Re: odd problem...

[Jon Elson <jmelson-at-artsci.wustl.edu>]

Clint Bach wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I'm trying to run a program which runs just fine on the AHHA controller
> and am getting some really disturbing problems.  At the end of the
> program  I have a G02 Move to make a hole followed by a retract and then
> I have a move to park the table for a part change.  Somewhere in the
> last few lines of the program the Emc goes wild!!!

Yikes!  Don't you have a hardware E-stop button?  All I can think
of is that G02 is a circular arc command, and the retract is a linear move,
probably not in the plane of the arc, either.  So, there should be a G01
before the linear move.

>  The stepper motors
> freeze and make a screaming sound, the display counts to -several
> hundred and/or displays NaN on all axes.  While this is happening
> mousing to abort and clicking the escape key do nothing.

Yeesh!  Getting NaN should make EMC abort, I would think!

>  The f1, f2,
> f3, f4, or f5 keys do nothing...  The only way out of the situation is
> to mouse to "File" and mouse down to "Quit". Other than pulling the plug
> that is...  This problem is NOT intermittent.  I can reproduce it every
> time.
>
> Of course I will study this in more detail tomorrow.

Probably, you should send the entire program, verbatim, plus your run
script and .ini file to Fred Proctor.  This sounds like an
interpreter/motion
problem, not the gui.

>
> My contribution to the project seems to be "Fool Proof Testing" and I'm
> just the fool to prove it!
>
> What does NaN in the X, Y and Z axes display mean?  It kinda sounds like
> when I was teased in third grade  "NaN, NaN, NaN!!!!"

It stands for Not a Number!  This means that the coordinate axes returned an

invalid code, reserved by the floating point number definition to represent
invalid data.  This could be the result of reading an un-initialized memory
area
or a floating point overflow, or something like that.

Jon