Hi all,

I've been running a small stepper based gantry router, 24x36 for about two years now using Mach 3/Parallel port - G540 combo. Steppers are the Kelling 380 oz/in motors that match the G540. In that time I've had a number of problems, some of which I believe may stem from the fundamental way Mach 3 generates timing signals and possibly a major bug in the Mach 3 CV mode trajectory planner.

I sometimes experience a somewhat random stalling of motors, usually during a 3axis move or right after a Z-move. I've read some articles stating that uneven pulse generation can cause a loss of torque.

I've also read that Mach 3 has a bug in the CV mode trajectory planner where it violates the acceleration (or possibly simply ignores) settings which also causes stalling. I've had this happen consistently with certain programs and it can usually be remedied by cutting a little slower or a little faster - nevertheless, it's ultra annoying and I've wrecked too many parts this way already.

I tend to push my machine pretty hard to save time (I'm doing this roughly half time for a living) and I understand that slowing things down can help but I'd rather get the thing working to its potential

So my question is, has anyone switched from Mach 3 to Kflop/Mach 3 or Kflop/Kmotion CNC and seen a significant improvement in performance? e.g., can you move faster, fewer stalls etc.?

I'm thinking that long term I'd like to move to Kmotion as I'm assuming that the Kmotion plug in is still getting accel info from the Mach 3 trajectory planner but if simply switching to Mach 3/kmotion plugin helps that would be even better as I've got a lot of customizations for Mach 3 I use as well as a good workflow that I'd like to keep.

Any experiences? And please, even if you switched and didn't see any performance changes, I'm interested in hearing that too please.

Best,

-Andy
www.birkonium.com

Andy
you can't go wrong with kflop,
however if you use the Mach plugin then you are only getting half the benefit as it will still be Mach's trajectory planner
Kmotion trajectory planner is much better, Tom is a magician with
that stuff.
But there are other things to consider

what are your mechanics? ballscrew,leadscrew? what pitch?
or rack and pinion ? how much reduction,dia of pinion?

CV usually isn't applied to a G0 move, so if that's when you stall
I would suspect one of the following
acceleration rate too high
ie; friction and or inertia is too much for the motors.
or too many rpms and not enough voltage.
you could set the pulse width in motor tuning to 10 and try again, helps sometimes.

I have a lot of customers wanting to go fast, but physics and $$
invested always determine how fast..
first you want rigid, accurate,then reliable. last thing to
worry about is speed. if you push a machine to max,it will come back to bite, eventually.

Carl

--- In DynoMotion@yahoogroups.com, "andy.birko" <andy.birko@...> wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
> I've been running a small stepper based gantry router, 24x36 for about two years now using Mach 3/Parallel port - G540 combo. Steppers are the Kelling 380 oz/in motors that match the G540. In that time I've had a number of problems, some of which I believe may stem from the fundamental way Mach 3 generates timing signals and possibly a major bug in the Mach 3 CV mode trajectory planner.
>
> I sometimes experience a somewhat random stalling of motors, usually during a 3axis move or right after a Z-move. I've read some articles stating that uneven pulse generation can cause a loss of torque.
>
> I've also read that Mach 3 has a bug in the CV mode trajectory planner where it violates the acceleration (or possibly simply ignores) settings which also causes stalling. I've had this happen consistently with certain programs and it can usually be remedied by cutting a little slower or a little faster - nevertheless, it's ultra annoying and I've wrecked too many parts this way already.
>
> I tend to push my machine pretty hard to save time (I'm doing this roughly half time for a living) and I understand that slowing things down can help but I'd rather get the thing working to its potential
>
> So my question is, has anyone switched from Mach 3 to Kflop/Mach 3 or Kflop/Kmotion CNC and seen a significant improvement in performance? e.g., can you move faster, fewer stalls etc.?
>
> I'm thinking that long term I'd like to move to Kmotion as I'm assuming that the Kmotion plug in is still getting accel info from the Mach 3 trajectory planner but if simply switching to Mach 3/kmotion plugin helps that would be even better as I've got a lot of customizations for Mach 3 I use as well as a good workflow that I'd like to keep.
>
> Any experiences? And please, even if you switched and didn't see any performance changes, I'm interested in hearing that too please.
>
> Best,
>
> -Andy
> www.birkonium.com
>

Have been using mach3 for 7 years on 2 routers and have all kind of
problems, all my problems go away when I switch to Kflop + kstep(drive) + Kmotioncnc(not Mach3)
what you get when you switch from Mach3 to kflop:
Smooth movement, no rounding corner,almost instant feed hold,
so reliable, not much depend on windows, no OS optimize need,
I don't have any stall, hang-up,just so reliable,much faster,i am so happy with Dynomotion, specially support.I have 4 sets installed on all my routers.

Andy,

KFlop is definitely capable of increasing performance, depending, of course, on your hardware. I switched to KFlop about a year and a half ago, after never-ending random problems with Mach3. I no longer use Mach3 at all, and have not had one, single problem since the first day. KFlop has been absolutely wonderful. In my case, it didn't increase performance, because I was already using a hardware motion controller (SmoothStepper), but it did dramatically improve reliability, and it is literally infinitely flexible, so I've been able to do many things I could never do with Mach3.

Regards,
Ray L.

--- In DynoMotion@yahoogroups.com, "andy.birko" <andy.birko@...> wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
> I've been running a small stepper based gantry router, 24x36 for about two years now using Mach 3/Parallel port - G540 combo. Steppers are the Kelling 380 oz/in motors that match the G540. In that time I've had a number of problems, some of which I believe may stem from the fundamental way Mach 3 generates timing signals and possibly a major bug in the Mach 3 CV mode trajectory planner.
>
> I sometimes experience a somewhat random stalling of motors, usually during a 3axis move or right after a Z-move. I've read some articles stating that uneven pulse generation can cause a loss of torque.
>
> I've also read that Mach 3 has a bug in the CV mode trajectory planner where it violates the acceleration (or possibly simply ignores) settings which also causes stalling. I've had this happen consistently with certain programs and it can usually be remedied by cutting a little slower or a little faster - nevertheless, it's ultra annoying and I've wrecked too many parts this way already.
>
> I tend to push my machine pretty hard to save time (I'm doing this roughly half time for a living) and I understand that slowing things down can help but I'd rather get the thing working to its potential
>
> So my question is, has anyone switched from Mach 3 to Kflop/Mach 3 or Kflop/Kmotion CNC and seen a significant improvement in performance? e.g., can you move faster, fewer stalls etc.?
>
> I'm thinking that long term I'd like to move to Kmotion as I'm assuming that the Kmotion plug in is still getting accel info from the Mach 3 trajectory planner but if simply switching to Mach 3/kmotion plugin helps that would be even better as I've got a lot of customizations for Mach 3 I use as well as a good workflow that I'd like to keep.
>
> Any experiences? And please, even if you switched and didn't see any performance changes, I'm interested in hearing that too please.
>
> Best,
>
> -Andy
> www.birkonium.com
>

Hi Ray,
Did you get your App for Kmotion finished?

Thanks,
Troy

--- In DynoMotion@yahoogroups.com, "himykabibble"wrote:
>
> Andy,
>
> KFlop is definitely capable of increasing performance, depending, of course, on your hardware. I switched to KFlop about a year and a half ago, after never-ending random problems with Mach3. I no longer use Mach3 at all, and have not had one, single problem since the first day. KFlop has been absolutely wonderful. In my case, it didn't increase performance, because I was already using a hardware motion controller (SmoothStepper), but it did dramatically improve reliability, and it is literally infinitely flexible, so I've been able to do many things I could never do with Mach3.
>
> Regards,
> Ray L.
>
> --- In DynoMotion@yahoogroups.com, "andy.birko" <andy.birko@> wrote:
> >
> > Hi all,
> >
> > I've been running a small stepper based gantry router, 24x36 for about two years now using Mach 3/Parallel port - G540 combo. Steppers are the Kelling 380 oz/in motors that match the G540. In that time I've had a number of problems, some of which I believe may stem from the fundamental way Mach 3 generates timing signals and possibly a major bug in the Mach 3 CV mode trajectory planner.
> >
> > I sometimes experience a somewhat random stalling of motors, usually during a 3axis move or right after a Z-move. I've read some articles stating that uneven pulse generation can cause a loss of torque.
> >
> > I've also read that Mach 3 has a bug in the CV mode trajectory planner where it violates the acceleration (or possibly simply ignores) settings which also causes stalling. I've had this happen consistently with certain programs and it can usually be remedied by cutting a little slower or a little faster - nevertheless, it's ultra annoying and I've wrecked too many parts this way already.
> >
> > I tend to push my machine pretty hard to save time (I'm doing this roughly half time for a living) and I understand that slowing things down can help but I'd rather get the thing working to its potential
> >
> > So my question is, has anyone switched from Mach 3 to Kflop/Mach 3 or Kflop/Kmotion CNC and seen a significant improvement in performance? e.g., can you move faster, fewer stalls etc.?
> >
> > I'm thinking that long term I'd like to move to Kmotion as I'm assuming that the Kmotion plug in is still getting accel info from the Mach 3 trajectory planner but if simply switching to Mach 3/kmotion plugin helps that would be even better as I've got a lot of customizations for Mach 3 I use as well as a good workflow that I'd like to keep.
> >
> > Any experiences? And please, even if you switched and didn't see any performance changes, I'm interested in hearing that too please.
> >
> > Best,
> >
> > -Andy
> > www.birkonium.com
> >
>

Troy,

It's software - it's NEVER "finished"! :-) I've been using it since January last year, and every so often I go back in and add more to it. It's still got some rought edges to it, but nothing major, and certainly nothing that gets in my way. I'd like to go back in and make some major changes to clean some things up, but don't want to risk "breaking" anything. The code is pretty ugly in places, but it works really well for me.

Overall, it's really been great - it works the way *I* want it to, and if it doesn't, I just change it so it does! That has been, by far, the best thing about the KFlop - being able to use it like I want to. And, it's been just dead reliable since the first day - something I never cam close to with Mach3. In fact, I just got a new machine, and for a few days I was stuck with Mach3 again. I couldn't stand it, so I spent a few days getting the KFlop running on it, before I even made the first chips.

Regards,
Ray L.

--- In DynoMotion@yahoogroups.com, "tmday7" <brotroy7@...> wrote:
>
> Hi Ray,
> Did you get your App for Kmotion finished?
>
> Thanks,
> Troy
>
> --- In DynoMotion@yahoogroups.com, "himykabibble"wrote:
> >
> > Andy,
> >
> > KFlop is definitely capable of increasing performance, depending, of course, on your hardware. I switched to KFlop about a year and a half ago, after never-ending random problems with Mach3. I no longer use Mach3 at all, and have not had one, single problem since the first day. KFlop has been absolutely wonderful. In my case, it didn't increase performance, because I was already using a hardware motion controller (SmoothStepper), but it did dramatically improve reliability, and it is literally infinitely flexible, so I've been able to do many things I could never do with Mach3.
> >
> > Regards,
> > Ray L.
> >
> > --- In DynoMotion@yahoogroups.com, "andy.birko" <andy.birko@> wrote:
> > >
> > > Hi all,
> > >
> > > I've been running a small stepper based gantry router, 24x36 for about two years now using Mach 3/Parallel port - G540 combo. Steppers are the Kelling 380 oz/in motors that match the G540. In that time I've had a number of problems, some of which I believe may stem from the fundamental way Mach 3 generates timing signals and possibly a major bug in the Mach 3 CV mode trajectory planner.
> > >
> > > I sometimes experience a somewhat random stalling of motors, usually during a 3axis move or right after a Z-move. I've read some articles stating that uneven pulse generation can cause a loss of torque.
> > >
> > > I've also read that Mach 3 has a bug in the CV mode trajectory planner where it violates the acceleration (or possibly simply ignores) settings which also causes stalling. I've had this happen consistently with certain programs and it can usually be remedied by cutting a little slower or a little faster - nevertheless, it's ultra annoying and I've wrecked too many parts this way already.
> > >
> > > I tend to push my machine pretty hard to save time (I'm doing this roughly half time for a living) and I understand that slowing things down can help but I'd rather get the thing working to its potential
> > >
> > > So my question is, has anyone switched from Mach 3 to Kflop/Mach 3 or Kflop/Kmotion CNC and seen a significant improvement in performance? e.g., can you move faster, fewer stalls etc.?
> > >
> > > I'm thinking that long term I'd like to move to Kmotion as I'm assuming that the Kmotion plug in is still getting accel info from the Mach 3 trajectory planner but if simply switching to Mach 3/kmotion plugin helps that would be even better as I've got a lot of customizations for Mach 3 I use as well as a good workflow that I'd like to keep.
> > >
> > > Any experiences? And please, even if you switched and didn't see any performance changes, I'm interested in hearing that too please.
> > >
> > > Best,
> > >
> > > -Andy
> > > www.birkonium.com
> > >
> >
>

Well, those are all very encouraging responses....Looks like I'm going to have to go for it.

The only reason I haven't jumped at it quite yet is that I'm not too keen on learning how to write software again (have done it before but not for years....LDAA anyone?)

I definitely want to move to kmotion as quickly as possible but there's a few things I absolutely need to have:

Multiple offsets or at least some way to load the offsets I'll be using for a particular program from a file or something like that.

"automatic" tool length process using a fixed plate. Must also have the ability to add an offset to the tool length when zeroing. I use this screenset right now and absolutely love it: http://home.comcast.net/~cncwoodworker/2010.html

Any guidance on whether or not anyone's written anything like that and would be willing to share would be great.

I'm also thinking about adding encoders at some point in case I do have a stall so that the workpiece isn't ruined.