Left motor issues

Hardware
1

Hello fellow Maslowians,

I`m having issues with the left motor while trying to perform a calibration procedure. It does not respond very well to commands like Extend/Retract chain, for example. It does it 1-2 times then it stops responding all together…?

During the test motors/encoders procedure everything works OK on all three motors. I also tried manual calibration and test movement and only the left motor is not working as expected.

p.s. I`m using Maslow Brains on V1.23 FW and GC, motors are alternative solution with adequate specs as the original ones.

Many thanks

2

Have you tried reseating the connections to the motor and controller? Also, try to isolate the cable routing from any other cables (i.e. away from power cords)

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3

This would normally be a loose connection.

4

Cable isolation is done well, but I`m not sure about the loose connections. I will double check.

I guess it would not be possible to perform a test procedure if that was the case, as test procedure goes without a hitch every time I run it.

Is there a difference between test procedure and other commands that the motor accepts?

Many thanks

5

Yes,the test procedure runs each motor full speed in each direction and checks that the encoder sends signals in the expected phase relationship for that direction. It is a ‘go/no-go’ kind of test.

The values for ‘Settings/AdvancedSettings/EncoderStepsPerRevolution’ might be different for the motors you’re using, that would be one thing to check.

Another check would be to swap the right and left motor cables at the motor board (with the sled detached) and see whether the problem shifts to the right motor (indicates motor board problem) or stays with the left motor (motor or cable problem). You could use the up/down arrows to drive the motors for the test.

I would also suggest updating to v1.24 of the firmware and GC, though it’s hard to see how that could cause a single motor to act up.

6

No, the motor does not accept ‘commands’, it just gets voltage and sends back
pulses.

If the connectors are loose, you can have problems. If the cables run near a
source of interference that isn’t on when you do the test procedure (say the
router’s power cord), you could have problems when the router is running vs hen
it’s not.

David Lang

7

Thank you for pointing out all this info. I will try to follow your recommendations and hopefully it will set me off in a good troubleshooting direction…

Best regards

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8

I had a similar problem with my left motor. I could have sworn it was not a loose cable, but I detached all the cables and then re-attached them again and it has been working since. The cable may not seem loose, but if it is ever so slightly tugging in one direction it wont have a good connection to the motor.
Hope you get it fixed!

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9

Just to report/add to the overall knowledge base - it turns out I didnt calculate properly the exact number of Encoder steps per revolution for the motors. Im just not sure how the right motor worked somewhat ok, and the left did not… But, now it all works well!

Many thanks

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