Hey everyone,
Not sure why, but my axis wiring is not staying in the green blocks on the gshield. Did anyone remove the blocks and solder them directly? Should I solder the ends of the wire to give those tiny little screws more to grab? Thanks!
Never solder the ends of wire that is to be secured with screw-down lugs. The reason is that the solder does not yield, giving you a teeny tiny contact point to screw down on. This will give you a very intermittent connection that will cause communication issues. After a while, the screw will even loosen and lose connection all together. You want to leave the wire bare but twist it before inserting into the screw-down lug. The wire by itself will yield plenty to allow the screw to “grab” into the material.
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Strip back twice as much wire as you currently have and fold it over so you end up with twice the volume of wire in the green block. This will give more area for the screw to clamp down on.
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What I had to do was terminate the stranded motor wires on a terminal strip in front of the power supply (screwed down to my work table) and then I used short lengths of solid core wire from the terminal strip to the screw down connectors on the GRBL. The solid core was much easier to place in the screw down connector and made a very tight connection.
The other advantage of the terminal strips was that they provided strain relief so if I jostled the machine (or motor wires) it would not pull on the GRBL connectors.
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Ferules are better for these type of connectors (especially with the nice crimper they have on inventables which produces a nice square ferrule). The kit here has them in every conceivable size you need on the x-carve
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I didn’t buy the wire kit, so I just soldered directly the motor wires to my loom wire. No connection blocks at all.