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Author Topic: I can Jog Fine but everything stutters when running GCode or even calibrating.  (Read 4504 times)

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Thank you. As I see it if I want to waste time I could disable on board video and add a video card that would have its own GPU or try a different comptroller again.  I am going to buy a speedstepper since I have more money than time.
Thanks again for all your help.  I will order one and post the results.
Thank you in advance.
https://www.amazon.com/Ethernet-SmoothStepper-Mach3-Smooth-Stepper/dp/B07QKQ8L52/ref=sr_1_5?keywords=Ethernet+SmoothStepper&qid=1581178571&sr=8-5
From Amazon,
CNC Ethernet SmoothStepper for Mach3 / Mach4 CNC Smooth Stepper with Cable
by Automation

There is no brand name.  Can you comment on this?
Thanks
Thank you in advance.
Hi,
the picture looks to be a genuine Ethernet SmoothStepper, but I'm dubious about Amazon.

Why don't you go to the Warp9TD site and either buy direct or from one of their distributors?

Craig
'I enjoy sex at 73.....I live at 71 so its not too far to walk.'
Good day,
Looking to see if anyone has suggestions on how to get my router to return to the same home position every time. Sometimes I can jog an axis and press on the home button and it returns to the same home spot.  The next time it may be 1/16 or more off from the original spot.  Motors sound smooth and I've tried everything suggested in this forum with no success.   Thanks
Thank you in advance.
Hi,
sounds like you motors are losing steps.....if you can rule out mechanical issues?.

Start by tuning your motors very slow and work upwards until they start losing steps, then back off a wee bit.

Craig
'I enjoy sex at 73.....I live at 71 so its not too far to walk.'
Good Day,
I still cannot get my axis to return to the same home position every time.  I agree I may be missing steps as I can sometimes hear it.  I have done the following:
Purchased the Ethernet Speed Stepper
Unmounted my breakout board and one motor driver and moved them to a different location with a different power supply
Rewired the one motor driver to the Nema 23 motor and ran the drain wire outside to an isolated 8 ft. copper ground
  I only grounded one side of the drain wire.
Also grounded the power supply
Grounded the drain wire on the wire going from the breakout board to the motor driver
I hooked up the Ethernet Speed Stepper directly to the breakout board using the 25 pin female DB connector supplied with the ESS
  So I am not using any other cable between the ESS and breakout board.
I tried a third computer with the same results. 
Tried adjusting the Amps, steps etc on via dip switch on the motor driver board.
Sooooooooooo Sad.

Several ideas and questions
1.   Can I be getting feedback from the Ethernet cable going from the computer to ESS?
2.   In my mind the next thing to try is to get a better quality breakout board and motor driver.  If you agree what do you 
      suggest?

Thank you for all your help.
Thank you in advance.
Hi,
it sounds like you have experimented enough to have established that the fault IS NOT Mach, nor the ESS, nor probably
the BoB.

I suspect that either (or both) the driver or motor are faulty.

What model driver and motor, and in particular what are the motor specs....including the winding inductance?.

My suggestion is to set up Mach/ESS/BoB to systematically test the motor/driver combination. You have been conducting
various tests in a scatter gun approach and it has not produced any meaningful results.

First, set the driver current to the rated stepper current....then leave it at that setting. Altering the current settings is
just confusing the issue. At best reducing the current reduces the torque and therefore INCREASES the likelyhood of
missing steps.

Second set the microstepping to 8 microsteps per full step, ie 1600 steps/rev and leave it there. Altering the microstepping
is confusing you.....it is just not relevant to the issue you want to solve.

Now you need to devise a Gcode program designed to test the motion of an axis. I would suggest something like:

g1 x100 f200
x0
x100
x0
x100
x0
x100
x0
x100
x0

Note I have assumed millimeter units.
Note also that I have used g1 so that the rate of motion is determined by the feed rate f.
This allows you to have several programs with indentical motion, that is back and forth 100mm, at different
speeds, from slow, say 200mm/min up to the max of your machine say 5000mm/min.

Tune the X axis motor for some very high and probably unobtainable max speed, like 20,000mm/min but set the
acceleration low, say 100mm/s2.

Now work through your test programs, starting at the lowest speed, that is f=200. If at the end of the test the X axis
returns to the original start point, that is, it has not lost steps then you can conclude that with the motor tuned
to low acceleration, 100mm/s2 the motor did not miss steps at f=200mm/min.

Now run the same program but with f=400mm/min say. Should that test conclude successfully, run the program again but
with f=600 etc.

Eventually you will find a feed rate that means that the stepper starts missing steps. You have just exceeded the maximum reliable
speed of that stepper. It may be slower than you want but that's too damn bad....this is what you have got. Carry on with the other
tests and once they are complete you may then ask the question 'are the test results I have obtained a genuine and correct
reflection of the hardware limitations or is there a fault....maybe power supply/signaling/extraneous electrical noise?

You should now have systematically found the maximum speed of your stepper, lets say it is 3000mm/min. If you reduce the feed rate
to somewhat less than 3000mm/min you could expect the stepper to NOT miss steps and therefore always correctly return to the
starting point. Write your test program with a feed rate of about half of your established maximum, say 1500mm/min.

Now you run your test program again, but always at the same feed rate, namely 1500mm/min. Between each successive run of
your program increase the tuning of the motors max acceleration by 50mm/s2.  Eventually you will find a limit
such that if Mach attempts to accelerate that axis beyond that limit, say 350mm/s2 then the axis will stall.
You have established the maximum acceleration the driver/stepper/power supply can sustain. Your operation of this stepper
will require that you apply tuning LESS than this maximum.

Please conduct the tests and report back.

There are a number of choices to be made about maximum velocity and maximum acceleration that can be made and applied to
you motor tuning, it is not for instance always desirable to go for max reliable speed, acceleration is often much more important to
accurate toolpath following and should be favoured over max speed.

Craig
'I enjoy sex at 73.....I live at 71 so its not too far to walk.'
Thanks Craig,
I have the same issue with all axis.  I had very systematic trouble shooting approach to exclude one item at a time as troubleshooting is my livelihood.  In my post I am showing what I have done overall.   During all my testing I had Velocity set to 25 and the acceleration set to 4, In.  The motor is rated at 3 amps and the driver board is always set to 3 amps.  I have decay set to 0, Torque 100% and steps to 2, not 8.  I can try that again however anything other than 2 the motor makes a high pitched wine and will move very fast and continually stall out. 

One thing that sticks out is the acceleration.  When I first built the router and started jogging around the motors rampped up, starting slow and increasing in speed until at full speed.  After a bit that stopped and the motors just start and stop at full speed.  I have not been able to get them to start slow and ramp up after that.  Not sure if I changed a setting or why that action changed. 

I will try again tomorrow working with motor speeds and working with your suggested code.  However if it doesn't move home when simply hitting the home button I do not understand why it would running gcode

thanks again.
Thank you in advance.
Hi,

Quote
However if it doesn't move home when simply hitting the home button I do not understand why it would running gcode

When you hit the Home button....do you actually know what is going on inside Mach? Does it shift a certain number of steps or what?
When you execute the small Gcode program I have suggested then you know EXACTLY what Mach is supposed to do. If your motor
tuning is 500 steps per unit say, then a move of 100mm should produce EXACTLY 500 x 100=50,000 steps, if you had a  pulse
or frequency counter you could count the pulses and confirm Mach/ESS/BoB. Can you do the same when you hit the Home button?

Quote
I have decay set to 0, Torque 100% and steps to 2, not 8.  I can try that again however anything other than 2 the motor makes a high pitched wine and will move very fast and continually stall out. 

That absolutely wrong and suggests a fault right there. If you set the microstepping to 2, that is called 'halfstepping' and
therefore 400 pulse per rev, exactly double the number of 'fullsteps' per revolution. If you set the microstepping to 8
then the number of steps per revolution is 1600 steps/rev. If the motor tuning remains the same then the axis should move
at 1/8 the speed of fullstepping and 1/4 the speed of half stepping. If its trying to move faster then your settings are wrong.

I still don't know what your drivers or steppers are but that description suggests that there is a fault or you are misapplying
the settings somehow. I repeat....'what drivers?'....'what motor specs, including inductance?'.

Either way you absolutely need to establish why your drivers are not responding to the microstepping settings correctly.

Quote
One thing that sticks out is the acceleration.  When I first built the router and started jogging around the motors rampped up, starting slow and increasing in speed until at full speed.  After a bit that stopped and the motors just start and stop at full speed.  I have not been able to get them to start slow and ramp up after that.  Not sure if I changed a setting or why that action changed. 

This is plain faulty, without an acceleration phase at the start of any move I would expect a stepper to stall. Likewise I would expect more
missed steps if the axis did not have a deceleration phase.

In the first instance try and sort out the driver/stepper combination....it may, with any sort of luck, rectify this second fault as well.

Craig
'I enjoy sex at 73.....I live at 71 so its not too far to walk.'
Good day all,

I have resolved this issue.  I joined a Facebook club for CNC.  I posted my issue same as above.  One of my first reply's was the TB 6560 motor controllers were know to have issues.  I had read this on other posts as well.  This is what I was suspecting after all my other trouble shooting and part swapping.  Based on user input I ordered one motor driver DM542T.  I hooked it up and presto.  No more skipped steps.  The motor runs very smooth and quiet.  I ordered three more motor controllers tonight and will be up and running (at least with this issue solved) by the weekend. 
Best of luck to anyone with this issue and I hope my post helps you resolve your issue.
Thanks
Thank you in advance.