[James Newton]

I don't have much experience with normal drawing programs. I've worked a lot with OpenSCAD, which I /strongly/ recommend, but that is mainly used for3D... you can do 2D with it, but wouldn't want to, probably.

I used CorelDraw years ago and understand that it is now open source? or abandonware? Or something.

[Nico13]

Well the problem returned with a vengeance so after some more stuffing around and the addition of a second printer port PCI card with a similar result I spat the dummy and removed said computer and brought out my good Win 7 desktop machine from the house, plugged it all in and away it went, a few minor tuning adjustments and all was pretty good.
After a couple of hrs. of dummy runs and some picture drawing it pretty much ran faultlessly aside from some movements that made the steppers growl a little I couldn't fault it at all.
So I've come to the conclusion finally that it has been the old XP PC that is at fault so it will be retired.

The thing is I don't want to leave my good desktop PC in the shed but I have a laptop spare and that will require a USB or LAN option so I'm now just looking for some recommendations as to what card to go with?
A smooth stepper, would this solve those remaining little grumbles from the steppers or maybe a CNC4PC, is there others I should look at, what would be your choice and any particular reasons why you would choose one or the other.

All input would be very happily received and considered as this has been dragging on for some months now without a fix but I think I'm close.

Thanks for any help

Nico.

[john-100]

Hi Nico

good to see its working
the computer was the only thing you had not changed !

I'd go with the LAN option to connect a motion controller to your laptop

if noise stops a USB port from working it does not automatically restart the connection

John

[Nico13]

Hi Nico

good to see its working
the computer was the only thing you had not changed !

I'd go with the LAN option to connect a motion controller to your laptop

if noise stops a USB port from working it does not automatically restart the connection

John

Thanks John,
Ran it again today without issues so I did a job for the wife that she has been waiting for, the daughter had broken one half of a patchwork quilt templeate she borrowed and I had the GCode ready to go so I setup and engraved and cut it.
All worked well so I think I'm going to go with the Smoothstepper card, it seems there are pro's and con's with whatever one chooses so I'll just have to buy it and try it and hopefully it will remove those last few little noisy steps I'm hearing at some points during a run.
A couple of picies of what I ran today.

Nico.