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Author Topic: Loading gcode from NAS, a problem ? Does Mach3 re-read code after it loads it?  (Read 756 times)

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Hello guys,

my first post here :)

On some other forums some guys told me to not load files from my NAS, as I done all those years, but to copy the file locally. I do this as generally I mill only one piece of any single drawing, I never have series so in a day I make 10 or more gcodes files, sometime I need to change some mops so I'm regularly moving from CNC to my PC, I found that the NAS is the best option, now I also have a dedicated PC near the machine so I do most of the changes on that, but everything is saved on the NAS so I have access to the latest files from my main workstation also.

Is there an official answer of this question: Does Mach 3 re-read a g-code while milling ? I don't think that this can happen because the files are so very small, most of my .nc files are 100 - 300kb, very rarely I have an 1Mb .nc file. But I want to have an official response to this as I'm just assuming based on my logic, also I noticed the file is locked and can't be overwritten while is loading in mach, but if I can see the entire gcode in Mach 3 window, why would Mach 3 read the file again while milling ?

My issues are not related to loading the files from the NAS, as it happens even if I manually jog with no file loaded in Mach 3, but I want to understand once and for all if this is a bad thing. If it's really not ok, I will install a sync program and when I finished making my daily .nc files, when I go to the CNC PC I will start the sync to copy the files from my NAS to the local HDD.


I moved this introduction to here as is not really relevant to this topic title

 I have some weird problems with my machine, the most annoying thing it that it something randomly, and something that I though I fixed it now about 6 month ago when I moved my CNC router from garage to my workshop, both under the same roof, same power supply .. same everything , but after the move the machine was ticking from time to time, and sometime it almost stop one motor, randomly which one, the problem is I had 2 motor on both Z and Y axis, stopping one motor on either of those axis is a very serious thing, which can cause serious damages. Now 6 months ago I started to change some power cables with shielded ones, installed an UPS, changed the parallel cable, purchased a new BOB which in the end I haven't installed as someone told me on a forum to try disabling the EIST and C1E functions in BIOS, it was right when I started to swap wires from old BOB to new BOB, I told to my self, it's an easy task to disable something in BIOS, I should try before swapping all the wires and changing settings to mach the new BOB .. I couldn't believe that after disabling those functions the ticking dissapeard .. everything was perfect .. for about 6 months, and those days the problems started again.

The CNC was custom made now 4 years ago, in all this time I used it with 2 computers, both Intel powered, I had this randomly (almost) stopping problem since the beginning , but back then it was happening very very rarely, I couldn't predict or repeat the issue, it happen maybe once a month or even once 2 months! there was no ticking back then, only the motor stopping issue you can see in this video I made now about 6 months ago.

Now it started somehow again, without changing anything to my setup, and in the last few months I really worked alot (about 8 hours / day on the router) .. everything was perfect.

Today I purchased a new controller (UC400ETH) to have something dedicated for pulse generation, so this task won't be something related to my computer (which I changed now about 1 year ago, it's a Lenovo Thinkcentre EDGE, 2.7GHz intel CPU, 4GB RAM, a nice computer in my opinion but with an integrated video card ) .

Offline Tweakie.CNC

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You have a good point there and I agree, why would Mach3 need to reload a file it already has stored in memory.
Over the years many things have been discovered that interfere with the smooth running of Mach3 and as a result recommendations have been made. One such recommendation is that GCode is only run from the local drive. You may be lucky and get away with running from a networked drive but you will be taking a chance. It is also a recommendation that the PC running Mach3 is not connected to a network or running any 3rd party background tasks. An integrated video card is also bad news for smooth running although this generally relates to longer GCode files than you are using.
Many of the “I have a problem” postings we see on the forum are as a result of issues just like these.

Some things like running other software in background, and even having an OLD onboard video GPU (current onboard GPU's have much more power and RAM to play with in my opinion) I can understand that might affect the pulse generation and could make the machine running NOT so smooth. But I couldn't find (maybe I haven't searched enough) any single fact to prove that the machine can run weird because the file is loaded into memory. The recommendation was made because Mach 3 is still reading the file after it was loaded into memory ? Or because there can be other processes that might use the LAN interface and make the computer unstable.

If you guys know other persons that had problems because the files ware loaded from the network , please reply with the topics links, I'm really curios to find out more about this.

Thanks for your reply Tweakie, any further information's regarding this subject is appreciated.