Initial calibration on .70 firmware, horizontal frame. Failed?

Troubleshooting
1

After a day where almost everything that could go wrong went wrong, I finally got to try out a calibration on my M4. My frame is a 5’x10’ utility trailer, I measure my anchor points and I’m reasonably sure that I put in 2870x1420 for the frame dimensions, and 700x350, 9x9. I thought the 350 was a reasonable value based on the M4 frame calculator and just doubled it for the X value.

I thought the calibration was going well, the only thing I noticed was the motor current threshold of 4000 was exceeded 3 times, always on the Bottom Right axis.

It appeared to get all the way through the calibration, and reported:

Calibration complete
Calibration values:
Fitness: 1.6785950428066916
Maslow_tlX: 0.6
Maslow_tlY: 1421.9
Maslow_trX: 2877.9
Maslow_trY: 1416.4
Maslow_blX: 0.0
Maslow_blY: 0.0
Maslow_brX: 2876.6
Maslow_brY: 0.0
These values have been automatically saved for you.
[MSG:INFO: Calibration complete]
[MSG:ERR: Unable to move safely, stopping calibration]
[MSG:ERR: Emergency stop! Stopping all motors]
[MSG:WARN: The machine will not respond until turned off and back on again]

So I guess what I’m wondering is did the calibration actually complete? If I put it back on the frame, will I be able to move it and possibly cut something? Did I choose a calibration area too large for the size of my frame, or do I need to disassemble and check the lower right axis for binding? I’m planning to build a frame, but putting anchors in the corners of the utility trailer was the quickest way to test things.

I have the messages for the entire calibration if that will help, and I plan to do more testing tomorrow, I’ll update with more info then.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

Russ

2

Those results look OK to me.
Have you tried just jogging the machine around?
Power up → retract → extend → take slack, and then try moving it around?

3

I believe @bar mentioned in the notes for one of the interstitial releases he dropped this week (after Wednesday’s stable release) that this emergency stop after calibration was finished was a bug he’s fixed. The same thing happened to me. After resetting the machine the calibration seemed to have been saved and I was able to carve with the machine as expected.

Bob

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4

I have not tried that yet, I kind of panicked when I saw the Emergency Stop message, and it kept repeating which made it hard to scroll back to see the earlier messages. It wasn’t until I got a keyboard connected so I could copy/paste the messages into a text file to review that I realized it said Calibration complete, and by then it was time to pack it up and quit for the day. Hopefully I’ll have time to do some more testing this afternoon.

Thanks,
Russ

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5

Thanks. I’ll take a look at the interstitial release thread.

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6

Had some time this morning to connect to the frame and move the M4 around, that worked OK. Then I tried to load the Maslow Logo NC file and “cut” it (no bit in the router, router not plugged in, raised Z axis 200mm), and it started drawing out the pattern, then got an error and went to Emergency Stop mode:

[MSG:ERR: Position error on Bottom Left axis exceeded 15mm while running. Halting. Error is 15.010mm]
[MSG:ERR: Emergency stop! Stopping all motors]

It looked like more than one belt was slack while it was moving just before it got this message.

Now I have a connection issue, I’m going to start a new thread on that one.

Thanks,
Russ

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7

Ok, I figured out my connection issue, for some reason Chrome decided to use HTTPS instead of HTTP when I just typed in the FQDN for my M4. I guess it’s time for a bookmark.

More problems, though. After reading a bunch of threads last night, I decided to make my frame more square. My initial frame was 2870x1420mm horizontal, which left me with a very wide but not very “tall” working area. I moved my anchors so I’m at roughly 1905x1420mm, so my working area should be around 1000x700mm. I upgraded to .70.2 and uploaded a fresh maslow.yaml file, entered my frame and calibration area, then ran a calibration. It seemed to go fine, but after the calibration I did a retract all/extend all/apply tension and tried to move the M4 around, but I eventually ended up with slack in multiple belts and Motor current exceeded threshold of 4000 on multiple motors. Unfortunately I am currently testing outside, and don’t have a lot of time to test after I get off work, so it may be this weekend before I can do significant testing, weather permitting.

One thing I discovered, I’m using XPS foamboard insulation for my tests, and there’s a LOT of friction between the sled and the foamboard. After my initial calibration, I put a half sheet of 1/2" plywood down on top of the foamboard, and the sled moved much more smoothly. So my plan is to run another calibration on top of the 1/2" ply next time I can test to see if that makes a difference.

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8

Made time to do more testing this afternoon.

When I did my calibration yesterday, I had the M4 directly on the foamboard, and the Z axis was raised about 200mm. This afternoon, I lowered the Z axis and added a sheet of 3/8" plywood. I did retract/extend/apply tension/calibrate, it immediately went to emergency stop. Tried again, same thing. Then I got the update about .71 firmware, so I upgraded, replaced maslow.yaml, then re-entered my frame dimensions and calibration area.

This time I was able to calibrate, but it took a long time. Calculations for the first set of waypoints was quick, the second set of waypoints took forever, final message was:

Fitness: 2.6741044 in 73600

Is it normal to have that many iterations?

The calibration finally finished, and came up with this:

Calibration complete
Calibration values:
Fitness: 1.379999202360461
Maslow_tlX: -0.4
Maslow_tlY: 1431.9
Maslow_trX: 1905.3
Maslow_trY: 1433.0
Maslow_blX: 0.0
Maslow_blY: 0.0
Maslow_brX: 1900.6
Maslow_brY: 0.0
These values have been automatically saved for you.
[MSG:INFO: Calibration complete]

FWIW, those numbers are different from yesterday’s results, typically by 10mm or less.

I tried to move the M4 around, set distance to 1, units to inch, after a couple of jogs to the right I had two belts slack, if the picture makes it, you can see by both the belts and spools that the top and bottom belt are slack:

image
image1920×1079 289 KB

I tried to return to home, it moved, but ended up with 3 or 4 belts slack. At this point I was out of time.

I’m also uploading the logs from all of the attempts this afternoon with some notes about each attempt.

Any assistance or ideas will be greatly appreciated.

Editing to add (since I just saw the post about the motor gear/idler gear clearance), when I did the initial assembly, it did seem that the meshing of the motor/idler gear was tight. When I did my first retract all, a couple of belts didn’t retract completely the first try, but after extending/retracting again, I haven’t had a belt fail to retract fully since then. I can disassemble to the point of being able to loosen the motor bolts to increase lash/reduce friction between the motor and idler gears if that’s likely to be the issue.

Thanks,
Russ

050124_calibration_attempts.txt (64.8 KB)