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.
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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.
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Don’t know about hot keys but cncjs has macros, you can set up all that there. Also bluetooth keyboard = wireless pendant!
wireless pendant?
A cnc pendant is just a remote control for jogging the machine around and things. For example: https://www.amazon.com/P4-S-Pendant-Mach3-LinuxCNC-PathPilot/dp/B00MGOE0ZO
My shop computer is about 10 ft away from the mpcnc, but when I need to jog the router to some position I can just carry the wireless keyboard with me next to the machine and jog with the arrow keys.
Yes. A big tablet can probably use the UI as is, but there is also a plugin for tablets called “tinyweb pendant”. It also has octoprint installed, and I have had good luck with the touchUI plugin from my phone.
No need, if you have a tablet. Wifi = wireless pendant!
Of course, I go to drill some holes for the spoil board tonight and the initial movement command to get to the first hole grinds the Z motor stepper and the X gets out of whack… guess I gotta figure out how to slow down the max speeds in arduino… lessons learned 5 years ago, not front of mind haha
So the switch has 3 poles the wire has 2. Which poles are used?
On the switch, you use C, and NC. On the rambo, you use (-) and (s).
Thanks the cables supplied with the Rambo and end stops has cables with black going to minus. Since I need to solder on the wires which pin goes to which. Sorry for my rookie questions
I went black to (-) and white to the (s)