Gantry Upgrade to C-Beam

Tune up!

I had a print go very bad. One of the bolts holding the upper drag chain rattle loose and dropped onto the gantry. This jammed the X axis causing the threaded rod pop out of the motor coupling. It looked bad, but there was no permanent damage. Actually, in the case of catastrophic failure, having a set screw be the first thing to fail seems ideal.
In fixing, tightening and adjusting everything (more locktight!) I discovered that the little bit of “slop” in the X axis I had not been able to fix was due to a loose anit-backlash screw. A bit of adjustment and the X axis is now rock solid. :slight_smile:

I have noticed that the carves I have done sense then have had a lot less “fuzzies” and needed almost no cleanup. I am not sure if that is due to the particular batch of wood I am using (poplar) or the stiffer X axis. Probably a little of both?

I got the homing switches wired up and working so I can now run homing with grbl.
However it doesn’t help the issue.
The GRBL version of chillipeppr doesn’t support work coordinates. Even if the set them manually the coordinates displayed are machine coordinates. :confused:
So I am still resetting the gshiled over my workplace zero to get a persistent X Y for multi carve operations.
That isn’t working out so well.
I had my PC reboot (probably a forced windows update :rage:) with 20min left on a 5 hour carve. :confused:
Unfortunately, when I reconnected the machine zero reset. (I would have lost the Z anyway)
If I had been running work coordinates I could have just re-homed the machine, edited the g code to remove what I had already done, and resumed. I have done it before with good results.

I am wondering if I can use the tinyG version of chillipeppr with the GRBL protocol? The commands are virtually identical. The primary difference being that the TinyG has more reporting info to send back. But I don’t think most of that is being used anyway. It is worth looking into. Otherwise I will see about switching back to UGS or possibly picsend.

I also like the idea of a stand alone program so I can kill the network connection while carving. Thus preventing anymore forced windows update re-boots.

Try using Picsender. Its great. And doesn’t require an Internet connection.

2 Likes

I love your build it’s amazing. I was thinking of doing the same . Can you provide a bill of materials and where to buy?

Would you mind sharing your file with me for these brackets? I am planning on doing the same thing but having trouble with the 3 screw holes at the top.