Offset carving - wiring issue?

Lately when I try to carve I get what you see above, it likes to offset (or sometimes does whatever it wants) That image being carved it 2 cursive L’s on fill setting. (Material, cut depth and speed rate not the issue) Been all over the forum, I tightened up the belt, checked v wheels, eccentric nut, set screws, checked wires all seem tight & secure.

  1. When I power it up, should I see both green and blue lights? Green only turns on when i move the X Y or Z components.

  2. When the power is on, I shouldn’t be able to move the X Y or Z components, Correct? I can move all 3 with power and spindle on. And I have no idea how to fix this.

  3. Is temperature an issue, it has been very cold out in the garage.

Any and all suggestions are greatly appreciated!! So far I have gotten 4 good carves and hubby is starting to refer to my X-carve as the expensive paper weight.

Lisa

Easel and Spindle I didn’t know enough about this stuff to try the Dwalts. As a side note I still can’t get the aspire program to connect to the xcarve. Still trying to figure that out.

Thanks I’ll look that up

@RobertCanning is right, the old spindle used to go bad after ~10 hours of cut time. I would highly recommend upgrading to the Dewalt, it is the new “standard” for Inventables. The difference in cut speed alone is absolutely worth it.

As for your offset issue, how do you measure your belt tightness? It’s possible to have them too tight, same with V-wheels. And have you adjusted the potentiometers?

Try these:

Adjusting the potentiometers seems to be VERY commonly needed.

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Looks like you might be missing steps on the Y axis.

A quick check would be to move the steppers a fair distance under computer control, using Easel or the Universal G Code Sender and make sure that there is no hesitation. You might need to adjust the current pots on the G shield.

You should do this without actually doing a carve.

Check the that the set screws on the stepper pulleys are tight too.