carved perfectly earlier in the week. Friday, it would not respond to homing commands from easel.
left it alone because i had other things going on . today same thing NO responses from easel issued commands.
Easel recognizes tthe machine is present (Green carve logo) but won’t respond to jog or homing commands,
when i go into the machine inspector and select the show status box, this scrolls across the screen
<Alarm,MPos:0.000,0.000,0.000,WPos:786.460,786.460,43.672,Pin:000|1|0000>
this is the same with two different computers one running Win-10 the other running 7pro.
I’ve never had a problem running either computer with the machine, nothing was changed on either computer (no recent updates or software changes) the machine has been undisturbed since the last carve project (School project post)
I have to go out of town for the week so I wont be able to do much troubleshooting, but it just doesn’t make sense to me that the machine should just stop accepting commands
OK… update… in attempting to troubleshoot, I opened a project and clicked on the green carve icon.
i chose “unlock without homing” and was able to jog the machine to the left/right, forward/backward… as soon as I tied to jog the z axis, everything else stopped responding. upon reboot of the x-controller, i was able to repeat the ptocess…
If I hit the “home” button, nothing happens and I cannot jog the machine.
if I open a job (or machine setup) and jog the x and y axis…all is good… but trying to move the z axis causes an error of som kind that stops the machine from receiving any further commnds
I have not. as i said, i have to go out of town tomorrow and if i get into troubleshooting right now, i’ll likely do more harm than good.
I likely start troubleshooting from scratch when I return home next Saturday, but I do thank you for the suggestion… I’m sure that will be one of the things I look into…
That being said, just for clarity (because my head is very far from clear…Sinus/Ear infections)… if I switch the wires (terminal block) at the back of the x controller and the issue follows then it’s the Z channel (or wiring…) if it doesn’t follow it could indicate stepper motor failure?
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swapped the Z axis and the X axis wiring at the back of the x controller, When I jogged the X, the Z stepper motor followed. when i jogged the Z axis everything seized up and none of the jogging commands worked and machine inspector keeps scrolling ->?
If i power off and power on again, i can replicate the failure… X and Y axix will jog but as soon as i try to jog Z all functions stop.
I’ve put a multi-meter to the wiring all wiring is good.
I honestly believe i have suffered a sudden failure of the Z channel on the X controller stepper driver board… Guess I’m calling customer service…
So…unless someone has something helpful to suggest…I guess I’m emailing CS and waiting until Monday to actually talk to someone
Same issue here. Did you manage to locate the cause?
I think I solved the issue. My machine worked fine until I enabled soft limits yesterday, had the issue since. Once I disabled soft limits it seems fine thus far. Can any of your old hands have a look at my machine code and tell me why soft limits could cause it?
Here is my machine code
$132=100.000 (z max travel, mm)
$131=540.000 (y max travel, mm)
$130=540.000 (x max travel, mm)
$122=50.000 (z accel, mm/sec^2)
$121=500.000 (y accel, mm/sec^2)
$120=500.000 (x accel, mm/sec^2)
$112=500.000 (z max rate, mm/min)
$111=8000.000 (y max rate, mm/min)
$110=8000.000 (x max rate, mm/min)
$102=188.976 (z, step/mm)
$101=39.913 (y, step/mm)
$100=39.870 (x, step/mm)
$31=0. (rpm min)
$30=1. (rpm max)
$27=1.000 (homing pull-off, mm)
$26=250 (homing debounce, msec)
$25=750.000 (homing seek, mm/min)
$24=25.000 (homing feed, mm/min)
$23=3 (homing dir invert mask:00000011)
$22=1 (homing cycle, bool)
$21=0 (hard limits, bool)
$20=0 (soft limits, bool)
$13=0 (report inches, bool)
$12=0.002 (arc tolerance, mm)
$11=0.020 (junction deviation, mm)
$10=115 (status report mask:01110011)
$6=0 (probe pin invert, bool)
$5=0 (limit pins invert, bool)
$4=0 (step enable invert, bool)
$3=4 (dir port invert mask:00000100)
$2=0 (step port invert mask:00000000)
$1=255 (step idle delay, msec)
$0=10 (step pulse, usec)
I have NOT resolved the issue…
I haven’t enabled or disabled anything that I have or haven’t been using since my first carve… honestly I’m not even sure how I would enable or disable soft limits.
I do have G28 and G30 positions set (not sure how I would eliminate them…I’ve used G28 and G30 extensively since the first carve back in October) I used the G28 setting as work zero for my last carve as I had to do multiple tool changes and wanted to insure repeatable work zero …that went well with no issues… I ran into the issue the day after completion of a multi step, multi bit carve.
I would try issuing commands with UGCS if I knew how to set it up for use with the X-Controller…
If I don’t get anything from CS or the forum today, I’ll try machine setup and disable homing… (it couldn’t be the homing switch… when I swapped Axis control cables, I was able to jog that axis…)
Can you post your GRBL settings? Enter “$$” into the console under Machine Inspector.
Sure… it will have to wait until I get home this afternoon…
Biggest problem with customer service that isn’t available after 4EST or on weekends…??
I’m not near my machine on a normal week day/work day.
ok
$132=100.000 (z max travel, mm)
$131=790.000 (y max travel, mm)
$130=790.000 (x max travel, mm)
$122=50.000 (z accel, mm/sec^2)
$121=500.000 (y accel, mm/sec^2)
$120=500.000 (x accel, mm/sec^2)
$112=0.000 (z max rate, mm/min)
$111=8000.000 (y max rate, mm/min)
$110=8000.000 (x max rate, mm/min)
$102=188.976 (z, step/mm)
$101=40.000 (y, step/mm)
$100=40.000 (x, step/mm)
$31=0. (rpm min)
$30=1. (rpm max)
$27=1.000 (homing pull-off, mm)
$26=250 (homing debounce, msec)
$25=750.000 (homing seek, mm/min)
$24=25.000 (homing feed, mm/min)
$23=3 (homing dir invert mask:00000011)
$22=1 (homing cycle, bool)
$21=0 (hard limits, bool)
$20=0 (soft limits, bool)
$13=0 (report inches, bool)
$12=0.002 (arc tolerance, mm)
$11=0.020 (junction deviation, mm)
$10=115 (status report mask:01110011)
$6=0 (probe pin invert, bool)
$5=0 (limit pins invert, bool)
$4=0 (step enable invert, bool)
$3=4 (dir port invert mask:00000100)
$2=0 (step port invert mask:00000000)
$1=255 (step idle delay, msec)
$0=10 (step pulse, usec)
$$
ok
Looks like this could be your problem [$112=0.000 (z max rate, mm/min)]. On my machine the value is the same as the Y and X ($111 and $110)
$112 should not be zero. Not sure it should be 8000 either. I think default might be 500.
At the command prompt in Easel type “$112=500” and it should work
not even sure what would cause that value to change, but as soon as i can snatch some bandwidth from my internet hogging family…
well, that fixed something… but not everything.
as suggested I change $112 to 500. rebooted the X controller, checked the settings to see if it took (it did)…
then ran through the jogging steps again… X and Y moved accordingly however Z will still not move.
the one thing that changed… Previously when I tried to jog the Z axis, everything else stopped accepting commands. Now after trying to jog Z the other axis still work… Just not the Z… I can enter homing commands, parking commands and the gantry moves in X and Y but the Z is still not responding.
I ran a simple carve (with router off) and the machine runs as if X Y and Z were responding…
I double checked my wiring and even swapped X and Z wiring… I even plugged directly in to the main controller board with a mini USB…bypassing the bulkhead connector and on-board command buttons.
On a brighter note I did get in touch with Tech Support. (Moe actually answered the phone 
) they will be sending me a main control board…
In the mean time, I will keep plugging away to see if it might be something less obvious
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So… the New Main Control board arrived yesterday and I decided that before I took the X-Controller apart to effect repair/replacement, that I would double check things just to make sure I hadn’t wasted anyone’s time.
I double checked the settings using the $$ command and once again $112 was set to zero. I repeated the process of setting it to 500 and again got the same results I mentioned in the above post. I double checked wiring, checked seating of internal cables and connectors and did just about everything I have read to do here in the troubleshooting section.
Nothing resolved the issue, so I put on my ESD strap, grounded myself and unpackaged the new PCB…
replaced the board, double checked connections, closed up the case and proceeded to run machine setup.
I need to run through calibration procedures and advanced settings again (my DOC is slightly off… I think the probe plate information is incorrect in settings) but the CNC is back in action, moving in all three Axis and about to start a job that will finally realize paying for itself…
Thanks for all the suggestions and assistance in troubleshooting…
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