Loosing steps running long program

Glad you are making progress. It is of course important to have everything as play free as possible.
In the meantime also look at your cuts, are they conventional or climb cuts?
If there is slop conventional may work better for you. (Cut the same direction you would when manually using a hand held router).
A climb cut may exert more force on the machine by trying to pull the machine into the cut.

Rick G

are the gibs well oiled ?
it could be also a factor that your motors are a little weak , or your stepper controller is under powered for the job in hand

glad your making progress

OK, a great step forward.
Changed computer and turned off SMI on this computer.
Also went down to 1/2 microstep and turned up the amp from the drivers to 3A RMS (had them at 3A Peak).

Two things happened:
1) I could run much faster without stalling (changed jogging from 470mm/min to 650mm/min and milled aluminum at 500mm/min)
2) No lost step. A 22000 line G-code program run perfectly.

I'm a happy camper!
And a 50V power supply is in the mail. Looking forward to what that one will do. Run 36V now.
Also about to order ballscrews.

Anders

Sounds like you are on your way!

Rick G

awes wrote: I'm a happy camper!
And a 50V power supply is in the mail. Looking forward to what that one will do. Run 36V now.
Also about to order ballscrews.

Anders

In the stepper world voltage is power!

JT

Question related to my tests.
I tried to read up on steppers and I understand that they are stronger the slower they run, right?
So when I went from 1/4 step to 1/2 step I actually lowered the speed the motor need to run to provide a desired feed-rate (actually half the speed). And by doing that I ended with a motor that is stronger at the desired feed-rate?
Have I got this right?

Anders