Movement Issue

[kparis211]

A friend has recently tasked me with attempting to fix his M3. My experience is solely with 3D printers and a carbide 3D, so this is all more or less uncharted territory to me. Basically, my issue is that the machine thinks it moved a millimeter, but it moves an inch. This issue persists with both just jogging the toolhead as well as when attempting to execute gcode. Has anybody else encountered this issue?

[Derek the Admin]

Hi,

There are a few causes:
1) He doesn't have the jumpers set under the drivers. The jumpers should be on the M0 and M1 jump points
2) He plugged the power supply directly into the uno board at some point, destroying the drivers.
3) You are in G20 (inches mode) and issuing unit commands in millimeters
4) The steps per mm setting in the firmware are not right. Can you open a connection then type $$ then enter in the command line and press enter, then copy and paste or screenshot the settings it reports?

Thanks
Derek

[kparis211]

>>> $$
$0=10
$1=255
$2=0
$3=0
$4=0
$5=0
$6=0
$10=1
$11=0.010
$12=0.002
$13=0
$20=0
$21=0
$22=1
$23=0
$24=35.000
$25=1200.000
$26=94
$27=4.000
$30=12000
$31=0
$32=0
$100=200.000
$101=200.000
$102=200.000
$110=3500.000
$111=4400.000
$112=3000.000
$120=240.000
$121=240.000
$122=240.000
$130=432.000
$131=432.000
$132=95.000
ok

I found that the M0 and M1 jumpers were aligned horizontally and not vertically. I fixed that, and it seems to behave normally now. When jogging it looks like the vertical movement is still more than a millimeter when in G21 mode, but I'm assuming that's just because it's not actually executing any gcode? I'll run a test job and report back.

[kparis211]

This issue also persists with horizontal movement. Jogging distance is inconsistent and motors seem to be grinding. I'm not sure why, because the belts are fairly slack (I'll try tensioning them again and seeing if that helps).

[kparis211]

Update #2: I tried loading the name engrave gcode to see what would happen. The machine immediately moved in the negative (?) Y direction until the physical limit was hit, then it kept trying to go. I immediately stopped the job and unplugged the machine.

[Derek the Admin]

This is on an M3? Like what you see in my profile picture?

Those are Carve King settings. They need to have the M3 settings restored. Please check out the list of default M3 settings at the end of the M3 instructions. You can change each setting by typing $setting#=value. For instance, if I wanted to change setting 1 to a value of 50 I would type $1=50 in the command line and press enter. (FYI, that was just an example)

[kparis211]

There are no default settings in the M3 assembly instructions PDF. I see under the carve king assembly instructions they are listed at the bottom, but they are absent from the M3 PDF on the website. Any way you could update the pdf or just send them here?

[Derek the Admin]

I'm very sorry... this one slipped by me.

Here are the M3 settings:
$0=10 (step pulse, usec)
$1=255 (step idle delay, msec)
$2=0 (step port invert mask:00000000)
$3=0 (dir port invert mask:00000000)
$4=0 (step enable invert, bool)
$5=0 (limit pins invert, bool)
$6=0 (probe pin invert, bool)
$10=3 (status report mask:00000011)
$11=0.010 (junction deviation, mm)
$12=0.002 (arc tolerance, mm)
$13=0 (report inches, bool)
$20=0 (soft limits, bool)
$21=0 (hard limits, bool)
$22=0 (homing cycle, bool) SETTING 22 SHOULD = 1 IF YOU HAVE HOMING SWITCHES, = 0 IF NOT
$23=0 (homing dir invert mask:00000000)
$24=25.000 (homing feed, mm/min)
$25=600.000 (homing seek, mm/min)
$26=244 (homing debounce, msec)
$27=4.000 (homing pull-off, mm)
$100=40.000 (x, step/mm)
$101=40.000 (y, step/mm)
$102=80.000 (z, step/mm)
$110=8000.000 (x max rate, mm/min)
$111=8000.000 (y max rate, mm/min)
$112=3000.000 (z max rate, mm/min)
$120=250.000 (x accel, mm/sec^2)
$121=250.000 (y accel, mm/sec^2)
$122=250.000 (z accel, mm/sec^2)
$130=264.000 (x max travel, mm)
$131=264.000 (y max travel, mm)
$132=69.000 (z max travel, mm)

[kparis211]

So the new settings fixed the issue of extra movement while jogging. I tried running the supplied test job, and the machine quickly moved to the limits of the x and y axis and the motors kept spinning, skipping the belt. I immediately unplugged the machine and prepared a 3cm x 3cm triangle job using fusion 360, but that resulted in the same issue. For both of these jobs I made certain I set the origin point the proper location.

[Derek the Admin]

If the settings are correct and jumpers are correct and it jogs the commanded distance then it is just a matter of zeroing, other setup procedures, or the g code itself. The machine doesn’t move randomly. I want to help you but we need the full picture.