First things first, I apologies in advance or the disorganization of the sentences to come as I’ve never been good at organizing my thought on paper.
Background Info: Since this is kind of like troubleshooting I’m going to add the important details for that too. 1) I didn’t buy anything from the site. 2) no endstops and 3) Windows 7, Might be 10 soon as I’m not sure if I’ll be upgrading.
So its has been a long while since I have used my machine, a bit longer than I’d like to admit, and I wanted to know what kind of maintenance I should do it before I start it up again since I’ve noticed some issues already. I’ve grease the threaded rod in hopes to make the Z axis move a little easier. Also I’d appreciate some recommendations on tools since two crescent wrenches are getting on my nerves and the last time I bought tools I showed myself I don’t know what good tools are. I was thinking a small ratchet wrench would be a good idea. Other suggestions are appreciated.
Questionable maintaince issues:
Wire harness isn't staying together well. I'm not sure if it is how I designed it or if it is because I need to solder more of each wire to each other. I build Y joints since I didn't have that good of a helping hand, the soldering tool, to allow me to solder 3 wires together at once. I'm going to try resoldering as is but solder more of the wire area together and to heat shrink things together.
Next the gantry seems to have more resistance when I try to move it manually. I'm not sure if this is a real problem or I just don't remember how hard I had to push it move the gantry around.
The next problem is that the gantry seem a bit loose. I'm not sure if it matters but I could see it affect the tolerance by at least 1/4 of an inch which doesn't seem right. I could be wrong and that could be the tolerance. Since I haven't used it in a while do I need to tight again all the bolts or just the ones on the center gantry?
In regard to tools, it depends on your budget. I have been happy with craftsman or stanley socket sets. Have also been happy with a socket set I bought from Auto Zone years ago. I have a 1/4" drive small set I bought from Harbor Freight and it is still servicable, but the ratchet is not as smooth as those in other sets I have. Also Husky from Home Depot is usually not bad.
Screwdrivers I usually stick with Craftsman or Husky. Standard drill bits have not been good in my experience from Harbor Freight, but I have a couple of step drill bits that I have abused the heck out of and they still work great.
If I worked with tools for a living I might be tempted to spend more for Snap-On or Matco, but only because they generally will replace anything for just about any reason. But so will Harbor Freight, so…
Good luck on getting your rig up and running again!
Best thing to do is fire it up and see how it runs. Why fix it if it isn’t broken, right? As for the wires, we have switched to series wiring, so if you do end up re-soldering things I would make the switch the diagram (hand drawn) is found on the assembly page.
There’s a right up about it somewhere (in the vicious1 info) but basically, it reduces the current by a factor of 2, which makes the drivers less stressed, and makes it harder to skip steps.
I don’t know what you set yours for. From me, no no changes, but you bought it elsewhere and haven’t specified what you are using, what drivers, what they are set to and how much your steppers require.
You should have to take them down to half of what they were. When running in parallel, the x/y were set to 1.4V, they should be set back to 0.7V, since the current isn’t going to be split between two parallel coils. Those numbers only make sense with some standard motors and the drv8825s, but there is something similar if you’re using something else.