The tower is a GX270, from 2004. The velocity for the steppers is 199.98 and motor tuning screen says they are 1112 steps, acceleration is 40. Step pulse and dir pulse are both 4. The first 2 months they sounded like they had the normal hum when traveling, and seemed to move smoothly. Now it's much louder, and does do the clunking sound. As far as the PP, if you mean post processor, I don't know how to tell. Back in March,  I downloaded the Mach trial ,got an xbox 360 control and plugin, the guy sent me the xml, and the machine was awesome. It ran great for two months. I don't believe we had an electrical storm or power loss, but I had the tower disconnected for a couple days, so I could get on the internet and download some programs. I'm thinking it was after this when I began noticing problems. It started with just the z axis behaving like I previously stated ( bumping up and down, jerking erratically). But this problem was obvious to recognize because it was plain to see that the motor configuration got altered somehow in the z axis. I simply changed the acceleration from 30 to 40 and it was fixed. How it got changed in the first place I don't know. I tried different settings in the ports and pins configurations,( checking and unchecking dir low active and step low active. I followed other threads posted on this and achieved no real results. I have replaced the ic drivers, step pulse optocouplers, and direction and enable signal optocouplers on my board. If anything, my z axis seems to be a little better, but I don't feel I have remotely addressed my problems. I will have a new driver board in today or tomorrow and have that finalized as to whether or not my problem lies within the driver. If not, and my motor configs and ports and pins configs are right, that narrows it down to what else? Thank you for your help,    Corey.

PP = parallel port. Oh, duh. Sorry. The PP is motherboard.

I hope I don't have to obtain an oscilloscope. I'd probably go buy a new tower if I have to get that deep into it.

You can get past xmls, which worked before, as they are stored in the C:\Mach\xmlbackups. Look at the readme file in that sub directory to see what you need to. 

You have an Xbox 360, did you remove the dll for the Joystick and ShuttlePro out of the plugin's directory since that can create problems if memory serves me.

Since you tested and confirmed you have a signal coming out the PP, and it was a Dell with on board graphics, the signal quality came into question, but at reduced velocity ( drop it down from
200 ipm to say 50 with acceleration ) the effect of a poor qulity signal may be diminished.
If you have or can borrow an osciliscope to look at the signal, fine, but  i wouldn't go out and buy one just for test.

This stuff happened, post going up on the internet. You should have the PC dedicated for CNC.
Could now have something now interfering with Mach.

Just some thoughts which can cause problems and don't require modifications to the hardware.
Simply put, if it worked before, it should work now, so take a moment and go back thru the
whole process and reaffirm Mach configuration and all connections.

Can't help you  with the configuration because you give no specifics on  the machine or dirver your using.


RICH

 

I'm using a Zenbot cnc router, driver is Mechatronics. 4 wire 285 ounce in nema 23 steppers. The joystick and shuttlepro keep coming back on, though I usually try to cancel them out before startup. I just installed a fresh driver board. It is now jogging better, but has no power. The slightest resistance causes it to cease jogging and the steppers just grind. It actually will jog now. But it's so weak the z axis won't even raise the weight of the mini router. Before installing the driver board, I uninstalled the mach 3 program, and re- downloaded it, and reinstalled the xml. After the new board was installed, I again went thru various configs in the motor tunings and ports and pins. The only thing I haven't done is test the stepper motor current using the test probes on the driver board, ( I have the manual explaining this process using a multimeter to test and adjust the V-REF and PFD potentiometers.)The potentiometers haven't been touched or adjusted by me. Could this be the  problem? I'm pretty sure I checked the PP signal correctly. Just to be sure, what's the best way to confirm that the signal coming out of the PP is good? Thank you for your help.   Corey

Thank goodness!! I got it fixed. The weakness was simply the potentiometers not being adjusted. I think they were at their lowest setting before I adjusted them. For the record, I do not know what originally the problem was, as I did just replace the driver board. It could have been anything. Thank you all again for your dear help. It's a scary thing when one's machienery is not working properly. Thanks again.