6040 with G540 losing position?

I have a G540, 6040, Switcher PSU, j1900, SATA DOM, Pico PSU, etc and a higher cost yet still Chinese Sunfar E300. I have a similar setup on a very small router minus the fact it uses a Delta VFD M unit instead and I have hundreds of hours of flawless use on it. I've used LinuxCNC for several year and it seems the j1900 is rock solid on my other unit....

One axis of the G540 seems to intermittently skip and then I swapped it out (with no issues on shorter jobs I've done) thinking that driver is dead.
Do the G540s have a failure rate? Should I go for the 4 axis leadshine drivers?
Are even the higher end "chinese" brand VFDs a problem?

Wiring wise I didn't skimp at all, as I am using good stepper cabling, and for the VFD cable I have the shield grounded. However, grounding could be an issue although I'm unsure of where things fall or not in this realm.

Part of me wants to replace the G540 with a leadshine driver, another wishes to try a TinyG, or just replace everything but that's rather costly even for my business.

I'd really appreciate some help. I will be rerunning the 300,000 line program tomorrow with the VFD off and see if it loses position again. I know there are many variable such as the G540, the VFD, grounding, etc. But maybe there's something you know and would be amicable sharing.


Thanks for your time and efforts--I greatly appreciate it.
Sincerely,
Josh

Just a guess but i do know that the G540 needs longer step pulses than specified when driven by 3.3V signals
like those from modern parallel ports, so if you are using a parallel port in "reset" mode you might try lengthening the
reset time (which will lengthen the step pulse lengths)

jm82792 wrote:

I have a G540, 6040, Switcher PSU, j1900, SATA DOM, Pico PSU, etc and a higher cost yet still Chinese Sunfar E300. I have a similar setup on a very small router minus the fact it uses a Delta VFD M unit instead and I have hundreds of hours of flawless use on it. I've used LinuxCNC for several year and it seems the j1900 is rock solid on my other unit....

One axis of the G540 seems to intermittently skip and then I swapped it out (with no issues on shorter jobs I've done) thinking that driver is dead.
Do the G540s have a failure rate? Should I go for the 4 axis leadshine drivers?
Are even the higher end "chinese" brand VFDs a problem?

Wiring wise I didn't skimp at all, as I am using good stepper cabling, and for the VFD cable I have the shield grounded. However, grounding could be an issue although I'm unsure of where things fall or not in this realm.

Part of me wants to replace the G540 with a leadshine driver, another wishes to try a TinyG, or just replace everything but that's rather costly even for my business.

I'd really appreciate some help. I will be rerunning the 300,000 line program tomorrow with the VFD off and see if it loses position again. I know there are many variable such as the G540, the VFD, grounding, etc. But maybe there's something you know and would be amicable sharing.


Thanks for your time and efforts--I greatly appreciate it.
Sincerely,
Josh

I have a G540 on my 4X4 cnc router and I have to run it in Sherline mode in (cough, cough) Mach3, because it gives longer step pulses. Otherwise I have the same kind of issues you are having. If I remember correctly it needs 20 usec step pules.

I am suprised but I haven't read of the J1900 and G540 working as a combo stock.
I've got a mesa card I've been meaning to use and I ordered a PCI e to PCI adapter so the card "should" work supposedly--as bit coin miners use it with their GPUs.
Hopefully that is the end all solution and everything works. Ironically the other machine works--perhaps a quick BIOS setting copy over would also remediate the situation.