harryball
08-31-2015, 05:02 PM
Circa 2006 PRT Alpha running most recent software 3.6.46 released in 2013 which is the newest I believe it will run.
PC has been running on it almost a year now, new USB hub recently (few months) after the old one failed.
Over the years I've had a few random disconnects while running but it has never been chronic and it's always been the typical error message pops up and it can't find the bot. Again, that's been rare and far between and excluding the USB hub failure has maybe happened twice in the last year since the move.
However... today it has just stopped, twice so far. It is running along and just stops. The screen (other than being static) is normal. The PC has not locked up, I can still move the mouse inside the start button. It's just not making progress. Spindle is running, just no movement.
To recover, I take a picture of the screen, use the task manager to end the process then open the control software again. It shows the x,y and z are now all zero. So I use the photo of the screen I took to move the bot to -x, -y values shown as the last position and re-zero the Z and restart the job a couple of lines ahead of where it stopped. The job then finishes without event.
I'm not sure what to think of this at the moment. Twice in one day, been running about 6 or 7 hours total. First time was a couple of hours in and the last time was to be the last job of the day.
It is hot out there, but that's nothing new. The PC seems normal, fans are clear and again, it didn't lock up. I've not had to reboot it to recover. It just puzzles me that I don't get the disconnected error and can continue after dealing with that. I've never had the control software stop responding like that during the middle of a job.
Ideas or suggestions would be appreciated as I plan to look at everything in the morning while it's cool. I figure I can replace the hub again, run some diags on the PC, check for nicks in the cables or loose connections, check the grounding etc...
/RB
PC has been running on it almost a year now, new USB hub recently (few months) after the old one failed.
Over the years I've had a few random disconnects while running but it has never been chronic and it's always been the typical error message pops up and it can't find the bot. Again, that's been rare and far between and excluding the USB hub failure has maybe happened twice in the last year since the move.
However... today it has just stopped, twice so far. It is running along and just stops. The screen (other than being static) is normal. The PC has not locked up, I can still move the mouse inside the start button. It's just not making progress. Spindle is running, just no movement.
To recover, I take a picture of the screen, use the task manager to end the process then open the control software again. It shows the x,y and z are now all zero. So I use the photo of the screen I took to move the bot to -x, -y values shown as the last position and re-zero the Z and restart the job a couple of lines ahead of where it stopped. The job then finishes without event.
I'm not sure what to think of this at the moment. Twice in one day, been running about 6 or 7 hours total. First time was a couple of hours in and the last time was to be the last job of the day.
It is hot out there, but that's nothing new. The PC seems normal, fans are clear and again, it didn't lock up. I've not had to reboot it to recover. It just puzzles me that I don't get the disconnected error and can continue after dealing with that. I've never had the control software stop responding like that during the middle of a job.
Ideas or suggestions would be appreciated as I plan to look at everything in the morning while it's cool. I figure I can replace the hub again, run some diags on the PC, check for nicks in the cables or loose connections, check the grounding etc...
/RB