Mach3 Zaxis help needed

[Feisty]

Hey guys just signed up.
I should probably start by saying that i dont have a seemecnc printer but one i built and designed from scratch (ill post pic nd info if your interested) BTW im using Slic3r and mach3. Its working really well aside from this one problem i have which from what i can gather when the printer is finished with one layer it seems to dwell or pause for about half a second before lowering the z axis for the next layer. this results in a blob of plastic where the head finishes. I have played round with retraction and anything related but it looks like it dwells for a little bit then retracts.
Any ideas would be greatly appreciated as im starting to run out of ideas. I am fairly convinced its something to do with the software altho the extruder still has a couple of issues to get rid of

Cheers
Jono

[johnoly99]

Welcome! John here from SeeMe. If i had to bet, i would look at your motor tuning for the z axis and or your a axis extruder. If you have a lot of accel it might be in the ramping of the two thats causing it to do that. Are you running your extruder as an A axis in mach, or as a spindle with M3 M5 start/stop commands?

Oh, and we DEFINATELY wanna see pics of your machine.

[Feisty]

Welcome! John here from SeeMe. If i had to bet, i would look at your motor tuning for the z axis and or your a axis extruder. If you have a lot of accel it might be in the ramping of the two thats causing it to do that. Are you running your extruder as an A axis in mach, or as a spindle with M3 M5 start/stop commands?

Oh, and we DEFINATELY wanna see pics of your machine.

Thanks for the reply mate, I have the extruder setup on the a axis. Im fairly sure its not missing steps or anything as there is a pause before it even tries to do anything, are you suggesting making the acceleration faster or slower? I take it theres no setting in mach that could cause this? something that ive noticed is that when you click the go to z button the x and y axis move together to zreo but the z axis waits for the x and y to stop moving. do you think that this could have something to do with it?
I was kind of hoping that it was a problem others had come across as it means its less likely to be something to do with the software. What do you think about some kind of latency issue with the printer port?

Sorry lots of questions but im realy wanting to get to the bottom of this. ill post some pics after work tomorow
Cheers
Jono