Calibration moving one motor wrong direction in Ground Control V1.08

Thanks for taking a look. Just as a heads up, when I measure the chain distance between the two motors, I normally only have to pull the chain once (since I try to extend pretty much the exact distance between the motors, so I’m surprised if that’s not calculated as correctly. I’m not sure what the file tells u, but I just measured the distance between the motors with a measuring tape and it should be close to 9’ 9"

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@bar Completely understand if you want to keep debugging and I can do the best to help on my end, but I just got the calibration to work successfully on v1.04. I didn’t change anything about the machine, but for some reason this time it worked…

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Here is the log file with all the position data removed which makes it a lot cleaner to read:

log (1).txt (11.9 KB)

From looking through it it seems like you are doing everything right.

There are a couple things that seem off to me.

The first is that the distance between the chain mounting brackets in the settings seems really far apart in some places in the log. Here its set to 669mm which is way too far Sent: $4=669.618 but then else ware it is set to Sent: $4=292.1 which is much more reasonable. I’m not sure why both are happening. Can you take a look at what the stored value for this setting is?

This is the part of the log that applies (I think) to where the sled is returning to center.

B02 L1 R0
Measuring out left chain
1648.88mm
ok
Sent: B02 L0 R1  
B02 L0 R1
Measuring out right chain
1648.94mm
ok
Sent: B15  
B15
Sent: !
okposition loaded at:
-192.10
-434.61position loaded at:
-192.78
-433.36
Connection Timed Out

Connected on port /dev/tty.usbmodem1411
PCB v1.1 Detected
Grbl v1.00
ready

Do you have any idea why the connection would be dropping there? If you pulled the USB out to stop it that would make perfect sense and be a reasonable thing to do. If not…darn

Just read your updated response :grin:

I guess that’s good…I still wish I knew what was going on.

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FYI
I’ve seen this twice in GC 1.07. It only showed up once per calibration and I was not able to recreate it.
I’ve un- and re-plugged every USB connection. On 1.09 I’ll keep all eyes open.

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That’s so weird, I only entered measurements in for the distance between the mounting brackets once and it was nowehre near the 670 mm and I believe it was around the 292 mm, so not sure how that happened lol I’m assuming the dropout was just because I hit the back button in GC and hit the “stop motors” button to try and prevent it from damaging the motors/chain further

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The stop command shouldn’t cause the serial connection to drop. You were right to doThat, but it should have just stopped the machine and then it would wait for the next one command.

There may be a bug out there causing this. 1.09 doesn’t come out until next Wednesday, but my plan is to release it in the forums later today and then spend the whole week testing it to make sure it is rock solid and this is one of the things I will investigate

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I’m having the same issue with my right motor feeding incorrectly. What was the final diagnosis?

What version of Ground Control are you on?

We have moved to v1.20 - 1.08 is pretty old if that is what you are using. Have you run the motor test yet?

Thank you

v1.19…run the motor test as in measuring chain length and extending/retracting? Yes I did that. I was falling step by step in GC until I got to the “adjust the chains to a known length” part and started noticed the right hand motor feeding the wrong direction.

The motor test as in open Ground Control -> Actions-> Test motors/encoders.

Thank you

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Two questions:

  1. Are you doing a top feed where the slack of the chain drops downward toward the ground or a bottom feed where the slack of the chain is taken up horizontally along the top beam.

  2. When you say it’s turning the wrong way, is it turning clockwise or counterclockwise?

I posted a long wiki article regarding calibration. Maybe read through it to make sure everyone is talking the same language.

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So the end result with me was just that I was expecting the left motor to want to extend after calibration, so I was positioning the left chain back to the top tooth of the sprocket and clicking “extend chain”. However, the extend in this case really means “retract”, because the software is expecting that I’ve left the chain extended all the way to the right motor for the previous measurement. Once I realized that, I’ve been able to calibrate correctly by just remembering that the extend in this case means retract

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The words, at least now, read “Adjust Left Chain” and “Adjust Right Chain”.

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I have the same problem. I just built my frame and am calibrating. The left motor fed from the top, as defined in ground control, but the right motor went in the other direction. I can’t figure out what the resolution for this problem was from this post through today. I am running 1.20 with the latest firmware (I just built this today).

Hi marlon61- Have had some very busy days and will be getting back to the project this week hopefully. Similar to your approach, I also installed rev 1.20 (deleted 1.18) and ill give that try as well. I also have had to rebuild some of my frame because it wasn’t high enough above the working area, so that’s another issue i’m contending with.

I got mine working today. There is a bug in 1.20 that is not running the motors correctly when feeding out left and right chain in the calibration setting. I downloaded 1.18 and that fixed my setup problem.

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Hi marlon- I installed version 1.18 on for the firmware and Groundcontrol and it still doesn’t work. It is still turning the wrong direction,e.g. both turning the same direction.
Can I just skip this step? I am so frustrated with this entire thing…is there a manual workaround or something to change in the software?

I believe that this bug has been fixed in the latest versions. Are you using top or bottom feed configuration? In top feed the chain will retract automatically when you press adjust. You do not need to remove the left chain from the sprocket. My hunch is that is the issue

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I’m having the same issue. Trying the calibration steps and the left motor turns correctly (counter-clockwise) and the right motor doesn’t (also counter-clockwise). I just downloaded (and installed) the Ground Control and Firmware yesterday. I’m on GC 1.24. Not sure on the firmware. Whatever the latest was yesterday.

Could you be seeing the issue with removing the chains mentioned above?