I just recently bought a Grizzly G8689 (X2 Mill) off craigslist that had already been converted to CNC. I got everything but the computer that it was configured to. I am trying to set up my computer with Mach3 installed on it. Im having a problem when the Z goes to rapid upward. All 3 axes are driven by Nema 23 425's (KL23H286-20-8B) I have played with the velocity and acceleration settings and it works great when Im using the jog buttons on the control. So if I manually jog Z up it works perfectly fine. I do believe Im well under its max speeds because it was skipping steps around 350ipm. However as soon as I run a program that has a G00 Z+... it seems like its ignoring my motor tuning settings and just trys to max it out so it skips steps and Z might move .100" when it was programmed to move 1.000" I currently have my settings for all three axis at 2000 steps for one revolution, velocity at 200, and acceleration at 30. Not sure what "Step Pulse" and "Dir Pulse" are used for but they are both 0.

Also Im thinking I may have a problem with my Y axis stepper. When in idle it makes a clicking noise every 5 seconds. It also is a lot hotter than the X and Z axis steppers. Anyone know why it could be doing this.

Im new to Mach so any help is greatly appreciated!

Welcome to the forum!

Being new, the most help anyone could likely give you is the following link. http://www.machsupport.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Mach3Mill_Install_Config.pdf   I bet your jog rate is not 100% and a G0 is. You can open the mpg flyout and see what the slow jog % is by hitting the tab key. Hitting the tab key again will hide it. Rapid jog is holding down the shift key then pressing a jog key.  Otherwise you will be in slow jog.

Brett

You didn't mention what stepper motor drives you're using, but almost all require a pulse width of at least 2 and some work better with it set to 5 or more.

A steady clicking noise like you're seeing can often be caused by a process running in Windows. But, they can be very hard to track down.

I've never used a mill, but I'd say that 200 velocity and 30 accel are quite a bit higher than most users are running? Especially with 425oz motors, which are about the slowest sinning Nema 23 motors you can get, unless you are running them at 72V. I'd try cutting both of them in half and see if you get better results.

The breakout board is a Probotix PBX-2 and the three drivers are Probotix SideSteps. I am unsure how to adjust the micro stepping. That is what you referring to correct?

No one said anything about the microstepping.

Increase your pulse widths from 0 to 5, and reduce your Z axis acceleration to 10-15 and velocity to 100. I think you're trying to go faster than your motors and drives are capable of.

Ok great Ill try these out right now and report back. Just to clarify your talking about both Step Pulse and Dir Pulse right?

yes.

Using the shift button while configuring my motor tuning settings was the main issue. I can oddly run my Z (80ipm) faster than my X (75ipm) and Y (75ipm) steppers. Changing the pulse width from 0 to 5 seemed to make no difference. Also increasing the acceleration from 10 to 30 to 50 to 80 seemed to have no impact. 1 through 10 do though. I left all three steppers at 30 on the acceleration. Will this give me any issues or cause damage?

I deleted some of the start up processes using msconfig. The Y axis seems to be behaving much better!

Also increasing the acceleration from 10 to 30 to 50 to 80 seemed to have no impact.

I wouldn't even expect it to run with an accel of 80. If you're not seeing any difference, it's probably not accelerating at those rates??? I still think 30 might be too high, but if you're not seeing any difference, than I suspect it's not actually set to 30. Not sure why that is, though.

My Y axis is back to making that clicking noise again. I spoke to soon... Any ideas how to track down whats causing it?