Hi, had my Workbee running today and realized I had put the wrong settings in after starting a job. Hit my emergency stop button which is wired to cut power to everything.... After restarting everything I found that movement in the Y axis is "rough as guts", moving the axis causes jumps, sometimes one of the motors reverses direction for a fraction of a second causing the x axis to twist slightly. If I disconnect the lead screws and power the motors, they move smoothly, but as soon as I put a load on them via connecting the lead screws, they start running roughly again. The lead screws are moving smoothly, so no problem with them. I have tried reinstalling Openbuilds Control to no avail. Any ideas? TIA Gary
Check that your machine is square, especially that the X axis is square to the Y. It sounds as though your emergency stop may have resulted in the two sides of Y becoming "out of sync", so the X axis may be slightly skewed. Alex.
See docs:blackbox:faq-identify-motor-coils [OpenBuilds Documentation] and note the symptoms in the first section Probably broke a wire or pulled a wire out of a terminal and now only 3 of the 4 motor wires still has contact throughout
They are square - until I try to move them using OB Control. They then move erratically jumping around as previously described. Gary
The wires are intact (checked that) and the motors run perfectly when they are disconnected from the machine. As soon as there is a load (via connection to the leadscrews) they play up..... Gary
Without load a motor with a bad connection on one wire often will do just that too yes. Under load it draws more current and that bad connection becomes the problem
Thanks, I will check all the y axis wiring again to make sure nothing has come loose. A quick look when the problem arose (straight after hitting the emergency stop) looked OK, but I will do a thorough check today... Gary
I hit the emergency button as I had experienced a bit of chip weld on the bit whilst doing some aluminium (using recommended speeds/feeds in an Ooznest video.) Got some vibration so hit the button as it was quicker than using a mouse on the screen....Did not know that using it coild cause problems? Gary
Well, you wouldn't expect it to cause problems, but something clearly has happened here. Yes, it's quicker to hit the big red button but in this case a controlled stop (or preferably pause) would have been preferable - it would have saved the job and given you the opportunity to knock the chip off the bit and resume the cut. Anyway, let us know what you find Gary.
Cutting power should not cause any issues. Probably just a loose wire that showed up coincidentally around the same time (or rattled loose from the extra vibration) Ps: instead of a mouse, keyboard shortcuts are a quick way to respond: Spacebar=pause Esc=abort
Peter, you are right. Took ages, much swapping of cables etc to pin down the problem. It was coincidental to using the E Stop button. I eventually narrowed the problem down to the cable feeding the right hand Y axis motor. There were no loose wires in it, and it measured perfectly with a continuity tester, yet any motor I hooked it up to played up. In desperation I changed the plastic connectors on each end, and Voila, it worked perfectly. I can't see anything obviously wrong with either connector removed from the cable, but one of the pins must not have been making contact correctly and causing issues. It probably came about as I had moved things around earlier in the day to make it easier to place workpieces in the machine and operate the computer. I must also assume in my effort to hit the E Stop, I must have moved something and triggered the poor connection. So all is good now. Thanks for all the suggestions from everybody. cheers Gary
Sometimes you can forget to fully open the terminal before inserting wires, and thus accidentally insert wires underneath the travelling clamp cage - instead of inside the cage - that might have been what happened. Or clamped onto insulation instead of wire - also a popular mistake
