Centroid Community CNC Support Forum

Hi Brains trust,

I am installing the Plasma Acorn controller and have done something I am unaware of I'm hoping someone can point me in the right direction.

I performed the Acorn bench test as soon as it arrive, everything went smoothly. I then proceeded to bench test a Stepper motor, perfect (getting super excited now )

I proceeded to install everything into the electrical cabinet and start wiring everything as it was bench tested.
I then received my Z axis setup so I wanted to test the servo and travel off the machine. Everything seemed good but then the servo only travels in the positive direction.

I remember going into the wizard to set some perimeters but not sure what I have done wrong.

Not sure if this helps but the last config change you made was to set the travel limits of X Axis to both -200 and +200 (metric of course). All other axes have + and - set to zero meaning no soft limits. At the very next restart the log shows "WARNING: The unlock for the Scales feature is not enabled".

Hope this gives you a clue but as I don't currently use the Plasma version I cannot help further.

I remember going into the wizard to set some perimeters but not sure what I have done wrong.

You may not have done anything wrong. Just check your stepper drive switches and see if one of them changes the motion from single direction to bi-directional. I see a lot of them defaulted to move in a single direction!

Dave C.

i moved this post to the plasma forum.

Nigelo wrote: ↑Sat Nov 26, 2022 12:46 pm Not sure if this helps but the last config change you made was to set the travel limits of X Axis to both -200 and +200 (metric of course). All other axes have + and - set to zero meaning no soft limits. At the very next restart the log shows "WARNING: The unlock for the Scales feature is not enabled".

Hope this gives you a clue but as I don't currently use the Plasma version I cannot help further.

I tried setting this back to zero in both directions and didn't help .

The warning about the scales was me just looking through things to see if i've somehow changed something but I have no access to that section.

Dave_C wrote: ↑Sat Nov 26, 2022 4:46 pm You may not have done anything wrong. Just check your stepper drive switches and see if one of them changes the motion from single direction to bi-directional. I see a lot of them defaulted to move in a single direction!

Dave C.

Switches haven't changed since the bench test. I did buy a new stepper as I had to shorten the shaft and thought I may have damaged something but that's not the case as the new motor is the same. I have also tried different slots on the DB25 port incase one was faulty but that didn't work either

cnckeith wrote: ↑Mon Nov 28, 2022 5:49 pm i moved this post to the plasma forum.

Thanks Keith, as it was more a generic question to just the Acorn and stepper I didn't think to place it here.

I am curious though, could the plasma side of the boards be interfering this here?

Aly-Tek wrote: ↑Tue Nov 29, 2022 7:03 pm

cnckeith wrote: ↑Mon Nov 28, 2022 5:49 pm i moved this post to the plasma forum.

Thanks Keith, as it was more a generic question to just the Acorn and stepper I didn't think to place it here.

I am curious though, could the plasma side of the boards be interfering this here?

no worries.


what make model drive and motors are you using? sometimes wiring errors or direction signal inversion will cause a step motor to only spin one way.

Have you tried setting the Z axis limits to 0 for both Z positive and Z negatived

What wiring diagram did you follow? S15114? I see from your report you have inputs for a breakaway and a float switch. I also noticed you don't have output 2 configured for torch on. Are you using a Hypertherm? Please tell us more about your system and please take photos and start a Google photos library and share the link here. It's easier if we can see what's happening.

As for your motor only going one way, double check the motor wiring and confirm the motor coils. It's possible you might have wired it incorrectly or the motor wire colors are backwards. It's happens.

Swap two motors and see if you get the same problem, this will tell you if it's the drive or the motor.

What drives and motors? Pictures would really help us.

Definitely reset your travel limits, they are incorrect.

You have a lot of communication errors in your log file, this means unwanted noise somewhere in the system. Grounds in a plasma system are super critical and you should retrace all grounds. Are your drive signals shielded? Do you have the RX and TX boards spaced far enough apart per the install manual? Again, pics are a big help here.