Hi to all from the great burning land down under, good old Australia.
Major help needed please.
Have recently completed building my Lowrider2 with all parts bought from V1. Mini rambo preloaded and all assorted other bits directly bought.
Build is simple and straight forward and all to spec But, when I try to print anything at all I find that as soon as things start moving the Z axis just drops into the job. I’ve also noticed that if the gantry is lifted above the job by whatever distance and I go away for 15mins or so,when I return I find that the router and gantry have slid down and are sitting on top of the workpiece even though the mini rambo is still turned on and clearly powered up.
To my understanding when powered up the stepper motors shouldn’t be able to just turn but are locked in position but mine clearly aren’t. I then found that when powered up it takes very little pressure to move any of the axes in any direction. on my 3D printer as soon as power is applied to the circuits it is basically impossible to move any axes unless the steppers are disabled by command.
So far I have tried running fusion 360, Aspire 9.5, V-Carve pro and tinker cad programs to try to get it to work but nothing seems to help, they all do the same thing and even though I’ve tried swapping out the Z axis stepper motors for others I have that I know function perfectly well on other boards, same problem continues. The pattern Ive draw is attempted but I cant even cut a series of straight lines as it pulls sideways with the grain and goes everywhere.
HELP
PLEASE
I’ve ordered new boards to swap out the V1 mini rambo and a touch screen as Michael of Teaching Tech uses to see if that will help and in the interim I thought that I’d try to get the latest updated software on Github from V1 but when I download the files it just comes up as “error when tring to open file” and I can’t even do that.
Sadly a miserable experience is getting more and more so as this is becoming a money pit so deep I can’t back out now and desperately need help to fix, please, help
Take a breath. This is fixable. The teaching tech skr board is not in a very stable state right now, so I would stick with the mini rambo.
-
Don’t leave your machine alone with the router on! That can easily start a fire. The collet rubbing against the workpiece or the spoil board is enough to catch the work on fire. Seriously, it is more dangerous than your stove, more dangerous than your 3D printer.
-
If there is an M84 at the end of your gcode, that will disable the steppers. Check that you don’t have that.
-
There is a stepper timeout. After that many minutes no motion commands, the motors will be disabled. In Ryan’s firmware, it is set to 1200 seconds, or 20mins:
-
The motors get enabled on the first motion command. This is how all Marlin printers work. I don’t know all the firmwares, but that is how my printers work.
-
If the Z axis is dropping during a job, then it isn’t any of this stuff. Do you have your motors wired in series? You didn’t plug the two Z motors into the two Z ports on the board, did you? That is a parallel wiring setup.
-
Take a look at estlcam, and the milling basics page. Also check out the test crown and the rest of the estlcam setup.
We can fix this. You shouldn’t even need to flash your mini rambo. Once we get you cutting, we can help you flash the board if you want. I think it is a good skill to have.
Also you can issue the command M84 S0 which will disable the timeout (until you reset the board). It will keep the steppers energized forever even if there is no movement.
As said in an other thread. I have the exact same issue with the mini-Rambo. Drop during of z-axis within minutes from the start.
I initially had a problem with the Z-axis dropping when using V-Carve Pro. I thought it was from losing stepper power, but it turned out that it was actually due to the rapid feed rates set by V-Carve Pro causing the Z-axis to lose steps. Since it never reached the intended height on rapid raise, it would plunge farther into the board when it came back down, making it seem like the Z-axis had lost power.
I added the following commands to the Marlin post-processor found in this forum (original thread for Marlin_mm-test5.zip).
In the header, I made declarations for global max Z acceleration and max Z travel speed. With the lower limits, I have had no more lost steps and no more Z drop.
Want my updated post-processor file for V-Carve Pro? Shared from DropBox.
Marlin_mm_Slow_Z.pp
Decreasing my feedrate on the Z-axis solved my problem as well. I use fusion360 and the post processor from Guffy.
I went from 300mm/min to 50mm/min and now it cuts like a knife through butter.
Thanks for the quick reply and your concern. As an experienced paramedic, a qualified pilot and having been a woodworker for the last 40 years I am actually aware enough that I would never leave a router running on its own, I was talking about just the cnc computer itself being left powered up but I understand that you don’t know who you are talking with and must assume the lowest common denominator at times 
As regards to part 2. of your reply I am having a bit of a problem finding out how to read what is on the purchased board.
I know how to flash to the board, how to update the program when I am able to download a stable copy but so far I can find no-one either on the phone or by searching the net that can tell me how to read what is already on the board as supplied. I can upload to the board but could you please tell me or point me in the right direction to find out how to read the preloaded board so that I can tell whether or not there is an M84 at the end of the code as you suggest please.
With regards point 5. as I originally said I built the machine exactly to spec as detailed on the V1 website, the Z axis is definitely wired as per instructions in series.
As a quick add on I have tried to draw a series of 5 parallel lines with a total depth of 2mm with each step down being only 0.25mm so that it should take 16 passes at 30mm/min horizontal speed and it plows and curves its way into my test board in the most horrid fashion.
Again, any help you can offer would be greatly appreciated as with shipping costs and the dollar exchange I’m out over $700 dollars so far and She Who Must Be Obeyed is not a happy camper and when I mentioned I could buy a smaller already built one for $250 she simply said “Not going to happen, Fix the piece if … you’ve already paid a small fortune for”.
As I said, Help, Please
Can you post the gcode you’re having trouble with? It might also help to post sone pictures of your machine.
I am a little unclear about this statement. You are saying that you have no problems with uploading/flashing firmware and you have no problems with uploading gcode programs? The m84 would be in the gcode file.
This really is a great platform and I am sure we can get this solved without spending more money. Did you try the gcode that Ryan has for making the LCD side plates? Wonder how that works.
I had this issue when using aspire, it tries setting the rapid Z movements way to fast! Look at your gcode, search for G0 commands and see what the F rate is set at. Recently I switched from mini Rambo bought here to ramps 1.4 grbl and had weird issues, not dropping but could have been if it was a loose connection on my Z axis and instead of my X.
I’m not sure anyone is really reading my questions. I do not have code to post, I am trying to find out how to read the code that is on the board that came supplied with the board. The good was Preinstalled by V1 so I cannot tell anyone what is in the code unless someone tells me how to get it off the preinstalled board.
I could download some New code and install that and read what is there before I nostalgic it but you asked me about what is on the board that I bought and I keep asking for help in finding out how to answer that question but keep getting asked what is in the code.
If I Knew the answer to that I wouldn’t keep asking the same question over and over.
Please, will somebody actually read my posts and try to help me. I can’t answer the questions about what the code says on a board that I bought that someone else put the code on unless someone will tell me how to get the code back off the board to read it. This shouldn’t be this hard but that sort of sums up this entire project!!
Please, I Cannot answer the questions about what is written in the code on the board unless someone helps me to extract that code. I can tell you what is written on a new code that I might download but that is Not the question.
The question is why doesn’t this simply work and how do I fix it or should I do what many others have done and just throw it in the bin
And sorry about my not back checking my words and finding that spellcheck has inserted wrong words but this is bloody frustrating and I have enough in my life with my wife battling the worst form of leukaemia and facing a 1 in 3 chance of dying when she has a bone marrow transplant in 3 weeks and I thought this would be a nice straightforward project to help me cope but has turned out to be anything but, Sorry
It has no brain. It needs you to tell it what to do. It never will simply work. Neither will a $250 machine or a $250k machine.
I do read your posts. I have spent a lot of my time on them. I am really sorry to hear about you wife’s battles. I hope you have some friends and family nearby that you can talk to about it. CNC comes with a steep learning curve. If you are trying to find something to entertain or occupy yourself, it can fit that role. But you have to let go of your expectations, take a deep breath, and enjoy the journey. Enjoy the learning, and let in the knowledge, even if it doesn’t make anything right away. If you aren’t able to find that, then it might not be the right fit, right now.
Here is the fundamental misunderstanding we are having:
- The firmware on the board, installed by Ryan is not what we need to investigate. It is working on thousands of machines, and I know it very well.
- The gcode is what you have created, and are using to cut. This has the movements for the machine in it. I can read it to see what types of commands might be causing the machine to give you trouble.
You drew this up in something, then opened it in CAM, and then saved a gcode file. I would like to read that file, because it will be clearer to me.
Please remember. I have helped hundreds of people with these machines. I really do want to help, but I am not in the room with you. You have to work with us.
Looking at the firmware is probably a dead end. But FWIW, I will answer that question directly as well. You can’t get the code back off of the board. It started as something human readable, but it has been compiled to machine code, and the mini rambo doesn’t store the original. But it does keep an author string and some other details, and you can see them in the console of repetier host. The source code is on Ryan’s github, and you can check that out too, but please trust me, this isn’t the way to fix it.
I am guessing you really wanted to hear from Ryan. I will add that he is on here all the time, and we just beat him to the responses. If he disagrees, or has something to add, he will. I am sure he would also be asking for the gcode to inspect himself.
Okay I think it is best to take a few steps back.
I have to assume the board if flashed correctly (cuz, duh, I’m perfect), but this test will actually test the firmware and you machine. (I do have a record of not flashing boards occasionally but if you are getting any movement at all your board is flashed correctly, there is a failsafe if I missed it not letting it move).
Run this gcode, https://www.v1engineering.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Test-Crown-12mms.gcode (right click, save as).
That will test everything all at once. Assuming you did this first, https://docs.v1engineering.com/software/ Moves as far as you ask and in the correct direction?
Thank you for your courtesy and patience at this difficult time.
I went back over every bit of documentation that is on the site and all the posts, overlooked all the bits that said “if you bought your board from here then there is nothing else to do” and the like, went back and did all the testing again and again to no avail.
The gcode that I was trying to get to work was the test crown gcode and I have looked and it has all the correct bits at the beginning with regards to zeroing out the position as you recommended and all to no avail.
So, in the end I bit the bullet and stopped trying to find out what was wrong with the board I bought and simply downloaded the updated code from the github and lo and behold, the problem simply vanished. Updating the marlin firmware was the answer all along but now, tho I am grateful that my machine finally works in the way it was intended, I will never be able to work out what exactly was wrong with the code that was initially put on the board which is very frustrating, but, again, it works now so if other people are also getting flawed software on the boards they buy there’s nothing I can do to help unfortunately and nothing can be learned from my experience as there is now no trace of the flaw left to inspect.
And thank you again for your assistance, I do appreciate it but, No, I was not hoping to hear from Ryan. I have corresponded with him once previously and after having him pull my letter apart, rearrange the order in which I said things and then respond to them having a totally different meaning to what was originally written and meant, well, I am that disgusted that I would be happy never to have to cross paths with him ever again tho if he lived down here in Australia we might have a little chat about respect and not twisting and distorting someones words in such a disgusting manner. Few people have ever left me with such a bitter taste in my mouth.
Anyway, thanks again for your concern and your help, it is much appreciated between the hospital visits and your prayers for my wife are very welcome.
Take care, all my best, Phil
This saddens me greatly. I’ve found that Ryan is usually fairly quiet, and allows the other members of the community to handle the front lines here on the forums. He’s usually well-spoken and thoughtful, and is loathe to intentionally offend or misconstrue the meanings of others, and will often go through contortions to try to find common ground.
Looking at this entire thread, and filling in via projection and dangerous assumptions, what I make up in my head is that there are several factors intersecting in unfortunate angles.
First is your personal situation. I am truly sorry for your wife’s condition, and I hope that all goes well with her treatment. I’m sure that’s put a huge stress on you as well. Your chosen method of distraction is, sadly, not always a turnkey solution. It can require, sometimes a lot of, work and learning and failure before finding success.
Second is Ryan’s personal workload. He is trying to run a business out of his garage, packaging and shipping parts worldwide, testing and flashing boards, breaking down pallets of bearings (seriously, he posted pictures of the 1500+lbs of bearings he received), etc. Plus wanting to keep up with design work and the forums and a family, etc.
Third is a slight knowledge gap. Jeff pointed out some of the issues above, and I see where you would be getting increasingly frustrated when it seems like everyone is either talking over you, or down to you. Hell, you’re a bright guy. You’re a paramedic! You’ve been working with wood for decades! And your skills shouldn’t be discounted or ignored, but they don’t necessarily always apply.
Fourth is that your experiences with your build are not unique. They have been seen and dealt with many times. So while you may have thought through the issues one way, Ryan has probably thought them through another. And another, and another… 
He was probably “short circuiting” your analysis using his experience and knowledge of the design and systems. I doubt he was being malicious or willfully obtuse.
I think you got caught up in a high stress situation, and things just went all pear-shaped. I’m guessing Ryan is feeling like crap after reading your last post. He really doesn’t like to leave people upset.
I’m glad that you finally got everything sorted, and I hope that you enjoy working with your LowRider. Please don’t be a stranger, show us what you make, and regale us with your exploits! 
I am sorry, I do make mistakes. I tried to use a little humor in my post, but I was actually trying to see If I screwed up or not. Again, I am sorry, and I screwed up.
This sounds like we very clearly misunderstood each other on whatever was asked of me. I checked and do not have the email to which you are referring. If you still have it I would love to see it, I need to learn from my mistakes. I am just a one man operation and I take things like this very seriously. I would love to make this up to you in anyway I can.
Ryan, I am happy to accept your apology and simply move on, and thank you btw, it is appreciated.
So, let’s simply start again if that’s ok with you and all the others who have tried to be helpful in this situation. And thanks to them as well.
As regards my machine, I do think you have come up with a really good idea and I’m grateful to be able to hopefully one day be able to use it to do, well, at this time, just about anything lol.
It did look like everything was all sorted but that was, as I previously said, by going back, reflashing the firmware from github and starting at the beginning and going through every step as laid out in the docs on your site.
The crown carved out beautifully and apart from still trying to work out how to wire the probe for setting the x,y and z axis that Estlecam uses I thought all was perfectly well.
Sadly, having a small break from hospital visits at the moment as the bone marrow donor has gotten sick and so the transplant for my wife has been put back about a month, so I thought that I could get back to my lovely little machine.
Run a few more test cuts I thought, putting in the x,y,z absolutes at the start of the gcodes put out by Fusion 360 and Aspire. So, I made a basic box shape 75x55x10mm with a pocket in the top 5mm in from the sides and 5mm deep.
Added the gcodes :
G90
M03 S2400
G00 X0.0000 Y0.0000 Z0.0000 F1200
G00 Z2.0000 F480
At the point before anything began moving and pressed go basically.
(I’ll document it all more properly once I’ve had time to go back, start yet again and will add in gcode lists, photos and videos as read and nesc)
Wow, what a disaster. It seemed to start out ok but then that pesky positive y stepper started to dig in again.
Ok, try a different print.
It decided to just drive straight down and drill for China trying to burn out my bit on the way down as it tipped sideways as well.
I had also put in a copy from estlecam where I imported the same little box with pocket and generated my gcode directly from the estlecam software and to my horror it started out nicely, cut out the pocket, tho a bit deeper than expected, then when it went to cut around the side of the box, it not only dug in but I saw that all of a sudden the z steppers were going in opposite directions.
Boy did I run for the kill switches in pure fear. That could have gone seriously horrid.
So, I’m not getting upset anymore, I’m just sad.
I will go back to the start once again, reflash the board and will go through every step with a microscope as meticulously as I would planning a cross country flight in a designated remote area (those are the fun areas of the aussie outback where if you have to make an emergency landing there’s maybe a 50 50 chance you’ll be found in time? maybe lol) or I was assessing multiple casualties and triaging them knowing some can be saved and others cannot.
Forgive my naïveté but I really did think this would be just like my 3D printer, assemble it, learn how to design stuff in Fusion or Aspire, send it to a slicer program like Cura then plug the results into the printer and sit back amazed at what I had just made.
Oh well, takes us old dogs a little more time to catch on sometimes but, as my wife says, “Who says you can’t teach an old dog new tricks cause there’s nothing an old dog likes more than a new trick 
“
Anyway, I’ll get back to you when I’ve had time to tear it all apart and begin again and see what happens, at least it only 3 visits to the hospital a week at the moment but still wish it wasn’t over an hour away hmmmmph lol
Take care and will let you know how I go,
See ya
So mid cut your z steppers started running (stepping) in opposite directions but they worked perfectly fine in tandem before? If so that is completely bizarre… Maybe one stepper just lost power and began to fall and your having wiring/continuity issues?
Be sure to upload your fusion and estlcam gcodes when you get the chance.
What do you mean the y stepper digs in? Into what exactly?
Can you manually jog the gantry around for an extended period of time without issues?
Someone else was having really weird issues with one of his steppers. He re-traced all his cables and discovered one of his connectors had partially melted. The assumption is that it wasn’t plugged into the board all the way causing higher than normal resistance that melted the connector and caused random shorts.