Hey all, working on getting my Maslow dialed in and I have run into a few issues. I also sent an email to Maker Made since I think I might have a hardware issue. When I was first setting it up I was going through the calibration using an old MacBook to run GC. Everything was going fine but I started getting the sled keeping up errors. I did some research on the forums here and found where some folks were having the same issue with older MacBooks. So I switched to a newer Mac desktop and everything seemed fine. Went through the calibration and got it lined up almost perfect. I decided to make some changes to my chain tensioner so I was running the sled back and forth and I started to get the sled keeping up errors. Rebooted everything, and it worked fine for maybe five minutes but then started acting up again. So I tried switching my control cables for the left and right motor, thinking that I might have a short but the problem persisted. The thing is, when I ran the test sequence, it would always fail on the left motor. So in desperation I switched my control cables to the opposite slots, but this time during the motor and encoder test it switched to the right motor having a problem!!! So I switched it back, ran the test again, and the motor failed on the left. So what I’m thinking is that I have an issue with my Arduino board, or maybe just the slot for the left cable. Any ideas??
sled keeping up has nothing to do with the macbook, slow down your feed rate and
see if it clears, or change the value in the settings that triggers the alert.
if you are getting problems when you do a motor test, check that the cables are
seated, if it switches motors when you switch cables, that means you have a bad
cable.
David Lang
Yeah, the thing is that it doesn’t change when I switch cables, only when I switch the slots where I plug the cables in for the left and right. I slowed down the feeds and adjusted the error rate up to 20. The thing is, the problem seems to be progressively getting worse. It used to pass the motor and encoder test fine, but now it’s started failing on the left motor. And when I switch plugs, it fails on the left, even though it is plugged into the right.
so the left motor fails the test motors/encoders, if you swap the cables at the
controller, it still reports failing the left motor (even though the left motor
is connected to the jack on the controller board that’s supposed to be the
right), is this correct?
If so, it does sound like you are having a problem on the motor controller
board.
If this problem has been building up over time, it could be that the chips on
the board are overheating and this finally damaged the chip.
David Lang
That is correct, and when I do the switch the straining type sound switches from the left to the right motor, but the diagnostics report it as a failure on the right motor.
so you do a motor test and it says the left motor failed
you switch the two motor cables on the motor controller and it now says the
right motor failed
in both cases, it’s the same motor and cable that failed, try switching the
cables at both ends (so that you agin have the left motor connected to the left
motor jack, but using the cable that used to be connected to the right motor)
if it fails on the left motor again, it’s something in the motor, pop the
plastic cap off and see if everything looks good on the encoder
if it fails on the right motor again, it’s something in the cable.
if it works, then it was a bad connection between the cable and the left motor.
David Lang
I did the cable switch with the correct port and the problem doesn’t move motors. I’ll pull the covers off and check the encoders tomorrow. Thank you so much for helping me troubleshoot this!