So I’ve managed to build the mpcnc. Square it all up and am able to manually control the steppers and move the X Y and Z axis around without any issues.
I’m now needing to wire in the end stops. I’m unable to find any instructions of where and how to wire them in.
I bought the kit from V1 with the Rambo 1.4 with the series end stops. Wishing I got the dual end stops now, but can always change that at a later date
You want to wire them to - and s. Never use +! Mine only use the min end stops. I have physical stops on the other side. I just use them as a reference 0.
Thanks for the info. Whats confusing me is that I was given 4 micro switches with my kit.
For dual, you have an endstop on each end of x and y 0, one per motor. We don’t worry about max, that’s set in software. Z will be a touch plate. 0 is generally front left corner as you stand in front of it.
For a series wired MPCNC do not use the endstops, they are in there because the board comes with them, you can use them for a dual setup in the future if you want to but for now, do not use them as per the instructions.
crap… so the series connectors I just made to make the Z more efficient are worthless haha… I gotta now do each stepper to a connector…
With the Ramps though, since the Z has 2 connectors. I assume I can use those two without having to use an additional stepper driver. Or would I need to, because I wouldnt have a corresponding Z stop pinout?
The two Z ports are wired parallel, and shouldn’t be used. I am not sure what your machine is, since this post was about a LR and is 6 months old.
Yeah my machine is a LR V2. It is working great (when I dont do competely stupid stuff). Like letting a power adapter wire get tight, pulling power, which lets the Z axis slide right on in to everything 
Can you use 2 Z endstops with the Z wired in series connected to 1 stepper?
I am reading everything I can about this dang thing and again, wiring isnt my strong suit haha
No, when you wire in series, they move in lockstep. Dual endstops works because you can move one motor longer than the other, until both endstops are triggered.
Thats what I figured… so you have to use an entirely different stepper driver for Z1 and Z2 and the corresponding End stop for that stepper right? Hence the requirement for 5 drivers… in my case, 4. I dont really care about X or Y endstops.
Are you sure it is worth it? I just give my leadscrews a little twist to releive an tension before I start and they start at the bottom, ao they are the same height on both sides. The other errors, like how flat my table is, and how much sag there is in the gantry account for more Z error than the starting position.
You can do it, but it requires some firmware configuration.
the problem is. when the steppers are disabled, one side goes down all the way, the other doesnt.
I have to end up manually turning the stepper, which isnt the end of the world.
However it seems that when it starts up again, that side goes up first, and the other side lags, which of course makes it not square
the only way I can get it close is to put a 2x4 under each side, and when it falls, gently press both so they touch equally on each side.
You should get in the habit of driving your gantry back close to home before powering it off. It isn’t good on the drivers to back drive them like that. It also isn’t good on your gantry to stretch it by skewing it like that.
Some people set up “parking spots” for their gantry. Wouldn’t be a bad idea to just have a gcode macro preset to send the gantry to it’s parking spot when you’re done. You can also probably set up your parking , unparking, homing routines in your cam.
yeah i thought about the parking idea.
I really wish vcarve would allow pre and post scripts so I can add gcode in there rather than having to add it in manually.
Unless you use machine coordinates, parking gcode is also tricky. It would be nice, but for that to work, I think you’d need to be using separate work coordinates, otherwise after you set your origin, it would have no idea where the parking spot was.
i just want pre and post code so I can issue my 106 to turn on the router and vac and issue a G92 command to zero out the coords…otherwise i hae to have a laptop there, or have separate gcode jobs to run these little things. why vcarve doesnt have this option is beyond me
That is unique. Most others have that. There are equivalents in the lcd though. M106 is fan speed and G92 is set home or something (I can’t remember exactly). You can also buy a pi and put my v1pi on it. You’ll still need a screen, but not touching the machine.
i have plenty of Pis laying around… I could do that… could you then use a tablet with some nice big buttons for movements, and hot keys for Zeroing, etc? Id love to have like 5 hotkeys set up… M106 M107, G92 X0 Y0 etc.
thanks
btw, jeff… thank you VERY much for your help… its super appreciated.
Don’t know about hot keys but cncjs has macros, you can set up all that there. Also bluetooth keyboard = wireless pendant!
