I recently replaced my gShield due to a dead stepper driver, but I’m having trouble locating what I think is a wiring or pin issue. What happens when I jog the machine on Z is the Y axis moves in the positive direction and Z slowly rises as well. In addition, jog commands to the Y axis do nothing at all.
Does anyone have a suggestion about where I should look for a small short or bad connection? I’ve already confirmed the axes’ wires are all in their appropriate places.
I’ve done a little more troubleshooting, including pulling the arduino out to make sure my connections are all good. The Jog responses are as follows:
X: Normal
Y: Unresponsive on either direction, even when current should be sufficient
Z: Normal, except each command also causes the Y axis to move only in the Y+ direction
I would suggest posting a picture of your connections so someone can troubleshoot.
I’m of no real assistance other than that, I have the XController =/
I’m dead certain it’s not the motor wiring, I’ve swapped things back and forth onto the X axis stepper driver and everything runs as it should.
Is this with the same arduino you had issues with on the previous gShield?
Yes, I’m thinking I should probably whip out a spare and see if something got cooked on the original Arduino.
Definitely do that. Scan the board for any visible issues…you may have a bad solder joint or a short somewhere.
Definitely do that. Scan the board for any visible issues…you may have a bad solder joint or a short somewhere.
Confirmed solution: The old Arduino got cooked at some point when the old gShield failed.
It’s possible it was just the arduino, but for the moment I have some orders to catch up on so I can’t test that immediately.
Yeah, I’ll be checking it later. If it’s still good I’ll update the thread.
Great! I’m glad that’s all it was. Always good to have a few Arduinos laying around.
The problem cropped up again with a new gShield (minus the Y axis moving when the Z axis received a command), and I was able to at least confirm that both gShields had indeed failed the same way. I’ve been using my machine to do a fair amount of cutting in brass, so it’s possible the extra current demand takes a harder toll on the driver. My feeds and speeds are:
Roughing: 1/16" square 2 flute carbide end mill at lowest speed setting on a DeWalt 611, 8 inches/minute feed rate, 6 inches/minute plunge, 0.015" depth per pass.
Detail: 60 degree V-Cutter with a 1/4" cutting diameter and 7/32" point length between the 3 and 4 dials on a DeWalt 611 (adjusted by ear at the start of the cut until noise dies down to a minimum), 21 inches/minute feed rate, 9 inches/minute plunge, 0.005" depth per pass.
Normally this works pretty well, but more recently I’ve tried boosting the detail pass up to 28+ inches/minute and shifting toward the higher end of the spindle speed range. If it’s current draw that’s killing the gShield, I think it’s safe to say the older settings are about as hard as you can push it.
