What happens if Spindle fails during carve?

X-Carve
1

Hey!

So I had a long carve on the machine last week and paused it overnight when I returned in the morning my Dewalt 26200 wouldn’t turn on. Lights on but no spin. A quick check of the forum suggested to check the brushes which I did. They were worn so I replaced them. all systems go.

Then today during a carve I went to check on the machine and noticed that the spindle had stopped again but the carve was still going through the motions. It did appear to have lifted the router up to its safe height though? Is this a feature? I just didn’t think the Xcarve had any awareness of the state of the router?

How has this happened?

For the record I think my replacement brushes were bad, one of them when I took it out wasn’t smooth like the other and had a charcoal burned texture to it making me think it wasn’t aligned correctly in the machine. Its likely as I could only source generic carbon brushes and had to sand them down to fit.

Anyway I just wondered if anyone had any insight on how come the machine seemed to have saved itself when the spindle stopped.

Thanks!

2

You were lucky. You probably lost steps on a plunge, so the machine “thought” it was lower than it was. Best to keep an eye or at least an ear on the machine while it works.

3

So it doesn’t detect a sudden spike in resistance and lift the spindle or anything? I didn’t think it did but that was the only way I could explain it. Looks like I was lucky then.

I always do keep an ear out and its saved me previously but by the time id heard the change here it was already in the state I found it in. The dust extraction sound masks a lot.

I was just wondering if there was anything built in as a protection as when the brushes wore out the first time I did immediately think “christ I hope this never happens mid carve”

Then it happened mid carve…

Thanks for the help!

4

No, none.

5

That’s not in the budget.

6

The Xcarve and most other similar hobby machines are “open-loop”, meaning the controller send commands which it assumes are done. If the machine fail to do certain commands the controller is unaware.

The primary defence against bad motion are soft limits but the requisite is a homing sequence prior to carve initiation. Soft limits are also only good if the machine dont loose position (again, the open-loop mentioned above)

With a homing sequence done before jogging to your work zero position, work zero is persistent as its a stored offset value based on machine zero (which homing establish)
So if a carv halts/faults etc you can simply re-home and restart without assigning work zero again. (*)

    • Unless you change bit which need a re-zero for Z only.
7

I have also same issue any suggestion for this so please reply. thanks in advance.

8

Anyone have suggestion for this.