Job or Abort when "Adjust Stepper Driver Current Alarms"

Hi All,

An interesting one for you, how many of you have had "stepper motor current alarms" which have ruined jobs or damaged your machine, yesterday I was running a slab flatten, working on a lovely slab of beach rescued oak. Managed to flatten one side then turned over and started the other. 250mm x 450mm x 50mm.

Part way through the second side I had what I thought was a catastrophic failure, SEE ATTACHED IMAGE, my right side stepper failed, but my left kept running throwing my X gantry out by approx 150mm left to right.

I've also had a couple of other stepper failures see post link;
blackbox z axis issues

The big question I'm asking here is, can openbuilds in the event of such alarms, pause or even abort the job to prevent jobs from running bad in event of Z issues and prevent expensive damage to machine structure itself!! I'm sure there are many forum members and non forum members that have had these alarms and yet jobs continue.


I plead with the "Software Gods" to come up with a much needed solution to save our "babies" from such events. Can a function be build it to automatically pause/abort as a standard setting.?

Is there a software view that shows what each current is set at?

Is there any way these adjustment knobs/dials could turn by themselves over time?

Should they be inspected on a regular basis to ensure no movement has happened, if so a software view of each current would be a really easy way to run a check! ( I had my machines for 4 months now and all of my issues have arisen in last month or so, just weird how it ran fine for months then when it start to heat up during summer months the issues arise )



I've been very lucky with this event, my gantry sides are 5mm carbon fibre and flexed beautifully, if they had been aluminium or metal, it would have been a different story! My machine for now appears to back up and running, but I don't know what damaged has or may have been caused by this event.

Thank you in advance, I hope you found this thread interesting and of value to the community.

 

Hi Peter,

Thank you for your time and response, I've only had 3 events in 4 months of use and I put machine through circa 100 successful jobs, and the 3 that have occurred are all recent, in last month or so. Twice on Z and once on Y2. So sort of feel that percentage of failure on a hardware front is expected working in the software and hardware industry myself, hence asking if an alert from one part of the controller interface can send a message to another part and stop machine safely.

Are you saying that this safety feature I asked about/suggested just isn't possible or would warrant too much development/programming work? I work for the largest UK DIY firm in Europe and we have to interface different software systems developed 10-15 years apart in some cases to get them to talk to each other, so in my simple mind, thinking that one part of a system controller can talk to another seems feasible. You guys already have what I believe to be the industry leading interface for our category, an extra level of safety can only go towards empowering that!

The black box is situated on the underside of the spoil board, so out of way of any external interference, but do wonder if airflow/heat could attribute in this hot weather so will look to raise machine about worktable to provide a much better airflow.

I take on board and thank you for your comments and will see if any con attribute to a more permanent fix.

Regards
Chris

 

Hi David,

I don't know enough about CNC yet, still such a virgin at it all, but coming from a software project management background and a passion for this and making things, this is a no brainier in my eyes. As a user of a £2000+ custom machine, and potentially working on expensive jobs, which Im' sure most of your more proficient users do, you only have to have this happen once to potentially render a machine useless, as per my previous comments, I'm lucky to have carbon fibre gantry sides which flexed unbelievably! Y2 failed on me again today and this time I identified the alarm on black-box, so tuned the power down in a hope this fixes the issue, assuming its power related, to match Y2, though I have to say the grub screw interface isn't particularly users friendly, maybe a software variant to tune power on drivers can be a thing the future!. It is weird because, this is first time since purchase of machine for Y's to fail in quick succession and do wonder if the heat is playing a part? Not heat of steppers but weather temperature, added to temp of controller etc. This time I've taken an image of the grub screw positions as a reference.

Any how, back to my point, 1 catastrophic fail could cost users significantly in repairs and loss of work, @Peter Van Der Walt said "it shouldn't happen, at least not often enough" how much does that once have to cost in lost work or repairs to warrant what I would suggest is a basic safety function (in my opinion, no disrespect to anyone), allowing a machine to continue to function in such an event could cause a fire, accident or something else if the machine were left un-attended ( I know you shouldn't leave machine un-attended, but people do) imagine if car manufacturers allow part of a car to continue operating when a key element of said car fails....??

Do any other hobbyist CNC manufacturers have this function? If not, then you, OB have a chance to be industry leaders providing even greater reliablity!

I look forwards to seeing if this possible new function comes of anything!

regards
Chris

 

Like I said, I'm a real virgin at this, even after several months, you've probably heard what I'm saying for the 100th time already..... ;-)