I cannot for the life of me get this thing to calibrate and find anchors. The frame is incredibly solid and as square as possible with 2x6s and 3/4 plywood gussets so flex is not my issue. It gets to waypoint 30 then fails the fitness test. Its a vertical frame at 20 degrees. I’ve attempted raising my retraction force and lowering it with no success either way. Please help.
Nicholas Van Sipma wrote:
I cannot for the life of me get this thing to calibrate and find anchors. The
frame is incredibly solid and as square as possible with 2x6s and 3/4 plywood
gussets so flex is not my issue. It gets to waypoint 30 then fails the fitness
test. Its a vertical frame at 20 degrees. I’ve attempted raising my retraction
force and lowering it with no success either way. Please help.
the first things I would check are:
-
what firmware version are you running (if you go to setup → test it will log
both the index.html.gz version and the firmware version before checking the
motors and sensors) -
make sure your arms are in the right order, the highest one it the top left,
the lowest one is the top right -
are your anchors at the same Z height as the spoilboard?
are there any errors that show up in the log, or is it just that the fitness
isn’t good enough? (it’s useful to download the log and post it here)
David Lang
Over the past few days I’ve managed to get the machine much closer to working through a combination of reading forum posts, using AI to help troubleshoot, and experimenting with different settings. One issue I discovered was that my motors would never fully retract together during setup. No matter what I tried, at least one motor would remain partially extended. Eventually I increased the retraction threshold to 1650, and since then all four motors have been retracting properly and consistently.
As for the Find Anchors process, I found that it would successfully calculate and write the anchor values to the .yaml file, but then continue running in a loop indefinitely until the machine was restarted. Despite that behavior, the machine has no problem moving around the entire work area using the jog controls. The issue only appears once G-code is running, where it will randomly stop partway through a job.
The problem I’m running into now is one I haven’t been able to solve. I’ve gotten to the point where the machine will start running G-code and even complete part of a cut, but at some point during every job, without fail, it reports that the Bottom Right motor exceeded 4000, followed immediately by a 15mm position error. The cut then stops.
I’ve restarted everything from scratch multiple times, recalibrated, rerun setup, and verified that all software and firmware versions are updated (everything is on 1.21). Despite that, the exact same failure occurs every time.
At this point I’m wondering if I could be dealing with a bad encoder, a failing motor, or some other hardware issue. Has anyone experienced a similar problem or have suggestions on where I should focus my troubleshooting?
I’ve attached the log and my yaml from the most recent cut where the error occurred. Any help would be greatly appreciated. I’ve had this machine for over two months now and still haven’t been able to complete a full project successfully. Any insight would be greatly appreciated.
Maslow-serial.log (5.7 KB)
maslow (2).yaml (6.9 KB)
Now the top left motor needs a threshold of 2600 to even start moving to retract.
This is totally the cause of the issue that you are seeing. What retraction force is needed to retract the other ones?
I believe its 1300 (from memory) but I can give you an exact number in 2 days.
I would suggest your spools are binding or there is an obstruction somewhere in the arms. Unfortunately, that means pulling the arma apart and sanding the spools until they rotate freely on both halves. On reassembly you should be able to drop the retraction force to at least 900 (mine are on 600). The lower the retraction force, the more accurate the Find Anchors becomes. Do not overtighten the screws holding the arms together as this cause the plastic to bulge slightly and bind.
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Nicholas Van Sipma wrote:
Over the past few days I’ve managed to get the machine much closer to working
through a combination of reading forum posts, using AI to help troubleshoot,
and experimenting with different settings. One issue I discovered was that my
motors would never fully retract together during setup. No matter what I
tried, at least one motor would remain partially extended. Eventually I
increased the retraction threshold to 1650, and since then all four motors
have been retracting properly and consistently.
that is quite high and indicates that the belts are having problems moving. the
fact that you later hit the max power of 4000 and it can’t keep up goes along
with this (and if it starts out bad, it likely gets worse)
what you need to do is to disassemble the arms and makes sure the spools turn
freely on both halves of the arm, sanding the inside of the spool with a high
grit sandpaper (I got a set of 600-2000 grit dremel sanding cylinders and went
around the inside of the spool with 600 until it could turn, then 1200 and 2000
to make it smooth)
during the find anchors run, it probably saved the anchors with a subset of the
measurement points, then gathered more, but was unable to get a good calculation
with all the points, which is why it was looping
once you get the arms turning freely, you should be able to retract with the
limit in the 700 range
David Lang
Thanks. Is there anywhere that has a picture or video of the locations I am supposed to sand?
Nicholas Van Sipma wrote:
Thanks. Is there anywhere that has a picture or video of the locations I am
supposed to sand?
the inside surface of the spool where it rides on the arm. check that it’s a
smooth fit on both sides, and when you reassemble, check that it still moves
freely (it’s possible to have it turn on each side of the arm, but still have
something that’s a probelm when fully assembled)
David Lang
Honest question. Is there any reason the spool to inside arm couldn’t be a extra large bearing instead of relying just on tolerances? I could see that fixing the vast majority of problems with force problems and fitment issues. Also with sanding down the inside surface is there any reason you couldn’t coat it in a non silicone or chlorinated solvent dry lube? Just curious on everyone’s thoughts.
Nicholas Van Sipma wrote:
Honest question. Is there any reason the spool to inside arm couldn’t be a
extra large bearing instead of relying just on tolerances? I could see that
fixing the vast majority of problems with force problems and fitment issues.
cost and size, large bearings are pretty expensive from what I’ve seen, and they
would make everything larger so other things would have to move to fit the same
amount of belt on the spool
plus, I’m sure there was a heafty dose or "well, it works in testing: 
Also with sanding down the inside surface is there any reason you couldn’t
coat it in a non silicone or chlorinated solvent dry lube? Just curious on
everyone’s thoughts.
you should lubricate it, you just need something compatible with the plastic
(the 4.1 kits have delrin arms and I think the spools are ABS, but it could be
the other way and I think the 4.0 kits were all ABS except the sled was PC or
something like that)
David Lang
Alright I got all the spools sanded down and reassembled with a retraction of 500 as the highest. What is a good setting to put it at? Do you want it as low as they all retract or bump it up 25-50?
I guess that makes sense. I feel even a track with either metal or plastic bbs to act as a bearing would’ve worked better than just tolerance fit. 
Maybe once I buy a 3d printer I’ll have to try to make one.
Nicholas Van Sipma wrote:
Alright I got all the spools sanded down and reassembled with a retraction of
500 as the highest. What is a good setting to put it at? Do you want it as low
as they all retract or bump it up 25-50?
the lowest that it will go while they all retract fully with 1 try.
if you see any belts loose whiel doing the find anchors run, bump it up a bit.
David Lang
Alright I pulled the belts and retracted them 3 times with a threshold of 600. Started to cut a project and after one part got the error again. Not to sure why still. all the belts move freely there doesn’t seem to be any issues extending or retracting either. Any thoughts? Here’s the log.
Maslow-serial (1).log (5.9 KB)
Ok and the weird thing is after I pull it off the frame to retract all it needs a threshold of 3000 to get the TL and BL belts to start moving. After I get them in though and extend all and retract they work at 600 again.
You can tell it wasn’t happy with the last cut either. As the wavy side was one of the last portions it did before it stopped and threw the error.
I had a similar problem at one point, It turned out to be damaged cog on the spool caused by a chip getting into the spool. First thing I would do is lower the retract to 200 (belts won’t retract) and extend the belts out, do a retract and extend again. The idea is to get all the belt out, Then if you can hit it with compressed air in the spools to drive out any debris (or vacuum it). Then reset the retract to 600 and retract all.
From your log it looks like something stopped the spool physically (4000 on top left). I suspect, if after it failed to retract at 600, if you had selected extend and jiggled the belt a little, then done another retract they would have retracted.
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