Something that I’ve noticed is that while the new calibration system is generally superior to the old system in almost every way I have been getting looser belts than I did with the old system and I’ve been digging into why.
I think that one contributing factor was that we didn’t have a good system for keeping track of the real z-axis position over time which should hopefully be addressed with this update:
But I’ve also noticed that the new calibration system seems to benefit from increasing how hard the belts pull while taking measurements.
I’ve had nothing but problems trying to jog around (much less cut) after calibration. I just installed the new firmware, and I hope to have time to do more testing tomorrow. One issue I’ve identified is the possibility that my anchor points are flexing, I plan to reinforce those before testing and set up a dial indicator so I’ll know exactly how much flex there is. I’ll also increase the calibration current threshold to see if that helps.
I decided to update the 0.72.1 maslow.yaml file with the x/y results of my most recent calibration, but left the z values alone, it will be interesting to see if it says I’m within 15mm when I apply tension.
One other thing I thought of, my anchor points are slightly above the work surface, probably 12-14 mm. Should I measure that and adjust the values? At this point, I’m not interested in super accuracy, I just want to be able to cut something.
One other thing I thought of, my anchor points are slightly above the work surface, probably 12-14 mm. Should I measure that and adjust the values? At this point, I’m not interested in super accuracy, I just want to be able to cut something.
It will not hurt to do so, I think you will need the 0.72.1 for those changes to
properly take effect.
I put 0.72.1 on my M4 last night, copied my X/Y values from my last calibration, and adjusted the Z values to account for my anchors being 13mm above my work surface.
Today I put the M4 on the frame, retract/extend/apply tension, and it said my coordinate system was good. I started to do another calibration, but decided to try jogging around, and it worked! For the first time I was able to move the M4 all over a 4’x4’ piece of plywood with no belts getting slack.
I tried running the maslow logo .nc file with no bit and the router off, but that didn’t work. I think the units in the file are inches, but it looked like it was moving mm…it was making very tiny movements. I’m going to look for another file to use, or maybe try to create one myself.
