Man, that’s yet another thing for me to confirm. I think I have at least 4-5 feet of excess lead coiled up under my table.
Another “doh!” moment for me. Thanks for posting that info!
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Someone else in here pointed it out before. Wish I remembered who so they could be thanked properly!
But your welcome on my part. I usually do stupid stuff like that to learn from
Did you figure out why your machine was losing steps?
from the picture it looks like the step loss is on the x axis.
Coupler slip?
y and x lead screw bearing blocks mixed up?
Loose motor plug coupling?
Machine out of square?
@DougDuvall where are you at with this now?
have you made any steps recently to fix your issues? if so what were they?
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I ll added your other issue here for reference to
This has happened to be a few times. It seems to be when firecontrol has been opened but inactive for a significant amount of time. The solutions / workaround i have found is to turn off fire control and restart it fairly soon prior to commencing my cut sequence. A method to address the “machine runaway” is simply to unplug the usb cable between the control box on the table and the machine running fire control. I do agree this could be a safety hazard however the whole process of turning electricity into live plasma and using it to vaporize metal in our garages and shops is a hazard. lol…Knowing this possibility of this happening and having a plan to deal with it is immensely helpful i believe.
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Other priorities have pushed this train wreck down the tracks.
To your questions:
Missing steps - possibly lead screw lubrication helps. The cardboard/pen attempt was better.
Coupler slip - it is secure.
Y and X bearing blocks - 99% sure they are correct - will check again.
Loose motor plug - appears to be secure, see cardboard/pen “success”.
Machine out of square - no. Assembly was quite diligent.
My next set of “fixes” is to - sadly - dust off my Process Engineer hat. Back in the bad-old-days of W2 income I did validations for medical devices. There is a process called IQ OQ PQ. So my next “fix” is to write a protocol for the machine. Somewhere in there a bug will be found… I’ll share the document when done.
And yes, the frustration with this “turn key” setup is still palpable.
DnKFab…
Thanks for the input. And… Great Ceasar’s Ghost! Remind me to have my personal injury lawyer on speed dial… And to try to get the failure on video next time. Random start equipment and circuits are an invitation to - I dunno - death?
I feel your frustration.
“Turn key” is probably not the right phrase for a machine that comes in three different boxes and has to be completely assembled out of a thousand parts.
It is interesting that that normally closed relay was able to get energized without an M3 command from fire control.
I haven’t restarted my shop computer in 3 months and firecontrol been open the whole time with no issues. But with my old laptop I had similar freezing issues and fire control locking up issues as you described above. I have never had the torch fire without a command before though.
@DougDuvall can you use the straight line cutting function through fire control both in the y-axis and the z-axis without issues?
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I’m not positive it’s a Langmuir issue. It could be but I also wonder if it’s a certain window or particular laptop problem.
When it happens I click a file to bring into Fire control, fire puts up a message of validating program and blurs everything on the screen. And begins running program that instant. Including firing the torch. Space bar does nothing, can’t force close fire control. I did delete and reinstall as Reilly suggested in the lounge. Hasn’t happened since…but now days I simply close and restart fire control if it’s been dormant but open.
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