Hi everyone. I am nearing the final stages of my build. I have all the mechanical parts put together and am now wiring the steppers. When I was done with the wiring I noticed some serious grinding on the X axis. At first I thought it was a bad bearing or something not fitting together and rubbing maybe but then I disconnected one of the steppers wire plugs and the problem went away. Nothing was powered during this I was just moving by hand. Is there some sort of voltage generated when moving the steppers that could cause this? I ask because while I was trying to figure the problem out I removed the belt from one side and while I moved the axis by hand I saw that the stepper with no belt was still spinning as if it were getting voltage thru the wires from the other stepper. Does this mean I have the wiring wrong or something? I’m afraid to power it up without knowing.
If I move the gantry on mine with the power off, it does indeed generate voltage enough to power some of the LEDs I have in the circuit…
I don’t quite understand what you were doing when it gave the noise, so I can’t coment on that… I assume you’ve done the usual first checks to make sure the right jumpers are set and polarity is correct on the steppers?
There is quite a bit of voltage generated when moving the steppers by hand. did you follow the instructions? did you remember that one coil on an adjacent stepper must be reversed since the motors move in opposite directions for each side of an axis. NOTE: do not move the steppers manually once hooked into the arduino/ramps or you could fry your electronics. the grinding you hear is most likely because you’re steppers are trying to spin against one another instead of with one another. and if you just have wires handing loose, and any of the coil wires touch it will cause your stepper to halt when you try to move it.