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Tormach 1100 speed control problem

John Nagle

Plastic
Joined
Dec 1, 2009
Location
Silicon Valley
The Tormach 1100 at the SF Mid-peninsula Techshop has been having spindle speed problems. I ran a job where a speed of 2500 RPM was specified, and the Mach 3 display showed 2500 RPM. But the actual RPM was something around 200-300, so of course it broke a tool. Running the machine with no tool, we could see the spindle running slow. Entering new RPM values into Mach 3's window would change the spindle RPM, but all speeds were maybe 10% of normal.

Powering off the machine and computer, then restarting, fixed the problem, and three jobs were cut successfully.

Someone else had reported a spindle overspeed problem on the previous day, but that report was vague.

Anyone else seen this type of failure? Does it come back?
 
What speed range where you in... sounds like you had high gear in mach3 and the belt is in low gear.
 
If you are using Mach3, that could be a bug in the software. It happens on mine once in a blue moon if I mouse the start button and inadvertently double-click. If they are using a recent Tormach controller, they should consider upgrading to PathPilot, once runs on LinuxCNC. That fixes a few Mach3 anomalies.
 
Mach 3 does have a bug in the Tormach version...If you double click on the line with RPM and M3 it will default the RPM to 200...
you might consider upgrading to Pathpilot runs much better than Mach 3
 
Path Pilot looks like there redo of the Linux CNC standard front end. I have ran Linux CNC for several years now on my mill, compared to MACH you won't be disappointed by changing it over, expect it to work and work well and very as in rock solid reliability. Have had Zero software related issues in thousands of hours of run time.

Linux CNC is very much a work in progress - continually advancing bit of software. Add sufficient motion control cards and it will happily run a very large PLC type capability and a multi axis robot + the cnc all at the same time. It and mach both share some original motion code if you go back a decade or 2, but they kinda split and went there own seperate ways as there platforms kinda dictated. Linux CNC is a lot more than just a cnc machine control as we know it, it will do a whole bunch of process type control work also. Its very very powerful + adaptable and runs in real time, not a bodged version that windows forces mach to live in.

Don't know if they have enabled it, but if they have, you also get ridgid tapping, which works awesome :-) Have only got as far as experimenting with it, but done everything from M12 in hardox 450 through to M2 in alu and nylon. All came out lovely :-)
 








 
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