Calibration Failure New 4.1 Kit

Troubleshooting
1

Hi everyone,

I put the 4.1 kit together and almost immediately started having issues.

The board seems to have arrived in a state where it wasn’t fully programmed (wifi didn’t advertise the machine). I ended up connecting my windows 10 machine to it and running the full-install reset. That allowed me to connect to the machine, but I’ve had no end of problems with fluid. Sometimes it just won’t work at all. Sometimes if I run the window in a private session it will work. Tried multiple computers / OS’s / Browsers, etc.. Just chalked it up to the experience, where I could get enough of the machine working to attempt calibration after many power restarts.

Upon attempting calibration, I started having new issues right away. The belts would not retract fully. I’ve had to up my retraction force to over 2400 to get the belts to retract fully. This seems not right.

I put together a frame to attempt calibration. Maybe twice i’ve gotten the fitness level above .7 on the pre-calibration stage only. All other attempts have been around .2 On the 2 good attempts I’ve been able to get the machine above .7, once it enters the actual calibration stage, there are a couple of movements that seem to look normal, but I hear a loud pop like it’s pulling WAY TOO HARD. it then completely unwinds one or more of the belts on a move, and the finess immediately goes from .8 to .2 or lower, and either creates a knot, or throws the belt entirely. I think I now understand the loud pop to be the belt coming off the belt wheels as the teeth slip out.

I’ve ordered a replacement board just in case there’s something wrong with the one that came with the kit. Again- there’s been no consistency in it. And after a failed calibration process, I’ve had to basically wipe the board to factory because fluid just stops responding to commands to do anything. Retract, Z-axis, etc.

I can’t get past the insane amount of force required to move the belts too, so I think maybe there’s just too much friction in mine, and the calibration is failing because the motors over or undershoot because of the torque required to move them at all. It seems like the rotation encoders are working because the motors do shut off when they torque stall, and I’ve re-verified 3 times that I assembled the arms in the correct order on the machine.

I’ve mostly been trying on 1.08 firmware. 1.09 made things worse for me, and I tried 1.07 out of curiosity, but same underlying issues of insane retraction / calibration force, and general communication failure between the fluid interface and the machine’s motor controller.

Any thoughts? Should I take a bunch of sandpaper to the arms to see if I can get the friction component down?

2

Not sure if it’s of any help but I had calibration issues with mine as well. I did eventually get through calibration (now having z-axis motor problems, so I hope that’s not down the road for you too) though. Some tug moves and screws loosening did it for me. Maybe you can get some insights in my thread here. Best of luck :crossed_fingers:

3

This seems like a sign that something is wrong. That’s is really really high.

Some folks have reported that tightening the screws that hold the two arm halves together really tight can cause the plastic to bulge out and rub on the spool preventing it from rotating freely, if it’s all of your arms which are that high that seems like a possibility.

I think that getting that friction down is the place to start.

4

I only sanded the inside edge, not the actual part that holds the belts, I figured if I wanted to change the belts at a later stage I didn’t want to sand that each time. I also used a mixture of Graphite (used by locksmiths) and Vaseline to lubricate the belt holder. It seems to have worked, I could pull the belts in with 200 (I am using 900 for working)