Thanks again Geoff,
I actually have a 500mm machine. Lately I had to have tendon surgery on my foot so I cant get into the studio quite as much but when Im in there next I’ll be sure to check out the wires. The only reason why I thought it could be something to do with the coding is because I dont really know too much about it haha. Also with that last carve the 2nd pass was just so far off I thought, surely missing a few steps couldnt make that much of a difference. But again im very bloody new to this haha.
I just remembered a few months ago I tried changing some of the parameters in Universal Gcode Sender to try and optimise the machine. I was following a thread I found but there is definitely a possibility that I messed something up??
I will try remember what I changed.
ok I was changing the steps per mm
I have not used Universal Gcode Sender. But changing the steps per mm should not cause what I see in the video. The steps per mm could cause the drift in combination with a broken step as it thinks it is in one place but is in fact somewhere entirely different. From the video something is causing it to jam. It cannot do that step.
Its unfortunately a case of trial and error with something like this which unfortunately can take some time to suss out.
Thinking about it then your first bet would be to switch the x and the y wires in the gshield. after doing this run the same test(just remember that x is now y and y is now x 
). If it still makes a clicking noise on the same stepper motor then it looks like all is good with the gshield. If it changes then it could be the stepper driver or software(although unlikely).
All the best with your recovery.
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So I was having the same problem. (Stair step style drifting on my X axis)
I swaped the axis on my controller (Arduino) and that didn’t fix the problem. still wound up with my stair step style cuts like HarryBrown was getting on the X axis. (I was hoping it would just move my stair steps to the Y axis and then I’d have an excuse to go buy an X controller)
So then I swapped the X and Y motor.
This seems to have fixed the problem. looks like the Nema 23 motor on my X axis is bad. What confuses me is that it didn’t make the Y axis start getting unsquare when I moved the motor over. I figured it would translate the stairsteps from my X axis and then move it to my Y axis (although it would be at an angle because only one of the motors on the Y axis would be bad)
Is this because the Y motors only get half as much power? (because it’s split two ways?) maybe the motor is worn out but it only looses steps when it’s getting “all the juice” from the Arduino controller?
Personally I don’t really need to fully understand the problem in order to fix it. I’m just going to buy a new motor and replace this weird one. But I’d apprciate any insight on the issue. The more I learn with this thing the better I get at handling problems faster.
On further inspection It looks like having the motor relocated is still causing drifting, (so now the X axis is slowly becoming unsquare over the course of time. I think I’ll try one more cut at a slow rate. (like 25IPM) and see if I still have the innaccuracy drifting in the same way.
Regardless, the error is following the motor, wherever I place it, so its getting replaced.
