Ran into a new error that has once again stopped me in my tracks. Had several successful cuts today. Took a break and came back to see up my next piece. I was just homing/zeroing my yxz axis so was jogging the machine around when all of a sudden I started getting continuous critical alarms come in. Unfortunately I forgot to save the serial log at this point before restarting the machine.
Power cycled the machine and now the Red light comes on instantly. I am getting various warnings as part of the start up serial logs and when I run the “Test” button the it shows that all encoders are not connected. I can’t retract my belts or even jog the z-axis at this point.
I even tried reloading my files and firmware to see if that would fix it. No luck.
Firmware 082.2 so I can bypass the high current alarms I have been struggling with.
Power cycled the machine and now the Red light comes on instantly. I am
getting various warnings as part of the start up serial logs and when I run
the “Test” button the it shows that all encoders are not connected. I can’t
retract my belts or even jog the z-axis at this point.
If it’s telling you that encoders can’t be reached, it’s one of three possible
problems
the maslow.yaml file got corrupted/overwritten and it no longer know how to
talk to the encoders
the wires to the encoders (the ethernet cables) aren’t making contact
correctly.
(unlikly), you fried your main controller board
without being able to talk to the encoders and motors, nothing else will work.
I don’t think it’s the yaml file as I did upload a backup of the file and no improvement.
I doubt it’s the cables as well. Losing connection to all 4 all of a sudden doesn’t support this option. Plus I can see the Ethernet port lights are on. I even used some compressed air on the ports after this happened and no luck.
Maybe it is a controller issue here considering it all crashed at once. I also have been experiencing some other non critical issues that maybe could be caused by the controller.
[MSG:INFO: Firmware Version: 0.81]
[MSG:INFO: Motor detected on Top Left]
[MSG:INFO: Encoder connected on Top Left]
[MSG:INFO: Magnet detected on Top Left]
[MSG:INFO: Motor detected on Top Right]
[MSG:INFO: Encoder connected on Top Right]
[MSG:INFO: Magnet detected on Top Right]
[MSG:INFO: Motor detected on Bottom Left] [MSG:WARN: Encoder read failure on Bottom Left] [MSG:WARN: Encoder not found on Bottom Left]
[MSG:INFO: Magnet detected on Bottom Left]
[MSG:INFO: Motor detected on Bottom Right]
[MSG:INFO: Encoder connected on Bottom Right]
[MSG:INFO: Magnet detected on Bottom Right] [MSG:ERR: Encoder not found on Bottom Left]
It looks like the issue is just with the bottom left one to me. Can you try unplugging the cable to that one and plugging it back in?
Alright did some more testing tonight and not looking good.
Switched ethernet cables between arms and that resolved the encoder connection issue when I would run a test. M4 still immediately goes into Critical error mode as soon as I power it on with red light. Won’t let me do anything.
Replaced yaml file again and did a power reset and still no change in behaviour.
I’m happy to send you a new controller board to try, but this really looks like a connection issue to me.
I noticed that you are running firmware version 0.81 and we made some connection improvements since then so it could be worth updating, although I don’t think that will help that much.
Can you try to unplug the encoder wires on both sides and dust them off with computer duster or compressed air?
@bar happy to update to newer version except I would like the current threshold alarm to not stop the cut. Could you push a version that addresses this?
I will redo the connections again today and clear them with compressed air but I already did that and the logs showed they were connected when I ran the test button.
Thanks bar for the quick turn around on this! I brought the sled home yesterday so I could continue troubleshooting today. Updated Firmware and the used s fresh yaml file just in case and it is working again. Was able to retract and extend! Tomorrow I will be back to cutting so hopefully that goes well.
One item to note is that today when I powered the M4 up there was no immediate red light which was happening before. This was before even being able to connect to the M4 with laptop and updating firmware. Just wanted to note in case this comes up again in future.
Thanks for the feedback!