Retrofit of my CNC One machine from Kickstarter

[CNCMaryland]

Howard County here, I might have to DM you with some questions regarding the parameters for the motors for the wizard. Have you had any hiccups with your setup? I'd probably rather go with something tested.

Good luck with your build. I am in MD as well. Harford County.

Just finished up a new controller using similar integrated servos.

Feel free to hit me up. There is a schematic that I followed that I am not sure is posted out there.

See attached.

[Tealfixie]

Ok, I've been pulling my hair out for a few days with getting all three axis to move and I finally got it to work, but I need to figure out why my original wiring did not work as expected. Long story short: I had to remap STEP2 and DIR2 to a different pins on the break out board to get my Y1 to move. WHY?

Here's the long version of the process:

I am using the DB25 breakout board to send control signals to the servos. After wiring everything up for hardware paired axis, I was only able to move X, and the Z axis. At first I thought that maybe there was something in the wizard or homing macro that needed to be programmed before I could get it to move. But after reading and researching, I did not believe that to be the case. I went back and checked all my connections with the multimeter to make sure nothing was disconnected. No luck. Next I went back and re-wired everything to cover the chance that the first time I might have messed something up. No luck.

Ok then I said, lets keep it simple. I switched the wiring to be software squaring therefore using up 4th axis outputs. I discovered that now, I could only move the paired Y2 motor, but not the Y1 motor. What?? I went back and checked everything at least 2 or 3 times. With no luck. I was still only getting movement from the paired motor. Then after switching the control wires for the Y1 and Y2 motors, I could get the Y1 motor to move but not the Y2. Ok, we're getting somewhere, must be a wiring issue. But what? I checked everything 4-5 times with a multimeter. All connections are correct and continuity of the connections were all confirmed with a meter.

Finally, I decided to try to remap pins 4 and 5 to a different pins on the DB25 and it finally worked! About 10 hours of trouble shooting to get to this point. Is there some kind of diagnostic that I can run in CNC12 to find out why pins 4 and 5 are not sending control signals to my motors. Step and Dir signals are only coming from the DB25, nothing is connected to the screw terminals for those outputs.

[CNCMaryland]

Do you have a Pro License?

[Tealfixie]

Yeah, I have the pro license, but even if I don't and I'm only using 1 axis output in my hardware-paired axis configuration. Something is going on with my db25 output on these particular pins.

[CNCMaryland]

Gotcha. Well you can always post a report and people will look at it and provide feedback.

[Tealfixie]

Attaching my latest report. I'd really like to figure out why I had to remap step 2 and dir 2 pins on the db25 to something non-standard to get that axis to spin. While it works now that I have re-mapped, it is still bugging me that I had to do this in the first place.

Otherwise, I have successfully hard-wired the dual axis machine with relay self-squaring. One thing I have to figure out is why my homing macro does not reliably use the parameters value I have stored for my Y-axis back-off distance. As far as I understand, I have stored the back-off distance in a non-volatile spot P700.

Code: Select all

#150 = #9700 	;Assign value of parameter 700 to user variable #150 which is 1.2mm
...
...
M94/112		;Unpair Y-Axis
G91 		;Incremental move
G1Y[#150]F50	;Back the Y-master axis back 1.2mm to achieve square
M26/Y 		;Set Y0
M95/112		;Re-pair Y-axis
G90 		;Absolute moves

When I last tested this, it worked and then the next day did not. But going into Params in centroid, I can see that the parameter is indeed saved. Do I have some kind of a syntax error? Frustrated with this, I ended up hard-coding the 1.2mm into my homing macro, but I want to set it in parameters so I can adjust it easily in the future.

[Tealfixie]

Quick question, now that I have things up and running, I am going though the process of setting up macros. One thing I am scratching my head about is the use of both a movable touch plate and a fixed position tool touch off. In the wizard there is only one place to set the height of the touch plate.

I have set the height of the movable plate, where do I store the height of the fixed TT? I was trying to use Clint's tool change macro without success. I am wondering if I may be misunderstanding the way tool offset measurements work. Do I need to set the tool reference parameter 3 to z home for this to work?

[CNCMaryland]

I believe what you are looking for is something custom. You might be able to accomplish this with Swissi's Probe App.

However, seems unnecessary. The Fixed TT should be used to measure the tool length, including the probe. Then you would just probe the work-surface you are going to machine and that's that.

[ShawnM]

The fixed tool touch off only measures a reference value and uses that on the NEXT tool change to add or subtract that value from the last tool. You dont need to set up the height of it, only the location in your macro. In the wizard you setup the height of your movable tool touch off only.

There's a whole topic on the forum about fixed and movable tool touch off with sample macros.

https://centroidcncforum.com/viewtopic. ... &start=150

[Tealfixie]

Thanks Shawn, I expected this to be the case. After some more trial and error I learned that the parameter 71 needs to be a positive value, changing this got it working.