Centroid Community CNC Support Forum

I bought a CNC at a university auction that wasn’t under power and partially disassembled. My first goal is to prove it is alive. It was originally built with a WinCNC controller in 2007. I am installing Acorn with a G540. I watched and following Marty’s video. Printed and followed the drawing S14979.dwg for G540. NOS Gecko G540 (Black Friday sale couple years ago), new Acorn (bought on Amazon). New (refurbed) computer Lenovo M93P, CPU mark 2,036. (Core i5-4570) Ethernet Cable is shielded
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Before starting CNC12 Mill;
• G540 fault light is red, power light off
• Acorn heartbeat is green with blinking red on one side
After starting CNC12 Mill;
• G540 fault light is off, power light is green
• Acorn heartbeat is same as before starting CNC12 Mill
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Then
• Downloaded and started CNC12 Mill (Free).
• Following Marty’s video, cleared reset and pressed Cycle Start
• pressed X+, Y+ and Z+, but no movement
• Steppers are not locked
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I’ve checked every connection several times.
Attached is am Acorn report plus pictures of the Acorn, G540 and CNC.
My experience to date has been with Mach3/G540, GRBL and WinCNC/ShopSabre. And 30 years defense/automotive engineering.

Steve.

• pressed X+, Y+ and Z+, but no movement
• Steppers are not locked

stepper drivers getting power? Green light on drivers on?
If getting power and not connected to signal wires, rotor should be locked.
Enable pin usually disables stepper, so unplug terminal block to signal wires and make sure rotor becomes locked

have you done the bench test with your acorn?

* G540 has green light when CNC12 is started, no lights on individual steppers

* No bench test, serious time to remove the steppers from the machine - I really just want to confirm machine life at this time. Packaging of Acorn said it was bench tested.

Benchtesting is to test your wiring, but must not be made on the bench...

Just wire up one component, test it, if it works, next component.

Uwe

What have you done with the Wizard? Some of your settings do not appear configured. Spindle RPM is max 3000, doubtful.

Also your microstepping does not appear correct. If the steppers are 1.8* then 360/1.8 = 200 x 10x microstepping for a G540, takes you to 2000.

marty goes over g540 setup in detail on this page.
https://www.centroidcnc.com/centroid_di ... guide.html

Update - I decided to check the fundamentals of the machine such as are the cables actually wired properly or even connected. I put jumpers on the stepper connections from the CNC at where they fit on the G540 and the steppers have serious resistance compared to without the jumpers.

Restarting the system I went into the Wizard again and "G540 Drives Only" wasn't selected. This time I saw a button "load drive" in the Wizard that I didn't remember from the YouTube and chose that, then updated the configuration. After restarting the computer and CNC12, the steppers are locked.

I still don't get any motion from the screen after clearing reset and getting into cycle start.
The heartbeat light doesn't stay solid green, On half of the heartbeat there is a flicker of red plus an LED near the ethernet cable flash at the same time.

Attached is the new (today) Report. Is there an editorial on what or how to read the files in the Report?

(Edit was to correct false comment of load drive not being in Marty's video.)

Steve.

cnckeith wrote: ↑Tue Feb 22, 2022 2:27 pm marty goes over g540 setup in detail on this page.
https://www.centroidcnc.com/centroid_di ... guide.html

Watched it several times.

I've just tried another G540 in the system to see if that could be it. No difference.

the report posted above shows that you have not selected "Gecko G540 'Drive Only'" in the Wizard. It is still set to "Bench Test Screw Terminal"

Select Gecko G540 'Drive Only', load it, and press "write settings to cnc control" and follow the instructions on the screen.
Marty's video shows how to do this.