Change HW on SmoothX ?

Mokki said:

Hey!

As the title suggest, would it be possible to change hardware in the SmoothX controller?

We constantly run into problems regarding high CPU load. The machine is laggy, and it's very frustrating to work with when you know which
button to press but it doesn't appear until 0.5 sec later than it should and you end up pressing the wrong button. I guess it's because it uses
3D model to simulate whatever you program, but because of bad CPU it tends to freeze up. Idle load on the CPU is 80%, and usually at full load under use.
Also, if the part contains several features it becomes so laggy you can't even operate it "normally", meaning you can't read off positioning coordinates
reliably as they only get updated ones every 1 - 1.5 seconds. Whereas the older machines (Matrix/Smart) the numbers are probably refreshed at the same
hertz as the monitor is. Our solution is to split programs in two, while in reality this should not be an issue!

We talked with our retailer and they said it would be impossible because of unknown reasons. We're really tempted to just buy a new CPU and put it in and see what happens.

It's unreal how a 1'000'000$ machine uses a 80$ CPU, rendering it useless for anyone with some standards

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Mokki said:

@ CNC Hacker

It's on a Integrex I-400

There's no problems with the machine when you start a new program, or even running a program. But ones the part becomes more complex (and I'm not talking about adding
3D files here, but simply program in Mazatrol from scratch) the machine starts to stutter. First you notice it when programming, when you start to feel a slight delay between key presses and then it gets worse from there. While running the program you can't safely rely on watching the coordinates (distance to go) as they only get updated every second or so. Any other Mazak (non smooth) we have you can clearly see it counts down the distance in 0.0x increments rather than 0x.xx (metric)if that makes sense. And also as I said, sometimes it just freezes up and then carries on after a few seconds.

The machining itself is of course flawless. Safety shield gets turned off as a start up routine every day so that's no issue. Machine simulate or 3D simulate is something that never gets done on any of our Mazaks because it's probably faster to just run the part instead. Here we're talking about basic programming and day to day use. If it sounds like I'm talking about overly complex parts then no, we're talking parts that, well, would require a IG rather than a Nexus. I myself is also operating an I400 but with Matrix2 control, and I had to spend two weeks in the Smooth machine. Worst two weeks of my ten years as cnc operator, infuriating experience this machine.

I'm guessing it's the horrible CPU they use, seeing how it's 80% load while the machine idles. You get next to no juice left to actually run the machine. And when it then creates a 3D model out of your program the CPU quickly reaches 100% usage. Even the Matrix machines starts to lag when running toolpath sim if the part is complex enough, but that is rather rare.

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Mokki said:

@noname777

The CPU I'm talking about is indeed the processor which runs the software on the machine, it also runs the graphics as they do not have dedicated GPU.

@Gobo

First window show the machine running a toolpath simulation on a rather simple part, where the second window is from the machine being idle.

View attachment 251398

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