Display fades on and off continuously

Thanks guys,

I ended up replacing the whole electronics due to my smart actions last time. Funny thing is the power supply (originally thought was the issue) now works after first trying the bigger replacement. I don’t know why I couldn’t get the axis to move last time, but now we have action. I had to swap green and black (or other pair probably same result) on one stepper per axis because when I tried moving the axis this morning, they moved in opposite direction, so just flipping black and green on one motor, fixed the problem. This was the case for both x and y. Don’t know where I went wrong in the wiring but it’s good now.

 

I’m hoping to (if not cut anything today) at least get something to draw on paper to see some action, and much needed satisfaction. Is there a youtube tutorial on what software to use (Estlcam?), what’s the easiest and how to use it. Basically a tutorial on first use of the machine. I know 3d printing pretty well, but I know absolutely (zilch) nothing about cnc cutting etc.

You guys rock. Your help is very much appreciated

 

John

Sweet, lets see how this works, https://www.v1engineering.com/estlcam-basics/

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Ryan thanks for your fast reply.

I still have some tidying up to do and hook up the spindle and speed controller, but either later today or tomorrow I should be ready for loading up some gcode and crossing fingers.

Thanks again, will let you know how I go

I have just loaded the “crown” in the example and run it. After a couple attempts I got it to sketch on paper. A few little issues:

  1. How can I predict or know where it will start to sketch/cut
  2. Can you set a "Home" without endstops?
  3. My sketch was drawn up-side-down
Definately getting there. BTW, I tried adding an endstop, but as soon as I plug it in to the board and try to move say 100mm, it only moves in short bursts and stops, almost seems like it's moving 5mm then stops, then you command it to move another 100 and does the same. Unplug the endstop and all is good. Weird

This is my best attempt so far. The small circle isn’t really a perfect circle. What do you guys think?

1-It starts right where the tool is, that is “home”

2-Hit reset on the board, boom, home.

3-Flip your Y axis wire over, on the same page as that crown it gives a link to correct it.

If you really want to monkey with and endstop either change the firmware or wire them normally open. Have a look at the FAQ’s and really think about how you would use an endstop when your work piece is never in the same place???

 

Great thanks mate.

I’ve been doing some more drawing tests this morning and noticed at one stage the steppers were skipping steps. So I checked the voltage on the drivers and they were around the 0.7V mark. I know that’s pretty low, and without doing any measurements and calculations I upped them all to around the 0.91V mark. No more skipping and the steppers stayed cold for the 10 minutes it was doing the job. Since we all pretty much use the same steppers (Nema 17), is someone able to tell me what is a good voltage to set the pots to? I guess I may still experience skipping when I move to cutting rather than just using a pen which has almost no force on it.

.7 is the standard voltage to set them to.

You have drv8825 drivers? At .9V the drivers would be insanely hot as well as the steppers. It sounds like you have different drivers or you are wired in parallel.

Skipping steps could also mean you are trying to move it to fast. If you are unsure upload your gcode.

I have the A4988 and wired in series. I’m running XY @ 900mm/min (15mm/s). As soon as I upped the VREF on the drivers, it stopped skipping.

I will keep an eye on the temp of both the drivers and steppers to make sure, but like I said, a 15 min print still had the steppers cold. Admittedly I didn’t think to check the drivers.

The driver voltage is pretty critical. You can’t guess, you need to find the right equation for those. You could easily gain a lot of power with the right voltage

We use a different driver so our standard 0.7 doesn’t apply.

I have the same problem here, but I am using a 12 volt, 5 amp ac adapter model JCY-1250. It fires up fine when I plug in via usb(and i flashed firmware already and I get the menu), but when I only plug in via the power cord, screen blinks on and off and the yellow light blinks on and off. I’m really just trying to set the voltage on the screws, but I’m having a hard time trying to determine which point to put the black terminal on my meter to. Different videos online show different contact points to set voltage. I know red goes to the screw. Any ideas? My power supply is like a laptop power supply, black box plugged into wall, then plugged into round power port.

You should not plug in the round barrel jack.

Fom the assembly page,

https://www.v1engineering.com/assembly/ramps-wiring/

 

As for the test points, red to the POT, black to your power supply negative.

Power supply negative is where? The far corner pin diagonal opposite the screw?

The negative wire of your power supply, usually black.

I have either usb powering it up, which has no wires, or nothing. As I said, the round port doesn’t power it up properly. I don’t have any wires hooked up to anything to power this, except usb. I’m confused here, clearly. I bought the round barrel jack ac power supply to power this. I don’t have any actual wires at all.

You have to cut off the round plug, and get to the actual wires, the barrel jack is not use in this application. In the link I posted it shows how to wire it up.

 

You can not set the drivers with only USB as they are not powered in that way.

 

Ok I try to go fast on it you should never adjust stepdrivers on usb power.

you should start with connecting properly your power supply

[attachment file=45558]

Com =mass

+V is positive

check with multimeter if you have 12V there if not you have some pot on left or right side to adjust it to 12V.

[attachment file=45559]
you connect your power supply to this green connector “+V” from power supply to “+” on ramps board and “Com” from power supply to “-” on ramps board.

positive from multimeter go here

[attachment file=45560]

and mass you can get from here

[attachment file=45561]

check on your multimeter what decider you have sometimes it can be confused.

I have just updated the previous link to show this more clearly.

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