I’m still having problems with my z-axis, so I took a video to show what’s happening.
First off, my z axis is working perfectly when I control it manually. Whether I do it through repetier or with the LCD board, both motors work fine. All axis work fine, in fact.
But when I run an actual cnc program and all axis are moving, that seems to be when things get messed up. In the video you can hear the grinding sound. The router is off so it’s otherwise quiet.
By the way, when I disconnect and power down the motors, its very easy to twist the screw to move the axis up and down so its not super tight. And as I mentioned, everything works fine when I control manually.
Yes, here are the first 200 lines. By the way, I just ran it again from an SD Card to eliminate my laptop and Repetier from the equation, and the problem still remains…
;Project dog5
;Created by Estlcam version 11 build 11.113
;Machining time about 00:01:24 hours
It looks like youve done everything right as far as software. Try decreasing the z rapid feed rate to 180 instead of 480. I am guessing this will get you up and going at least, and your manual jog will work like your cam job.
It looks like Estlcam uses the rapid feedrate to go up, and the plunge feedrate to go down, which is reasonable. After all, going up is not cutting and going down is potentially cutting. But going up you are going against gravity so you need more torque. Slowing down should help.
BUT at 480 you should still have plenty of torque, so something is still wrong and needs to be fixed. If you are borderline when raising the tool then for a long job if you could lose some steps and best case you only ruin your work.
Maybe with motors energized, try turning the coupler with your hand and see if you can skip steps with your hand. If so, see if both sides feel equal. You could use a multimeter to measure the current through each winding of each motor, but setting that up is quite a hassle.
Thanks, I’ll try those things in the morning. I was thinking that today I had added an aluminum beam for wire management, as well as connected shopvac hose, so I’ve recently added some additional weight. If I’m srtessing the torque with my feed rate, that additional weight certainly won’t help.
By the way, I can definitely skip steps with my hand by holding the coupler. I tried that today, but I wasn’t sure if that’s normal. Is that a bad sign?
Jamie - thank you so much! I woke up early this morning anxious to try slowing down the z rapid feed rate, but lo and behold when I went into my estlcam settings I found that my previous settings had disappeared. It seems that my z feedrate was trying to run much faster than 480 in Marlin. So I set it back to 480 and everything ran smooth as a baby’s butt.
I was so focused on mechanical and electrical, I completely missed the obvious. This was good though, I learned a lot more about the software, firmware, and gcode along the way.
This morning im leaving on a short family vacation and it’ll be much more pleasant knowing I’ve got a working machine waiting for me when I get back!