I am a happy newbie user of lowrider2. I put it all together on a table top in my living room, did crown test which turned out great, then generated some gcode from pictures to get a hang of it - it worked as well, I attached a pan and CNC drew images without any problems.
Then I took it apart in order to change it’s location to my garage. While puting it all together one side of Z axis started to drop uder its own load. It didn’t happend earlier, no matter how high or low I left it it didn’t drop.
I began serching for answers on forum but I didn’t find anything that would address my exact problems. As suggested in one of topics I pluged in all the cables, powered it on and tested if motor works - it worked and it did hold its position even with router in place. Then I disconnected everything and at that time the left side of Z axis droped again.
When it comes to settings in repetitier-host ‘‘Disable Motors after Job/Kill’’ ‘‘Disable Extruder after Job/Kill’’ and ‘‘Go to Park Position after Job/Kill’’ are not selected.
It’s not something to fix. They’ll drop under their own weight when the steppers are disabled. They will turn off after a bit of time has passed. Best practice is have a parking spot for end of jobs so if it does happen to drop and you’re on the other side of the shop it doesn’t drop into your work piece.
Another way to look at it (as a positive) is that you’ve minimized friction for that side of the axis. Ideally, both sides should behave the same. Why is friction higher on the side that’s not dropping?
Thank you for your replies, I successfully used lowrider to engrave 1 picture in softwood
but there still is a problem with left side
If I understand correctly before every job I have to set my router to desired starting point, then unplug usb, unplug power and power it up again in order to start engraving from that set position.
So while engraving my first picture in softwood I decided to hold Z axis in place by hand - that worked, after pluging everything in it stayed in place and successfully engraved some flowers
Today when I tried to engrave something else I turned on the CNC to set a starting point, then I unplugged it, decided to hold Z axis with my hands one again just like yesterday, while holding it in place I plugged everything in,connected it through Repetiter-Host, waited a few seconds, then I let go of Z axis and it still droped like 3cm eventhough everything was powered on.
Send a G92 X0 Y0 Z0 after you jog the machine to your starting point. This resets 0 to that point. You can also just manually add that to the start of your gcode.
This will keep you from having to reboot the machine.
Note that Repetier won’t understand that the G92 command has reset the coordinates. Elsewhere in the forums folks suggest issuing the Repetier command @isathome after the G92 to have coordinates display correctly.
I should make a bot that has the username @isathome, and it will say something snarky everytime it gets called, like “Repetier host hasn’t fixed that yet?”.
Thank you for finding a solution for this problem but before closing this topic could you please tell me if I’m thinking correctly? When I turn off power (no matter if I unplug CNC or restart it on LCD) left side drops at the very same second. As far as I uderstand motors should be ‘‘active’’ for 6 minutes after turning everything off, does that mean that there’s some kind of problem with that motor or do I just need to do some magic in Marlin?
(Honestly I don’t feel like I can fix it it as yet becouse there are many things that I need to learn when it comes to just using the machine but I am very corious about the fix)
Once again thank you for your answers, I don’t write here very often but I read this forum almost on a daily and I’m very happy to start being a part of your comunity
If the power is off, there is no way to keep the steppers energized and the Z axis will / should drop. I always raise my Z axis up and put in the supports that I printed.
