That is the question.

On long jobs (9+ hours) I am losing steps. I am running my machine slowly (50 in/min) with low acceleration. If I turn my speeds up, I am guaranteed to miss steps almost immediately, despite not feeling any binding on any axis. My machine is 4 axis, 3.5 amp motors, 12.5 amp power supply 48v etc. etc. I can jog the machine very quickly (1000 in/min on rack axis, 600 on screw axis) and it sounds alright. When I cut at 50 in/min, it sounds like garbage no matter what I adjust.

I've done driver tests and these are pics in the middle of them:

http://i.imgur.com/olpMYoc.png

http://i.imgur.com/cybQi0c.png

What does an ideal drivertest look like? Are my times too long?

The noisiness gets worse if I try running anything else. The computer is a quad core that only has windows 7 and mach 3 on it.

Would a smoothstepper help me?

Thanks for any input.