Calibration issues

So a couple of questions:

  1. The software seems to randomly loose connections to the motors, it has happened 3 times and I haven’t put a router bit in! I unplug and replug in the brain box and they reconnect.
  2. I keep getting the message “Unable to find valid machine position at so and so chain lengths.” Why is that happening?
  3. Currently after measuring chain lengths 4 times in a row and then going back to try and do the test cut for the calibration the motors seem to only go down. When I try and do the test cuts for the calibration both sides just dump chain until the router is on the floor and it still keeps dumping chain. When I go back to the main deal and no matter which directional arrow I press it just keeps feeding out more chain, but when I run the test motor function both directions for each motor seem to be doing fine.

HELP!!! I would definitely appreciate it!

So a couple of questions:

  1. The software seems to randomly loose connections to the motors, it has happened 3 times and I haven’t put a router bit in! I unplug and replug in the brain box and they reconnect.

The most common cause is that power management is kicking in, try to disable
that on your system.

  1. I keep getting the message “Unable to find valid machine position at so and so chain lengths.” Why is that happening?

That message means that with the machine dimensions it’s been told, it can’t
find chain lengths that will get it to the position it is trying to get to,
and/or can’t calculate where it is based on the chain lengths it thinks it has
(it thinks the chains won’t reach the sled)

  1. Currently after measuring chain lengths 4 times in a row and then going
    back to try and do the test cut for the calibration the motors seem to only go
    down. When I try and do the test cuts for the calibration both sides just
    dump chain until the router is on the floor and it still keeps dumping chain.
    When I go back to the main deal and no matter which directional arrow I press
    it just keeps feeding out more chain, but when I run the test motor function
    both directions for each motor seem to be doing fine.

back up to the beginning.

first make sure you are on the latest software, then start the calibration from
scratch and make sure that the dimensions that it’s coming up ith are sane.
k

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What operating system are you on for your computer please?

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Its a Mac: OS X 10.10.3

Thanks!! Starting over now Ill let you know how it progresses.

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Is the info in this thread applicable? This comment or this one touch on the most common issue when gettin started for the first time. Keep us posted, let’s get you up and running :smile:.

Sorry, I quoted the wrong source :blush:

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I saw a post here that someone resolve the disconnects by reloading the firmware. Make sure the Mega/Shield is plugged in before opening the Arduino IDE. Please let us know how it goes.

Thank you

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Thanks, I appreciate your response it helped tremendously, I broke out the tape because I don’t think in mm and it’s hard for me to visualize that. The distance between the motors was way way off. I hit the stop motors button when I was running throug the calibration procedure, I was thinking the software would know where the motors had stopped, now I’m thinking that maybe it was just a safety procaution and that’s the reason it was thrown off? Not exactly sure but it’s fairly dialed in now, enough to cut the frame pieces. Thanks for the response!

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The stop buttons are a safety precaution. It should not forget where it is but I certainly haven’t test that thoroughly. I’m glad to hear you are cutting things, keep us posted!

Some older Macs have serious USB problems that caused a lot of problems with 3D printers in the 2012ish dark ages. As a non-Maccer I don’t remember the details or models, but it was a hot topic in the printrbottalk.com forum around that time. The forum’s owner/admin plexus was a member of the fruit crowd and finally purchased an unaffected model.

I’m no longer up on MacOS versions but isn’t that an older one?

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I too keep getting the “Unable to find valid machine position at so and so chain lengths.” error every time I try to walk through the entire setup. I have successfully printed before but all of sudden I no longer can calibrate. Retired too many times…. very disheartening. I use a linkage set and thought I figured it out that I had to set back to Quadrilateral before running setup and got to the very end of the setup (usually threw the error right after chain length calibration). If I ignore trying to move the sled around by clicking the arrows all have the same effect they move the sled down? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks

This error message means that with the dimensions you have given the firmware,
and the chain length that is measured, there is no way that the chains actually
can attach to the sled.

This may mean that the machine warped as it was measuring the distance between
the motors (check with a tape measure that the results are reasonable, and that
as the chain tightens, or loosens after tking the measurement, the motors don’t
move)

The other thing is that something may have gone wrong during the calibration,
and it resulted in an impossible dimension (say a negative distance between the
chains)

Try clearing your .ini file and try calibrating again (watching for the motors
moving while checking the distance between them), and post the resulting .ini
file (and if you have both quad and triangular sleds, try it with each one)

Also, make sure you are using the current 1.02 (or newer) release.

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FYI - the GroundControl.ini is un the users directory. I’d rename it to .old while GC is closed. Then restart GC, it will make a new .ini file.

Thank you

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Clearing the ini file worked. Thank you very much!!

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