Manual motor control glitches and then dies

Troubleshooting
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1

I’m at the the step where I need to set one gear tooth to 0 degrees or TDC. I have ground control up and running, uploaded the firmware to the arduino, and tried the quick motor test. Both X and Y pass but Z fails because I don’t have it hooked up just yet. I measure distance from motor shaft to top of work area and enter it in mm. then, on the screen with manual motor controls (I think it’s step # 2 or 3), I click “move X motor 0.5 degrees CW” and it moves more than 180 degrees. Next, I try something else like “move 360 degrees CW” and it starts turning, stops, seems to skip steps or grind, and then stops before reaching even 90 degrees of rotation. Now, it’s dead and I can’t get either motor to move at all. I reset ground control and unplug the USB to arduino and reconnect. Motors will respond again but then die after calibration step #2, always in the same fashion as I described. I tried different combinations of manual moves for the motor and I always get the same result. One move that’s many more degrees than I sent and then a second move that makes grinding or skipping sound and then dies. Arduino gives me no error to speak of.

I made sure I had the most recent firmware. I re-uploaded it after doing a compile check. I tried both port 1 and port 4, the only two available to me.

I’m following MakerMade’s setup instructions.

I have not tried isolating the USB cable from the power cable, I understand this can cause issue. I will try that tonight.

Any suggestions?

2

I have a hunch this might be a factor. Do you have a z-axis motor? Let’s try plugging that motor in and see if that makes a difference. No need to have the motor actually driving anything.

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3

I do have the Z motor, I’ll hook it up and see what happens.

4

Loose motor control cable on the left motor. Plugged in Z axis but pretty sure it was the slightly pulled out plug on lefty.

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5

Fantastic! Good catch and thanks for the update on what the issue was.

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