Adjusting x-controller power to motors?

X-Carve Troubleshooting
1

Oh glorious hive mind…

When adjusting the x-controller dials to increase/decrease the power going to the motors, where do I put the sticks to measure the power so I can work out the exact values going to them? Also, is there a desired voltage that I should be looking for on my meter?

I’m experiencing some interesting course failure which I thought was due to my belts being too tight, and I adjusted them and it got better, then it carried on, so I thought maybe they were too loose so I split the difference and it got better again… but still at random times, it just goes off course and ruins the piece. Feeling that the belt issue is resolved but the going off course is still ever present.

I’ve tried going less in feed rate and depth per pass, but that didn’t help either.

Assuming it could be not enough power to the motors and although I can find something that explains “kind of” how to adjust the old setup the new x-controller is not explained as far I can find.

Any thoughts, values, etc would be very helpful.

Mark

2

TP1 gives you the reference voltage for X, TP2 for the Y drivers, and TP3 for Z.

The range, according to the schematic is 0-1.95V.

I can’t remember the calculation of the Vref to output for the stepper driver chips, it’s in their data sheet I believe I just don’t have it available right now.

The silk screen on the board shows approximate output current based on pot position.

The instructions kinda talk about it:

The old instructions are more in depth:

3

For the X-controller:

I(current limit) = (1/3 * Vref) / 0.157

Vref range is 0 - 1.95 volts

(1/3 * 1.95) / 0.157 = 4.14 amps

From the TB6600HG data sheet:

The average current is lower than the calculated value because this IC has the method of peak current detection.

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