So I am working on another alligator table and the finish toolpath has about 700k lines of code and about 50% into it the gantry just stops moving with the spindle running. Now I have had this before randomly and I usually just resort to vectoring the remaining areas and continue on. I would like to figure this out, is there a log that would show what happened?
Still running Mach-3 here, so this is just a reference data point, but āmayā not apply depending on which SW you are using. The finishing passes I was running on the sculpted entryway table pieces were 9.1M files, about ~300.25K-lines of G-Code. I ran 3 variations of those and also made the two matching benches which were somewhere in the ballpark of ~400K-lines. These finish passes all ran without issue.
Thinking about this issue, the questions that come to mind right away is what security SW is running and is it enabled during the run? Is the computer connected to the internet or other computers on a home network that may be triggering firewall operation or other windows features to kick in, in the background? (Is the cable literally disconnected or wireless radio for those connections disabled.) Are you running a version of Windows that is old enough that it can truly have background cleanup / updated functions disabled?
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Yes, I have witnessed this behavior as well. Multiple times.
I grow weary of Newfangled and their sorry excuses 
Well it sure saps my confidence that my machine will do what I tell it to doā¦ lol
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I have had the same issue. Tech support says itās because my PC is busy doing other things in the background.
Shut off Wi-Fi radio, re run the scu utilities, disable antivirus, etc
I am actively exploring LinuxCNC options. Mach4 is hot garbage.
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They tell you that for every bug 
Blame Windows 
PS My PC has never had the wireless drivers installed so I know for a fact that excuse is 100% BS.
Iām running Mach3 and have never had a problem using a Warp9 card. I can run 20, 30, 40 hours and never a problem. Iād check to make sure anything to do with networking, usb, or systems functions that are not needed are turned off. Iām running a lean windows 7 system andhave no problem. I suspect youāre running ethernet, so make sure you have a good quality cable with filters as static electricity can also cause you problems.
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Wow! Rockin the Winders 7.
I have you beat, my X3 conversion runs on a 2010 mini ITX and still rocks the parallel port for 4 axis. I upgraded to the latest LinuxCNC v 2.8.4. last September. Last time Mach3 was updated was 2010? Yeah, 2010ā¦
I call the machine the āLittle Green Monsterā but everyone else calls it the āSolitaire Machineā because when they are doing long cuts on it they sit and play Solitaire at the same time. I put a touchscreen on it in 2015 which became a problem because they started doing two player gamesā¦ which got the humans distracted, forget the silly machine.
Heck, it is WIFI only and we cut all of the work from the shared drive on top of playing Solitaire.
Mach3 never could do that. Mach4 still canāt do that
An option to look at might be a modification to the post processor that would automatically break the job up into more manageable pieces, say 100K lines or whatever you want. If you are using Vectric as a CAM they have a procedure defined to do just that.
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I"m right there with you. Not on my design machines, but for the machine running the CNC, Mach-3 & Win-7 w/o all the extra bits installedā¦
Does the photo show when it stopped?
If it does, and this still a long way from finishing the carve, then I would recommend breaking up your program into separate roughing, semi-finishing and finishing programs. I donāt know what your finished project is supposed to look like, but it looks like it has a long way to go, and perhaps a lower resolution roughing operation would shorten the time and number of lines to get to where you show in the photo.
The roughing was already done and it was 40% into the finish toolpath. I really donāt understand your response, is there a time limit on finish 3d toolpaths? I mean the gantry stopped moving and the spindle continued to spin.
This is a great thing to do. Sounds like the PC may be the culprit here.
If youāre posting out of Vectric there is a post modification you can do called ātape splittingā
This will let you split code up into chunks. Youāll have to code it into the post, but coding Vectric posts is pretty trivial. Docs can be found here:
There are two totally separate issues here. The first - the machine stopping with no explanation - is not something I can help you with, since there are many variables we would have to guess at, like the control, hardware, post, and so on.
But I think this could also be prevented through just not having 700k lines of code in the first place. It is a common thing for people to assign a high resolution to roughing toolpaths and wind up a far longer program than necessary. By breaking it up slightly further into another semi-finishing toolpath that leaves a thin skin for your finishing toolpath at the end, you wind up with only one full-resolution program with a lot of code. Even for your table, it probably wouldnāt be 700k lines.
When you donāt have scales or rotary encoders on your axis motors, you are taking a leap of faith that the kinematic motion of the machine is synchronized and stays synchronized through the programmed motion. The longer the program, the longer you are trusting it to maintain that synchronization, through radio interference, varying wood density, slowly dulling cutting edges, etc. Without a feedback loop from scales or encoders, itās better to err on the side of caution and run as short a program as possible.
I have had the issue many times where it just randomly stops, and the spindle is still running. I have had it stop about 100 lines in. Rerun the same job and it completes or stops at about 10,000 line. I have run 3D jobs that were over 1 million lines and it completed many of them fine. Its very random. I did go through Task Manager and disable a lot of unnecessary process, run the SCU utility, shut Wifi, etc
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Thanks for confirming this, it has nothing to do with
people to assign a high resolution to roughing toolpaths and wind up a far longer program than necessary. By breaking it up slightly further into another semi-finishing toolpath that leaves a thin skin for your finishing toolpath at the end, you wind up with only one full-resolution program with a lot of code. Even for your table, it probably wouldnāt be 700k lines.> Blockquote
And everything to do with the machine stopping when I did not tell it to stop. This was not my first 3d carveā¦
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Yeah, this isnāt the length of the g-code or I would be screwed on these sheets of aircraft parts. I am way over a million lines especially doing 10 tool changes along the way.
Yep, I can only imagine, Some of those last supper carve are close to 2 mill on the finish with a 0.5mm TBN on manual tool change. Iām not into the programing end, but I thought there would be a log that could be looked at and see what happened in the last line of code when it stopped. Maybe there is a debug mode for logging that needs to be turned on??
I use aspire but if I wanted to make smaller files I use machine āselected vectorā. To be clear the laptops I use are dedicated to each machine and have the SCU recommended settings. It is not a big problem that happens all the time, but it is a problem and I was hoping that a log might exist that would help me dig into it.