I’ve been using the X-Carve for a number of months now and haven’t had any major issues until today. I was in the middle of a cut when all of a sudden my X and Y motors stopped working. My Z still works fine. The last thing I did before it quit was pause and unease the program a few times, and after my last unpause, it just didn’t resume. I unplugged all power, quit UGS, relaunched everything, and again the only thing that works is Z. I find that I can easily move the X & Y axis by hand, whereas I can’t do that normally when the machine is connected to the computer. There’s no sound at all, no grinding, nothing. The motors just don’t budge. Is it possible they could have burned out??? I’ve only had the machine for a couple months. I know on the very last cut it struggled a bit as it was doing a heavy cut that was 2" in size on the X axis, but nothing that should burn out the motors. If it is in fact the motors, surely they’re under warranty, no? I know it has nothing to do with the power potentiometers on the arduino board as I had adjusted those adequately when I had trouble in the past. Any troubleshooting I could do?
Actually it sounds exactly like a power issue. If you can move them with ease there is no power going to them. I doubt they burnt out, stepper motors are pretty resilient and it would be 3 steppers going at once if x and y are gone. Sounds to me like a wiring connection came loose somewhere or something burnt out in your gshield. but before we start guessing, when you physically push the x or y axis does the green light on your gshield light up?
Thanks for your response. You’re right, it doesn’t make sense that 3 motors would die all at once. However, to answer your question, when I manually move the motors by hand, the green light on the gshield definitely lights up, in both x and y direction. So the wires must be ok, right? Is the gshield busted?
best thing to do is check all your connection for your non working steppers on both the g shield and xcarve connections. Once you’re sure all your connections are good, switch your x axis stepper with your z axis stepper connections on your g-shield and see if your z axis control moves your x axis and vice versa and report back here
So yes, I did what you suggested, and it’s clear that the motors are working fine. When connecting the X & Y motor wires to the Z on the gShield, I was able to move in the X and Y direction using the Z buttons on UGS. So I guess I need a new gShield right? Or is there a possibility that it could be the Arduino board underneath?
Sounds like your gshield to me, did you try to move your Z when it was plugged into your X on the gshield? also make sure your gshield is planted firmly in your arduino. if so and it failed, give inventables a call tell them everything you tried and see what they have to say, they may have a few more tests but my bet is a short in the g-shield.
Yeah, I tried moving Z and it doesn’t move when it’s plugged in either X or Y. It only moves when plugged into Z. gShield is definitely plugged in firmly. I’ve already emailed Inventables. Waiting for a response.
Thanks a lot for your help.