Super X3 mill malfunction

[hughlss]

Syil UK here - one of our customers with the Super X3 mill has the following problem which has suddenly manifested itself after several months of use. The mill has been lubricated and adjusted correctly.
I've cut and pasted from his emails to me:

' I seem to have a problem with the machine. It seems to be jumping and
missing steps.
I have checked the pulse from the computer and this seems to be fine and
again checked code produced by LazyCam which is fine'.

'As to which axis is the problem, all seem to be giving problems and when I
switch off the machine the Z axis goes plummeting downwards crashing into
the workpiece'
on one occasion the job had nearly finished and the
machine in the process of doing a G2 movement suddenly went off in a x minus
movement. I re-ran the program on the same scrap piece and it machined
perfectly.'

'Unfortunately this has made
no difference (tightening the couplers), the last few times I have run the programme it has gone
too deep, i.e. missing/jumping steps in Z. I would conclude from this
that the problem seems to be in this axis, could this be the PSU?'

We would be grateful for any assistance.
Hugh
Syil UK

[metalworkz]

Doesn't the Z axis have the gas shock on it to prevent it falling? The note about it missing steps or going too deep in the Z makes me wonder if the coupler on the Z axis may have come lose?
Have you checked all the bootlace connectors going to the stepper controllers as some users have found poor connections at these connectors.Might be good idea to take a close look at them(bootlace connectors) and make sure they are all crimped tight and connected. I just went thru this process not too long ago myself.

[syil canada]

i also had a similar problem with a sx3, i found that it was losing steps it happened consistently when more that 1 axis was trying to move at one time. it stumped me for a while, to make a long story short it was the computer. my computer was also checking out in mach3????


i had 3 other syil products running on mach3??? the only difference was the one i was having problems was a 64 bit processor, i then hooked it to the other machines and i had the same problem.

would suggest using a regular computer, on all of my syil's I now use acer, they are inexpensive but consistently work.

http://www.acer.ca/public/page4.do?l...crc=3780329685

i hope this helps,

keith

[neilw20]

Check all crimps to stepper motors.
The plugs (at least the ones on mine) cant be inspected without removing the pins with a pin removing tool turned from a piece of brass.
That's a tube that just fits over the pin and slides into the nylon housing to release the barb. If in doubt give a yank on each wire. If it comes out it was going to cause problems anyway.
ALL CRIMPS on my factory machine were done with the WRONG TOOL.
Also the crimps on the limit switch connectors can have problems.
Ensure ALL screw connections are tight, especially on bootlace ferrules.
A goods idea to undo these, and squeeze with pliers.
Check for tightness and add a dab of loktite or super glue to the nuts holding the stepper drivers in place. A nut fell off mine and killed the switch mode supply. Thank you Syil for prompt replacement.
Intermittent shorts around the display area can kill the electronics.

[hughlss]

Many thanks for the contributions so far.
Rob, my customers has been checking all the connections, but I suggested switching drivers, which he did, to try to pinpoint where the fault lies. The problem with the Z axis (moving downwards on switching off the machine) is still there.
For this to happen there has either to be data telling the Z axis what to do, or a spike of current on switching off - at least I can't think of anything else!
Now I know we've had reports of faulty PSU's - does anyone know if the condensers in them can discharge when the machine is switched off, and cause this?
The other fault reported - jumping and missing steps - could be one of several problems, but loose connections or software issues are high on the list of possibles. Rob has a hunch that it's the PSU - which is easily replaced, but I'd really like to know if it can cause this strange Z-axis movement.
Over to you guys!

Hugh

[neilw20]

Try a new parallel port cable. Something is introducing problems common to all axis.

[Crevice Reamer]

The computer operating system can also cause problems common to all axes. Is it running vista?

Are there other programs (perhaps recently installed) running on this computer?

CR.

[Babba]

Hi Hugh.

I had a similar problem a few months back, all axis would miss steps & the Z axis would move (luckily) upwards of its own accord. Tried a differant computer, which cured it, so re-loaded WinXP & all is now fine.

[jimmearns]

I have similar problems. The "cheap" chinese PSU keeps the primary side capacitor charged even after switch off and the 48V output drops to zero. Beware - it is at 450V dc. We check the volts with a meter and discharge slowly through a resistor before working on them. We fixed ours - mainly bad soldering around the power transistors. We have since replaced it with a Meanwell PSU - they are much better quality and reliably start on switch-on.
We also experience loss of a line of code, fairly randomly, causing the Z not to lift and machining across the part to the next X/Y or not doing an X/Y traverse. The problem is therefore not axis related. Also the DROs on Mach 3 continue to show the correct position. I think the computer is probably not issuing the command to the printer port. Has anyone ny ideas on this - we have two XP machines which exhibit this problem. Could it be due to the setings for the parallel port in the BIOS?? Finally, does anyone know how to set Mach3 to come up in metric units properly? Any suggestions gratefully received!

[neilw20]

I assume you are using the Bobcad editor. Sometimes the screen cursor is not over the code you are actually editing. Dumb sh1t code. BEWARE.
It does that. I killed a $60 cutter because of evaporating code.
Find some other G-Code editor.
Notepad is OK.
I use Win2000 and most problems just went away.
Losing steps is the OS. Weird operations usually corrupted G-code.
Using the space bar to pause during operations often lead to strange glitches.
If you want to stop the code often liberal m01 throughout the code is the way to do it. At least is stops at the end of a cut (sequence).
Canned cycles like G2,G3 and G8x cycles don't pause well due to the way the low level driver has already consumed a sequence so control is lost.
Welome to the wonderful world of windows.

[jalessi]

Jimmy

I have had to completely delete the Mach3 directory from Windows and then do a clean install choosing the metric setup in order for Mach to work properly.
If you choose inches first and then try to change to metric it has issues.

Jeff Alessi