Got my m4 on Monday and by Wednesday had my first cuts, After running another calibration, I changed my frame a bit, it failed. I tried a few different firmware versions, and the same thing, each time they failed. Also noticed that I can’t move the unit on the Z axis. Today I noticed that the Z axis is racked, one line is higher than the other. Any suggestions other than taking it apart and rebuilding it to fix the issue?
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Even down? I would expect driving it down to straighten that out.
Tell us more about this. Do you hear any noise when you try or does it simply not move?
what should happen is that you just drive both Z motors down until they are even again.
We have had some cases where the maslow gets confused and needs to be restarted (you should have some error messages if that’s the case) and we have also had some cases where the maslow.yaml gets corrupted and needs to be reset
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Even down there is no Z movement. Here is a video showing what happens when I try to Z Down. Note the belts are retracted but it did the same with them out and fixed to the frame.
you can hear the Z servo on the left (Y+ from the spindle) bottom out. I did unplug the servo that was making noise to see if anything could be heard from the other, but it was silent. Example:
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Right, I figured it should drive down but no luck. And no errors during the process. This is the log from boot to the z movement.
Serial Messages
[MSG:INFO: Channel auto report interval set to 50 ms]
[GC:G0 G54 G17 G21 G90 G94 M5 M9 T0 F0 S0]
[MSG:INFO: FluidNC v0.74]
[MSG:INFO: Compiled with ESP32 SDK:v4.4.4]
[MSG:INFO: Local filesystem type is littlefs]
[MSG:INFO: Configuration file:maslow.yaml]
[MSG:INFO: Machine Maslow S3 Board]
[MSG:INFO: Board Maslow]
[MSG:INFO: UART1 Tx:gpio.1 Rx:gpio.2 RTS:NO_PIN Baud:115200]
[MSG:INFO: SPI SCK:gpio.12 MOSI:gpio.11 MISO:gpio.13]
[MSG:INFO: SD Card cs_pin:gpio.10 detect:NO_PIN freq:8000000]
[MSG:INFO: Stepping:Timed Pulse:4us Dsbl Delay:0us Dir Delay:0us Idle Delay:240ms]
[MSG:INFO: Axis count 3]
[MSG:INFO: Axis X (-2438.400,0.000)]
[MSG:INFO: Motor0]
[MSG:INFO: Config messages ran]
[MSG:INFO: Axis Y (-1219.200,0.000)]
[MSG:INFO: Motor0]
[MSG:INFO: Axis Z (-100.000,0.000)]
[MSG:INFO: Motor0]
[MSG:INFO: tmc_2209 UART1 Addr:0 Step:gpio.15 Dir:gpio.16 Disable:NO_PIN R:0.110]
[MSG:INFO: Motor1]
[MSG:INFO: tmc_2209 UART1 Addr:1 Step:gpio.46 Dir:gpio.38 Disable:NO_PIN R:0.110]
[MSG:INFO: Z Axis driver test passed]
[MSG:INFO: Z2 Axis driver test passed]
[MSG:INFO: Kinematic system: Cartesian]
[MSG:INFO: Using spindle NoSpindle]
[MSG:INFO: Connecting to STA SSID:MainThings]
[MSG:INFO: Connecting.]
[MSG:INFO: Connecting..]
[MSG:INFO: Connected - IP is 192.168.2.50]
[MSG:INFO: WiFi on]
[MSG:INFO: Start mDNS with hostname:http://maslow.local/]
[MSG:INFO: SSDP Started]
[MSG:INFO: HTTP started on port 80]
[MSG:INFO: Telnet started on port 23]
[GC:G0 G54 G17 G21 G90 G94 M5 M9 T0 F0 S0]
[MSG:INFO: Caution: Unlocked]
Will it let you drive it up? You should also be able to sort this if you can get it all the way off of each screw and put it back on evenly.
Edit: I missed where you said it had no movement.
You could potentially undo the stepper motors from the frame and rotate them manually till it’s even again and see if that lets you move it.
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It will not. Which is why I figured I would need to take the entire thing apart
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can you try swapping the plugs for the Z motors to see if the issue is in the motor or the board?
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Tried that, and I can ever so quietly hear the stepper that is in the higher position try to move. Also checked the the down stepper with the other port and it was working making noise. So it does not seem to be the board.
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Pulled the unit apart, removed the steppers, and tried to have them rotate without anything attached to them, one would spin, and the other just stuttered and wouldn’t rotate. Any way to get a replacement?
Absolutely, can you try swapping the stepper motors to make sure it’s the motor and not the board?
Just plug them into opposite ports and see if the behavior is the same. Shoot an email to Anna@maslowcnc.com and we’ll send you a replacement asap once we know which bit it
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Could it be that a corrupted file messed up the pin assignments on the stepper driver output or is that not configured by that file?
Confused stepper driver output pins could make a stepper motor stutter instead of spinning.
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I tried swapping them, and the same the same behavior happened. So it is the motor, not the board. Thanks @bar, I’ll email Anna.
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I have reuploaded the firmware and yaml and index files a few times. I would think that would have removed any potential pin assignment issue.
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I agree sounds like the motor to me. That’s the first bad one we’ve seen. Sorry about that 
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No worries, easy to replace.
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Got the new steppers today and it is moving well in the Z direction. Now to get above a .4 on fitness. Somehow on my second attempt after initially building it, I got close to a 1 and now I’m consistently hitting below .5.
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We increased how hard the belts pull when taking measurements which generally lowered the calibration scores, especially if your frame has any flex in it. You can lower the threshold for good calibration in settings if you want it to not stop at values less than 0.5
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I am assuming it is this line in the yaml file:
Maslow_Acceptable_Calibration_Threshold: 0.5
If so I will give that a shot tomorrow.
Question if you set the current threshold higher in the UI to something greater than 1500 does the calibration threshold stay at 1500 or will it go up past what you set by an amount? Say I set my limit to 1600, would that then be the same in the calibration?
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tryon wrote:
I am assuming it is this line in the yaml file:
Maslow_Acceptable_Calibration_Threshold: 0.5If so I will give that a shot tomorrow.
no, there is a retraction current limit and a calibration current limit, those
should both be the same
@bar, did the test for frame flex make it into this week’s update
Question if you set the current threshold higher in the UI to something
greater than 1500 does the calibration threshold stay at 1500 or will it go up
past what you set by an amount? Say I set my limit to 1600, would that then be
the same in the calibration?
two separate variables in the yaml file.
David Lang