Chain length calibration issue

couple things:

  • motor shield power is the 12V and plugs into the upper board, the shield. The Due (brain) controller is the lower board and is powered from the USB.

  • I think your spoil board is very likely the issue. The assumption is that your spoil border is perfectly straight and absolutely correct for alignment with the motors. it may not be. It will likely not be perfect. Yes, your edge would be the inside edge of the skirt border. Motor height or Y offset or beam height is what you need to be correct and is the plane of the motor from the inside edge of the top of the skirt… shown below it is the top edge of the spoil board for a frame with no skirt. (top left label)
    image
    this comes from the “manual” that we put together to help new users.

  • I mean typically you don’t use the last roller because the pin is missing and nobody wants a pendulum. So pinning the rollers that are used to hold the sled to the ring bearings is what I was referring to, but thinking about it more, if you are off by more than 1/2", it likely isn’t the chain roller used in the centering operation. 1/4" per link off 2 links max is 1/2" if linear, but in the chain triangle, it would be less offset, so that avenue of inquiry is more of a bunny trail off in a random direction. Sorry to waste your time. I think the spoil board or the height measurement may be a more effective solution to fix your problem.

  • one last thing: in the makerverse precision calibration, you can set the target distance that the system will punch the hole from the edge. I’m not sure how you are doing this with the edge calibration, but the sled should stay inside the border for the measurement or the value should be negative that you report… unless I’m totally missing what you are saying. When I built “Fred,” the Due system I had to test this out, I didn’t have a good sheet of ply to use for spoil board (as seen in the video) and ended up using one without a good top border, so I drew one where it should have been and measured from that. If your motors are level and the beam is on right, you might use them as reference and draw your work area out and see if it matches up with how it is placed. This is not likely going to be painless, so just an idea.