Page 1 of 1

help Controller lost its programing?

Posted: Sat May 26, 2018 10:27 pm
by mdweber45
running a 8 panel cut on the shark hd4 extended bed and half way thru the rough pass the Bit buries its self through the 3/4 mdf and the 3/4 mdf spoil board and into the bed of the machine. Son of a buck is it nasty. wasting my time even thinking about making anything or a living using this thing .

Re: help Controller lost its programing?

Posted: Sun May 27, 2018 9:37 am
by SawDust913
When I was introduced to CNC Shark 5 years ago I had a couple of hiccups and crashed. Any machinists will tell you "If you haven't crashed a CNC then you have not run one very long"! I would check the program and load it then scroll down checking the "-Z". Hang in and keep carving.

Re: help Controller lost its programing?

Posted: Sun May 27, 2018 7:15 pm
by Rando
MDWeber45:

Ugh! Man, that's harsh; I wish there was an easy answer to these seemingly-eventual failure modes. Stopping and refusing to progress is one thing. Plunging into Z0-minus infinity is just wrong. :evil:

You know, these growing reports of controller issues is making me wonder if maybe I should create a "third party" upgrade kit specifically for us Shark users. :roll: Yeah right.

Anyone interested? Heh heh.... :twisted:

Regards; you have our sympathies, mdweber45.

Thom

Re: help Controller lost its programing?

Posted: Sun May 27, 2018 7:23 pm
by Rando
MDWeber45:

Thinking a little more logically, there are a couple things I always do that help keep those kinds of things from happening. They don't fix actual controller issues, but they at least make sure the GCode is more likely to be correct.

I use a standalone "backplotter". The vectric software has their simulation, and their toolpath displays, but that's their own internal representation; they're not really simulating how the MACHINE will take the GCode that comes out of the post-processor. But, a back plotter like the GWizard Editor from cnccookbook.com helps keep things in the right space. There's a "front" view where you can see the exact extent of the bit travel. I've found too many times that I somehow missed setting the safe-height, or the bottom for a drilled hole is way too deep, and so on. That is a big help that way. Check for a free one, but that one is definitely worth every penny, especially when used with their Feeds & Speeds calculator.

Secondly, there's another tool I wrote, a program called "GCodeShim". The intent is to allow "nudging" of toolpaths up, down, left or right so I can adjust to out-of-spec material, without having to go all the way back into Vectric. But, when you run GCodeShim without any offsets to change, it just scans the file, and reports on the "extents", that is the maximum excursions along any axis it finds in the GCode. Let me know if that in any way interests you as something you'd run as a pre-flight check; if not, no biggie ;) .

Verification of the inputs to the machine is a good policy, but it only goes so far, and can only prevent so many problems.

Regards,

Thom

Re: help Controller lost its programing?

Posted: Mon May 28, 2018 7:35 am
by 4DThinker
Anytime I hear of a runaway I suspect a corrupt file. If you are using a USB stick to transfer file from your PC to the Shark system then simply pulling out the stick while it is still in use can muck a file up royally. Writes to the internal memory of the controller can get corrupt if the internal memory (SD card I believe) is going bad.

I've also seen a CNC go somewhere unexpected when a shop vac was following the bit and static discharge arced to somewhere near/on the CNC.

To gain a little confidence you can take the bit out of the router/spindle and air cut the file, keeping your hand near the e-stop to shut it down if a flaw shows up.

Don't give up. I've had my share of madness from CNCs over that past several years. Those are rare times though, and what a CNC can do all the rest of that time is worth some patience.