I have no idea what could cause that lagging. It should be getting the exact same steps sent to it. Triple check the extensions you put on, and make sure they are turning the same amount, like use some tape flags and make sure they both have the same step rate and such.
My gut says the ramps is the issue but there are too many possibilities to jump straight to that.
Swap the plugs and see if the issue follows the stepper or port.
I just switched motors and no change. Still lagging on Y2. Still intermittently stops responding on X or Y axis after repeated manual moves. I did test the Ramps board as good before this build, but that was with the parallel wiring with three drivers.
Swapped the motor plugs and the Y1 now has the Y2 behavior, but the Y2 is barely moving as well. So hard to diagnose when nothing is repeatable. I try to move the X by 50 and it just stops after 10
Just to verify, I’m running the 32 step dual endstop firmware. Is this the correct version?
Try it this way.
Power down and unplug. Directly plug in one stepper to the x driver, power up and move 50 mm.
Repeat trying each driver individually with the same stepper.
Did you try with shorter and / or thicker wires ?
if they’re too thin some losses happen, that could explain this lag and random behavior.
I missed this comment while I was still out there messing with it. Although I ran a similar test like you described earlier. My brother in law came over with a fresh mind and we ran through some things. First, many of the strange randomnesses were coming from the setting for the " build area" in Repitier not being correct. So I would manually be jogging and it hit either the lower or higher extent and I didn’t notice that was the cause of the stop.
So in eliminating those issues, we were able to isolate the X2 motor as the remaining problem. Putting a brand new tuned driver on that slot did not help. Swapping motors or positions did not help. At this point, I am fairly certain the issue is coming from the signals sent from the board to that driver. I turned the default speed down and all other motors run smooth and quiet. That one acts like it’s got the speed turned up like crazy. If you try to bump it a mm at a time it will quickly jerk and make the move, but if you try to go 10mm it acts like its trying to do it all at once and you get the sound as if it ran up against something and is still trying to move.
Starting to think you were right when you said to stick with the way I had it wired, not using the auto squaring. I’m guessing I could go back to that wiring and everything would work, saving me from having to buy a new board right now, as well as cutting down a lot on the amount of wiring.
Sound like a board issue?
Try to reduce the length of wire and see if that helps. If that does work, then you need to switch the wires to a thicker gauge.
I’m not sure this is an issue since my X1 motor has the same wiring at a much longer run than the Y2 and it’s totally fine. I’ll give it a shot tonight though. Thanks!
Ah then that will probably not work. Have you tried switching the motors with the drivers and see if you get the same issue with the same motor or the swapped motor?
So last night I switched everything over to parallel wiring. The lagging Y2 motor improved but remained an issue… I thought for sure it was the board slot. So it looks like this means it’s either the motor, the wiring, or a mechanical issue preventing the movement.
Tonight I’m going to try switching the motors again, and I’m willing to give heavier wiring a try. Does anyone have a source or ideas for the wiring? I’m guessing something that comes in a roll with 6 heavier wires would be ideal. Then you buy the same connectors and crimp them on the ends so they can plug into the board?
If wires are the problem, shorter wires can do the trick so you can test without buying new ones. If it works, then heavier wires should work too.
I haven’t yet wired my mpcnc, so I won’t advise on numbers of wires, but for the needed section there are many calculators online (for exemple) based on lenght / voltage / accptable loss.
If your wires are a bit shielded, that’s better. Stepper motors operate with pulses, which easily spread to adjacent cables if the shielding is inadequate.
Replaced all the long lengths of wire with a heavier gauge. This cleared up a few issues but it turns out it was a combination of the wiring as well as a bad position on the board for the Y2 motor. Now that slot isn’t even sending a signal despite trying three different drivers, so I’ve gone back to parallel wiring for now until I upgrade the board. After three days of troubleshooting wiring it was nice to see it finally home last night.
There is one remaining issue, however. When I try to home the machine with a long distance to travel, the X axis stops after about 400mm and Repitier throws a red error message that says the printer has an error. Any ideas there?
Here’s a few progress pics. Still lots of tweaking and cleanup to do, but I might be cutting a test part tonight. Then maybe cut a few parts for itself!
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This is just an idea, but isn’t there a timeout on homing ?
I would check for this in the firmware? I can’t find anything in Repitier settings that indicates this.
I think so, but haven’t yet look at the code. Repetier is just an interface with the firware, it won’t set timeouts as it have to stay compatible with different printers / cnc.
Maybe others would know where to search it.
IIRC there’s soft endstops configured that may be kicking in. Set your bed size correctly and it might work or go into the configuration files and hard code in a larger bed.
To reiterate the other post. No homing in non-dual firmware. And the bed setting are firmware set to 200mm. If you are getting 400mm, you have step rate issues as well.
So I couldn’t resist immediately cutting something once I got it running. Doing some pen tests tonight though.
I cut at 3" square just to have something I could throw calipers on. The X came in at 3.020" and the Y at 3.030". Of course my next question is how to fix / tighten up these tolerances. I’ve read through the extensive pen test threads. I don’t have the auto squaring, so would I just tighten belts to try to fix this? I’m really tempted to mess with mm per step settings…
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The steps per mm should not need to be calibrated ever. That is only for extruder gears because of tolerances and filament tension.
Right now you are withing a half a millimeter over 76, so first try you are within 99.4%. Not bad at all.
Did you use a finishing pass? You should have.
Do you have some plastic to try the tests on? Wood is not the most accurate of materials.
How do the diagonals measure?
