All kinds of skips and jumps. I have found the same mother boards will cause clicks and pops when playing audio so its some sort or IRQ or timeing problem.

I have run windows XP but now strictly use windows 7. I prefer boards with build in parallel ports as only a few of the add on boards actualy work correctly.

Never, I repeat never use mach3 on a laptop. You are just asking for problems and if it does not have a proper parallel port it wont work at all.

Dont run mach 3 on a server that is running web or FTP servers or anything similar. They can also play havic with the timeing.

I use mostly little ITX mother boards with Nvida chip sets and tend to stay away from AMD.

The slowest machine I run mach3 on is a little dual core 1.6Ghz. The fastest is a quad core 3Ghz. I have run it on my CAD workstation which is Quad 4ghz.

I have run two parrellel ports with success. One Built in and the other an add on. This way I could control two G540's. The charge pump only worked on one though.

I have written software to talk to mach3 and directly load Gcode. Works well once you get mach3 installed properly.

[daz59]

Originally Posted by msimpson99 Never, I repeat never use mach3 on a laptop. You are just asking for problems and if it does not have a proper parallel port it wont work at all.

Why do you say this? I have had my machine for two weeks now, seems to run fine from my laptop.
laptop is about 8 years old...

Darren

[jasminder]

i have been using mach3 on a diy lathe since a year. But mach never gave me an unwanted move. Yes, once there was some problem in the leads of an axis but it was a bad DIR pin on the parallel port. now i keep the things on add on pci parallel cards and if i face an issue i put another one first of all.
they are really cheap (5$ each) so i keep two or three in spare.

The best thing is to keep a backup of the xml file in your mach3 folder. If you are having a new problem, try restoring the older settings to make sure that things work like before again and then redo the changes you want.
I have seen some people using mach on machines having 12kw spindles and 1.5 kw servos so you should not be worrried about it.
One suggestion from me- if you are wiring the inputs outputs first time, use an isolated bob.
(on board port is always priceless)
jasminder singh

[eaglezsoar]

Originally Posted by msimpson99 If you are having reliability issues the first place I would look is your PC. I have loaded and tested Mach3 on over 20 machines ao various shapes and sizes. I build all my own machines so I know exactly what parts work and what parts cause problems. For instance many Gigabyte (brand) mother boards play havic with Mach3. All kinds of skips and jumps. I have found the same mother boards will cause clicks and pops when playing audio so its some sort or IRQ or timeing problem. I have run windows XP but now strictly use windows 7. I prefer boards with build in parallel ports as only a few of the add on boards actualy work correctly. Never, I repeat never use mach3 on a laptop. You are just asking for problems and if it does not have a proper parallel port it wont work at all. Dont run mach 3 on a server that is running web or FTP servers or anything similar. They can also play havic with the timeing. I use mostly little ITX mother boards with Nvida chip sets and tend to stay away from AMD. The slowest machine I run mach3 on is a little dual core 1.6Ghz. The fastest is a quad core 3Ghz. I have run it on my CAD workstation which is Quad 4ghz. I have run two parrellel ports with success. One Built in and the other an add on. This way I could control two G540's. The charge pump only worked on one though. I have written software to talk to mach3 and directly load Gcode. Works well once you get mach3 installed properly.

Could you tell us which of the parallel cards work best in your opinion?

[davy182]

i have had it on three machines and not one problem

[drboom]

the only issue i have with it is the documentation/wiki/videos are very out of date. Not good for software that has a pretty steep learning curve. The support is spread out between its own forum, a yahoo group and this forum on cnczone.
other than that ive never had a machine go crazy on it. ive broken some bits on machine extents due to my own fault.
The documentation really lets this product down, the mach wiki is hideously incomplete.

[drboom]

Originally Posted by msimpson99 For instance many Gigabyte (brand) mother boards play havic with Mach3. All kinds of skips and jumps. I have found the same mother boards will cause clicks and pops when playing audio so its some sort or IRQ or timeing problem. Never, I repeat never use mach3 on a laptop. You are just asking for problems and if it does not have a proper parallel port it wont work at all. Dont run mach 3 on a server that is running web or FTP servers or anything similar. They can also play havic with the timeing.

I call BS on all of these opinions. Making a connection between audio clicks and problems with mach is a long reach diagnosis at best, i wouldnt even call that a diagnosis.

As far as laptops are concerned, there are plenty of options out there for using mach without a printer port.

And as far as ftp or web servers. you must be using old dodgy hardware. the drivertest program is there for a reason. If you want to run other apps/servers/whatever, load them up with usage and run the drivertest program, if your getting spikes then your hardware cant handle it.
this is just another example of a point i made earlier about sloppy documentation on mach, and the absence of unified hardware list. All that exists is anecdotal evidence spread out on 3 forums.

[msimpson99]

Actualy I found the problem on the Gigabyt boards. You have to dissable the CPU Speed adjustment so that it runs at full speed all the time. This fixes the Mach 3 problem as well as the Audio clicking I mentioned. (The two were related).

And I will agree that some laptops will run Mach3 just fine, many wont. I own three and two of them suffer from timing problems.

Im not going to get into an aruing match over what will and will not work with Mach3. I will simply state the facts.

For the easyest and most reliable way to control a CNC with Mach3 is to use a PC with a built-in Parrallel port. Anything else adds complexity and/or reliability issues.

[ErnieD]

There are hundreds of Tormach CNC milling machines in service that are running on Mach3.

ERnie