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Program stopping in mid inspection


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As of late one of our machines will stop/freeze during its inspection. Have any of you experienced this? It doesn't red light so its not crashing. It goes to a feature and just sits there. We end up red lighting and starting over. Sometimes it works through the program till end. Sometimes they try several times. It seems to me that there is a lack of communication between the desktop and CMM controller computer. The computer is pretty old. Not sure on age, but I know it's been here for a while.

Any fix for this? Anything I can do to monitor the connection if that is even a thing? Seems to be getting worse and worse.

Lincoln
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Is the program you're running stored locally, on the computer, or remotely on a server?

I've had some pretty weird problems running directly from servers. Also, if you are running from a server, and have a single program open/running from multiple workstations, you'll have problems there too.
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What Head on the Machine? If it is an Vast XXT or Vast XT and the part is moving the machine will wait until it stop moving so it will set on the part until it can apply probing force. It can take up to 1 mins to take a point. but it feels like it is forever. This happens all the time when I probe fabric.

Just let it go and see if it errors out if it can't take it probing it will error out at some point.

Thanks
Danny
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I don't know of this problem in 6.6
I don't like software updates they case problems I what until the next stable version. Also some versions don't work with Line Scan and Viscan.
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Thanks guys for the responses.
-Head XXT- brand new just installed a new last week. Two pins fell out of it.
-Software is 5.6(older)
-Not really sure if it stops at the same place. No PCM's or formulas.
-Part sits on a magnet and it firm.
I have requested a new computer for this machine.
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Depending on the strength of the magnets and how close the XXT gets to these can cause some issues with measurements. XXT sensors also start to act up if the adapter plate contacts are not clean. Also having a good collision or enough impact where the machine releases the sensor "if its connected to a articulating sensor" could cause random delays if it still works after the crash.
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If I remember 5.6 had problems 5.4 was good
but Zeiss will not help if you try to install 5.4 you will need to install drivers of 6.0 or higher then remove everything but the SQL updates and install 5.4
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  • 2 years later...

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Hey Lincoln,

Did you ever find out what the issue was with this? I have been having a very similar problem with our shop floor CMM. It happens with different programs and probes where the probe will just rest on the part mid-inspection but the the stoplight stays green. Some days we don't have an issue and other days it happens fairly often. Pretty frustrating and I have done everything I can think of on my end to make sure the CMM is in good working order, although I do suspect there have been some crashes that I was not told of all of the probes continue to qualify without issue. Our identically set up CMM in our quality room has no issues stopping mid-inspection running the exact same programs.

Any insight you may have would be appreciated, thanks!
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We had the same problem, Micura , XT head. ver2020. It seems to have gone away on its own. Never happened very often.
We keep an incident log now for computer glitches. All 4 of our machines have weird computer problems. Stalls, graphics that can't rotate, Screens that we can't delete. (Printouts that won't close) The occasional black screen. It's driving us crazy, IT is trying to track down sources, but its difficult.
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Other than the obvious network connectivity issues that can arrive from running programs from a server, another good place to look is your hardware. Aging computer parts, especially RAM, can give you all types of mysterious problems (computer hanging up, blue screen of death, random restarts). I also keep our CMM computer connected and updated with the latest and greatest drivers, Calypso updates, and windows updates. I know some do not care to have their computer connected to the internet for updates, and that can be fine too.
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  • 4 weeks later...
The next time the CMM stops for no reason try this:
Use a mirror, preferably mounted on something stable so its not moving.
Watch closely for vibration as viewed from the mirror, typically you can see minute vibrations from the reflection.
Find an angle that you get a clear view of a bright light reflection point.

If you see vibrations, you may need service.
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XXT head will not vibrate. It has no motors to cause a virbration scenario. Only an XT/XTR will vibrate at time of internal failure. And XXT will sit and not take a point if the envirornment is unstable and the sensor cannot get a stable reading from the workpiece. This usually translates to a "Floating mean value" error.
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  • 10 months later...
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Did anyone identify a cause or solution for this? It sounds like the same issue we're seeing on our O-Inspect.
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While I never did figure out conclusively why this is happening the closest I can figure that brings me some sanity is that it is a network issue.

It mostly just happens on our shop floor CMM, rarely happens on our quality room CMM, both run programs off the same network. Some programs tend to have the mid-inspection stops more frequently but not always in the same place/probes. We will go weeks without issues, then some days it seems like it happens constantly. Maybe Mercury is in retrograde? More likely we are just having small network outages more frequently on those days and they just happened to occur mid-program.

It is a hassle to have to restart programs and there is always a risk of a crash switching to manually to clear the probes but the overall convenience of having programs pulled from the network for multiple CMMs kind of outweighs the occasional program stop for us.

I just tell our operators there are ghosts in the machine, red light/green light the program, clear the probe, cross my fingers, do a dance, and hope for the best.
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We have sometimes these issues of freezing CMM during inspections. Specially on Duramax. On two of these we changed the workstation with a new one (not from Zeiss) and we reduce to 10% these freezing (I think is the raid of HD, the new one don't have the raid on it and these has the same specification). Sometimes happen again but I think that the problems come from Servers, lag servers and traffic on connection.
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A potential middle ground solution for the convenience vs stoppages (which are likely caused by the programs being on network, we see this semi-frequently), would be to work with your IT team to develop a method to push the programs from the network to the local CMM pcs at some frequency. This gives you the convenience of not having to update the programs in each location manually, while hopefully taking care of the stoppages caused by networked programs. A slightly better version of this would check which programs have changed and only push those, for better efficiency.
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the issue can be, that two cmm run the same program from the same source at the same time, or not?
When I open, change (or not) and safe a program from network, that a machine is running at that time, the machine runs into failures.

Greets Jens

P.S.: sorry for my bad english
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Your English is great, Jens!

We very rarely have same programs open on both machines at the same time (pretty much only if I am doing some programming adjustments while trying not to hold up production) but I have experimented with that and have noticed that can definitely cause one or both of the programs to crash.

I like the idea Kevin proposed working with our IT (they are third-party offsite and can be a bit slow to help) to try to save programs locally to workstations but still update from the network at regular intervals so the programs stay uniform across the shop. I'll keep that in my back pocket. Right now every couple of months I have a thumbdrive I will throw the most recent copies of our most used programs on in case of a network outage for when the messy brown stuff hits the fan. I have only had to use that once in my time here but it made me a hero for the day.
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