Now that I have cleared the 15mm errored I am running into a “Motor current exceeded threshold of 4000 during cuts” error which is stopping my cuts. The game of whack a mole with these issues has been very real sign.
Friday I was experiencing these errors (Bottom Right Arm) along with one arm (Top Left) squeaking (New noise) when moving while also having issue retracting all the way despite upping the retract threshold. So I decided to rebuild the motor arms and solder the encoder while I had the machine taken apart. Made sure to clean everything, re-lube, etc.
Once the machine was reassembled today I tried some cuts and no more retract issue and squeaking noise so that seems to have been resolved now but still getting the Motor current exceeded threshold of 4000 error during a cut. It’s wasn’t every cut so I really don’t know where to go from here.
Seeing the same error. I’m running horizontally on the floor and notice a lot of friction with the sled moving. I ordered some ski wax, and we’ll see if that does the trick.
Can you give us a little info about what your cut parameters were? How deep a cut, how fast you were moving, material being cut, and cutter configuration (diameter, # of teeth, upcut vs downcut), contour vs pocket cut, and if pocket cut, what your stepover was. I’m sure there are others, but those are off the top of my head.
For me it has happened for a number of different types of cuts as per below.
Pocket Cut
Bit: ¼” downcut flat
Feedrate: 80 IPM (not confident the M4 got to that speed and not for long periods)
Speed: 16,000 RPM
Stepover: 0.1”
Depth of cut: ¼”
Material: plywood
Pocket cut - remaining area ¼ couldn’t get so more similar to contour cut in most places
Bit: 1/8” downcut flat
Feedrate: 80 IPM (not confident the M4 got to that speed and not for long periods)
Speed: 16,000 RPM
Stepover: 0.05”
Depth of cut: 1/8”
Material: plywood
Contour Cut - Cut out squares
Bit: ¼” compression flat
Feedrate: 80 IPM (not confident the M4 got to that speed and not for long periods)
Speed: 16,000 RPM
Depth of cut: ¼”
Material: plywood
Engraving Cut
Bit: ¼” 60deg v-bit
Feedrate: 80 IPM (not confident the M4 got to that speed and not for long periods)
Speed: 20,000 RPM
Depth of cut: max of 0.1”
Material: softwood
I should also mention I a using a vertical setup and sometimes I am not getting any error messages when the M4 stops mid-cut. I’m assuming it is the same issue here but maybe not a good assumption. Just can’t really troubleshoot when I don’t get an error message.
Those don’t seem to be too aggressive, although I’m surprised with 1/4 inch depth on 1/4 diameter bit, seems a little deep. Did you try upping router speed? How did chip size look?
I think 80 IPM is reasonable, I did some contour cuts at 90 IPM with 1/8 bit at .1 depth through 5/8 plywood this weekend. Total time was 30-45 minutes at a time and never had a fail. Some logging of motor currents would probably help figure out the issues.
I am using a horizontal setup, not sure if that makes a difference.
How tight do the belts feel when this is happening? I’ve only seen that issue crop up when it is in fact a good warning that the belts are too tight and it is protecting the machine.
Does it always seem to happen on the same part of the sheet?
Chip size has been looking pretty good in general. I can try cutting with less depth but considering other lesser rigorous cutting has caused the issue I am skeptical this is the root cause.
Didn’t note belt tension at the time of incidents but will pay closer attention to this along with motor temp compared to others in future.
Not happening in the same location on the workspace. Even happened during a piece that was less then 2”x2” centered on the workspace while engraving which I would consider as easy of a cut as you could ask for.
Does this error steam from the motor itself or the encoder?
If the motor, can we trend current values over time by chance to see how each motor is performing?
If encoder based I am wondering if the soldering I did could have messed up the encoder? That was my first solder job ever but also I did see this error previous to doing so.
It’s coming from the motor driver. Each motor driver has current feedback which is measuring how much power each motor is actually drawing. 4095 is the max value that we can read for the current.
I wouldn’t expect the resistance to be coming from the force of cutting which is quite small. I would expect the resistance to be the belts fighting each-other ie top left and bottom right pulling in opposite directions.
Not sure if this is relevant but I am noticing that since rebuilding the M4 it now does this small circular motion when applying tension or when taking a measurement during calibration. Only the 2 bottom motors are moving during this circular motion.
Spent a good chunk of yesterday running a bunch of test cuts to see if I could narrow down the source of these issues and mostly found more issues and nothing correlating strongly on possible root causes. Here is the list of the observations/issues from yesterday. I really don’t know where to go from here.
When “Applying Tension” or tightening to take a calibration measurement the M4 does a small circular motion. I believe it is only the 2 bottom motors moving at this time.
Ran some “cuts” without a bit and with router off and noticed that the top stepper motor was making a ticking noise similar to when you bottom out the steppers to Zero out the Z Axis only when the M4 was doing Helix ramps into the stock. No issues when retracting upwards. Motors got very hot as well. A lot harder to tell if this happened during real cuts due to the noise of the router and dust collection but I suspect if was still occurring. Doesn’t appear to be causing issues with cuts yet but still concerning
M4 would randomly stop for 3-5 seconds during a cut including the fan and then continue on. No error messages would pop up for this. Didn’t appear to affect cutting quality but happened easily 20+ times throughout the day.
Earlier in the day the bottom right belt was slightly looser then the others but as the day went on the tightness of all the belts got tighter to the point of some creaking. Not as bad as I have seen previously but the inconsistency after many restarts seems peculiar.
Bottom of Router and collet would get very hot. This happened even without a router bit in place. When a router bit is in place the heat moves down the bit shaft as well.
M4 stopped with current exceeded threshold error at beginning of engraving cut. Right bottom motor. Previous day cuts it was also this motor. Motor is cool. stock is center of workspace. 1.5” thick piece. This happened twice.
Ran a successful pocket cut at 1.5" thick piece. Wanted to see if a different type of cut would make a difference.
If a successful cut I went back to the engraving cut and the M4 stopped at the beginning of cut again. This time no error message but before starting cut there were some current threshold errors that posed up while jogging the sled around which didn’t lock out the M4. This time the error was for the Top Right motor so no longer isolated to a single motor. Right of Center of workspace. 1.5” thick piece. Belts tighter than they were previously and sled creaks more. Happened twice.
After reseting for above cut the top right motor wouldn’t retract. Had to do another power cycle to get to work again and later had to up the retract current threshold from 1300 to 1600. Haven’t had this issue since rebuilding sled and grounding the encoders. Really not happy to see this pop up again.
Finally had a successful engraving cut for first time but this was at a normal ¾ in depth stock. Maybe thicker pieces causes more issues but yet I did have 1 successful cut with a thicker piece.
Top right motor tended to be hotter then the rest of the motors through the day. Wondering how much temperature comes into way for the operability of the M4. I am working out of an thermally unconditioned shed in 20-28 C outside temperature.M4 is always shaded in shed and there is low to moderate airflow through the sled.
With all the varied errors and in some cases not getting error messages at all when the M4 locks up Im pretty lost. I can’t tackle real projects with the M4 locking out in the middle of cuts as it is never quite lined up after a start up dance as the previous cut.
This looks to me like it could be frame flex. Basically what is going on there is that it’s pulling each of the lower two belts tight one after the other, but I wouldn’t expect the machine to move down that much when they get tight.
This is interesting, I have absolutely no idea what would cause that.
Is this with the router running but not cutting? If so that sounds like a router bearing which is wearing out. I’ve had that issue with Makita routers, but not with the DeWalt yet.
I think that what is going on here is that the belts are too tight.
This could be related to the frame flex we saw at the top. I think that if the frame flexes it could lead to inaccurate calibration which could lead to the belts getting too tight on some spots on the sheet.
I don’t think this is frame flex. I added nuts to my anchor bolts to stop them from loosening over time and added ratchet straps on the backside of the frame to tension in the opposite direction of the sled to help here and still see the issue. It’s also something that didn’t used to happen before I rebuild the sled the last time…
I updated firmware to 0.82.2 to bypass these current errors and completed 2 cuts of really good quality. Did get a lot of the current threshold errors mostly from the 2 motors that have given my problems before (Bottom and Top Right). During one of the cuts the Bottom right motor would trigger the error everything time it entered a top right inside corner of the pocket in the same area of the workpiece.
Question for you @bar: Is there a way to see if the current stays above the 4000 threshold or not. Curious if these are momentary spikes that might be less consequential or are sustained which could lead to bigger issues. Maybe the emergency stop would be triggered after being above this threshold for a set time instead (5 seconds but adjustable?)
I think that this is a great suggestion, I will look into doing something like that. If I put together a version which works like that will you test it to see if the thresholds are good so it’s not triggering when we don’t want it to?
a try and let me know if the alarm still stops you when running a file? It should now be much less sensitive so it should not get as many false alarms as before.
I’m having pretty similar issues as described here. Even the same motor, bottom right exceeds 4000. I have tried re-building my arms and re-greasing them. That made things worse for me (I started to get the 15mm error right after calibration and it seemed the machine wants to pull itself apart when adding tension). @bar, is it worth opening another thread? Super frustrated at this point. Have tried the hot glue, adding a surge protected UPS and am running with no bit, but cannot go through any job.
I’m having pretty similar issues as described here. Even the same motor,
bottom right exceeds 4000. I have tried re-building my arms and re-greasing
them. That made things worse for me (I started to get the 15mm error right
after calibration and it seemed the machine wants to pull itself apart when
adding tension). @bar, is it worth opening another thread? Super frustrated at
this point. Have tried the hot glue, adding a surge protected UPS and am
running with no bit, but cannot go through any job.
what is your frame/workpiece size?
did you try grounding the pin on the encoders when you had everything apart?
I didn’t but I have just decided to go nuclear and buy basically another machine.
I might try to ground the pins of the new encoders.
It seems some people have 0 issues and some people have shed loads of issues with the encoders, so I’m playing the statistics by buying everything that is not the sled again. Need this thing to work for a project and I’m burning a ton of money keeping the space for the machine.
