I’ve got an older PRO machine (circa 2017), and running Mach4 with ESS–both of which are not the most current version, but they were working so I haven’t pushed to update.
In the last day–not sure what changed–but having lots of issues. The machine will stop in the middle of a run. In Mach4 it looks like it’s still going, but it isn’t/ Manually stopping and jogging the machine sounds TERRIBLE, and definitely losing steps when I manually move it with the keyboard. I can cycle the control system, reboot the computer, and re-home, and all is fine…for a while.
The machine also does this “stutter” when cutting now. wildly swinging the feed rates. Not sure that that’s about, either.
My computer is OLD. It’s a 2016 machine, and it’s been having some struggles itself.
So hoping for some advice.
Anyone have anything similar happen to their machines?
Any suggestions on first steps? I have a much more modern laptop that I was thinking of setting up–but that’ll involve switching licenses, getting everything setup, etc,… But might be the best first option.
Long term I’m open to upgrading to EX, but that may take a few months.
Given that the laptop hasn’t changed and you are losing steps doing a keyboard jog (not compute intensive) I wouldn’t start with the laptop. It sounds like you are having trouble on multiple axis. That makes a mechanical problem less likely. First I would give it a good visual inpection. Are the wires still connected firmly, are any of them frayed. Did something with the electrical ground change? After that I would try some slow speed single gcode instruction that move a long ways. Try each axis. Those won’t use the laptop once they get started. If they have issues then the laptop is not the problem.
I’ll try that, thanks. I haven’t found anything in the cables, nothing loose or frayed. My control box is mounted away from the machine on a wall, to keep vibrations down, too. I checked all the baord in there, and they seem to be seated correctly. Won’t hurt to do a once over again tomorrow. And I loke the simple G-Code suggestion. I’ll try. My issue was that it would run a job, and then randomly start behaving weird in the middle of the job. I could reset, start it again, and it would behave weird again in a different spot–same G Code.
When you move two axis at the same time, and it stutters, do both of the axes stutter? I went through this as well and it was just my laptop power supply died without me knowing and it defaulted to the slightly less performance mode, but it was enough to mess with the communications. I narrowed it down to either cat5 cable or power settings because even my z axis would stutter at the same time as the others.