Manually control motors via WebUI

Is there a way to manually control the individual motors on a Maslow4? I got one of my belts in between the metal drive gear and the main plastic gear mangling the belt and requiring me to break the machine apart to open the unit up. I tried to trick the UI by unplugging only the one motor I wanted to control but was locked out and hopefully free the stuck belt but had issues since the motor was “over current”.

I have also had that happen. The belt guard is in there to prevent it, but it can still happen. I’ve been thinking that a redesign of belt guard part is in order. DM me your address and I’ll send you a replacement belt and spool.

There isn’t a way to manually control the individual motors. That over current limit is in there to protect the motor driver chips, but that doesn’t mean we couldn’t overide it for a fraction of a second for unjamming. That being said I think that the real solution is to prevent it from happening with 1) Hardware that makes the belt less likely to find it’s way in there and 2) Firmware that reduces the amount of slack belt. I’m guessing that it happened during the calibration process? That’s the only time that it can really happen because once everything is calibrated the belts are always under tension.

Yep it was during the build portion. I don’t have a build platform yet so I can’t calibrate but I did want to bring in the slack and found multiple motors moving when I only wanted to move one. Without 4 hands I couldn’t give them all tension so almost all of the spools and belts started coming off their respective areas and then falling out of place. Kinda frustrating but I might just be an edge case.

During the build portion? Build as in assembly or build as in building the firmware?

physical construction.

(darn verbs having multiple meanings)

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At what step in the construction process did the motors move? I wouldn’t expect them to move at all during the build process.

Honestly it could have been user error.

I had the sled components mostly built but without a cutting surface I couldn’t actually calibrate. I also was apparently using an older version of the index.html. I was jogging the motors attempting to pickup slack.

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No such thing as user error, just unclear assembly instructions and user interface that can be more intuitive.

The button that you want for that is “Retract All” I’ll make the firmware so that it won’t move the motors until after retract all has been pressed.

Retract one at a time “might” be better in some cases since if the spool already has slack it can bind not leave enough room on the spool since there is “dead air” towards the center. The belt really dont have much slip against itself meaning it might be necessary to make slack (to use up the dead air) then retract one at a time holding tension so the spool is wound without gaps.

I reported an issue on the FluidNC github for tracking. Feature Request: Manual individual control of motors for troubleshooting · Issue #56 · BarbourSmith/FluidNC · GitHub

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