I bought the Maslow a few months ago and finally got around to setting it up, but I can’t get it to retract at all.
I’m seeing these errors:
[MSG:ERR: Encoder not found on Top Left] [MSG:ERR: Motor not found on Top Left] [MSG:ERR: Encoder not found on Top Right] [MSG:ERR: Motor not found on Top Right] [MSG:ERR: Encoder not found on Bottom Left] [MSG:ERR: Motor not found on Bottom Left] [MSG:ERR: Encoder not found on Bottom Right] [MSG:ERR: Motor not found on Bottom Right]
I’ve already checked the motors, and switching the cables doesn’t change anything. I’m willing to order another board, but I wanted to ask first: is this a common issue, and is it something I should expect? Should I order multiple boards just in case?
I’ve also redone the arms twice, and nothing seems to be off there.
Have not heard of this problem before. Can you put up a photo of the machine from the top showing where all the cables are plugged in. Can you move your Z motors (click on alarm first).
You may have a firmware problem, which can be fixed by downloading the current version via the USB port.
Thank you guys so much for your feedback. I will take more images after work and try the firmware changes. I updated to the latest version of the firmware @dlang.
That seems like progress from where you were before.
A couple of very basic questions to be sure:
I assume you fully turned it off and back on after updating before you get this error output?
Do you remember where the magnets are installed relative the the encoder boards (I believe you still get this error if the magnets are wrong, but someone can correct me)?
I took the arms off last night and double checked the magnets; everything is in order per the video. I’ve tried a few different firmware versions with no changes.
Try restarting the machine and click on the save serial after it starts, which will load a Maslow-serial.log file into downloads and paste that file here.
Also, if can go to the FluidNC tab and click on the green file tab and download a copy of your maslow.yaml file and paste that as well, we can try and see where the problem is. That’s the circle with a down arrow in it.to download.
It’s definitely odd - all the encoders or all of the cables being bad seems unlikely because that would suggest a bad batch of them (and we’ve seen no signs of that).
It does still seem most likely it’s a software / config issue for them all to be reporting not found (if we can rule out a simple misunderstanding repeated on all four).
The only time I’ve seen this behaviour is when I’ve made my own wires and I wired them wrong, which I’m extremely skeptical of with production wires.
So, do what @ian_ab suggests - this is definitely the best next step for tracking it down.
But if you have a spare 10 minutes and fancy trying something to rule something out - can you go through and swap the wires so that each one has been top left, and you do a full power cycle for each.
It was on an much older firmware version when I played with the wires, but I have this vague memory that I might have seen behaviour that if the first encoder threw an error, then each subsequent one did too.
Now I still think it’s extremely unlikely that’s what it is, but if you have a spare 10 mins it might be worth ruling it out.
It might also be worth unplugging all of the cables and then plugging them in one at a time. That could tell us if the issue is being caused by one of the parts
Sorry for the delay. I was busy fixing some issues with a misting board. Since I was already at my ESD workbench, I decided to put the Maslow PCB under the microscope.
After tracing channels 1 through 4, I noticed there was excess solder on the I2C lines, which was causing noise to be distributed incorrectly across the four channels and sending bad signals downstream. After clearing the solder bridge, the error codes went away.
I also had to replace one resistor, but luckily it was only a single component on the Maslow PCB, everything else looks good from my LCR and all lights are green now. Im going to try and flash again and restart.
If there are any other soldering issues, i’ll fix it here and let you guys know the outcome.
