When starting up the Maslow software it asks to calibrate the chain length. after a couple test runs it somehow loses USB connection and loses the data that it collected and suggest to turn it on and off and re-calibrate the chain length. i tried re-uploading the software and basically starting from ground up zero and is till acting the same. sometimes it wont even lose USB connection it would just ask to recalculate the chain length and basically start from the beginning. if any has run into the same problems and found a solutions please help
That sounds like the USB connection isn’t reliable. It could be a lose connector or possibly RF interference in the room. Is it possible to try running the machine using only the short USB cable?
I tried switching out the USB cable with a couple different ones but i still run into the same problem when i close out the software it dose not know where the home position is and ask to find the chain length again. but i was running it with a pencil attach to the sled while it was working to see if it would of cut out the correct pattern. what i am noticing is there seem to be a lag. meaning the pointer on the software is moving but the sled has a delay and it is not drawing the correct pattern.
I am having the same problem. Running firmware .86 and ground control .86
I did the complete 9 step calibration process under “actions, calibrate machine dimensions” and got my errors within the .5mm tolerance. I closed ground control and when I re-open it immediately gives me the cannot calculate with 0 chain length error and i close that and it pops up again. I still don’t know how to manually calibrate the chain length and to have to unhook the sled and re-calibrate the chain length every time i turn the machine on is a huge waste of time.
Any way to fix this problem?
double check all your system dimensions. The calibration process attempts to
measure as many as it can, but if you are telling it wrong numbers about
something, it is going to have problems.
The “needs calibration” message means that with the chain lengths and machine
dimensions that it thinks it has, it is unable to calculate where the bit is.
This means that the math is failing. The most common cause of failure is that it
has bad information about the machine.
This message does NOT mean that the machine detects that a chain slipped, or
anything like that. It strictly means that it can’t calculate a valid position
for the chain lengths it has calculated on the machine dimensions it thinks it
has.
The first thing I would recommend would be to move the sled around a little with the arrow keys after the calibration process to make sure it really is working normally, then shut down ground control. You probably don’t need to re-do the whole calibration process, just calibrate the chain lengths, although like @dlang said it’s probably worth checking that the values for the machine dimensions in settings look right. Because the error message specified that it thought the chain lengths were zero, my bet is that the calibration of the dimensions is OK, just that the chain lengths are off.
I have double checked all of the machine dimensions and they are all in the appropriate units (mm) and they are all correct and very close to what I have read they should be considering I built the entire temporary setup to the instructions provided.
I can do the chain length recal but I just don’t want to have to do that every time I turn on ground control.
When I put all of the measurements in the first time, I also wrote them all down on a sheet of paper. I have checked that the numbers under settings are still the same and that’s fine it’s not losing the data between shutdown of the program. When I first went through the calibration of this temporary frame and sled setup, the chain length calibration step worked fine.
When I went to do the first test cuts I set zero for z at the surface and for some reason it raised up twice instead of raising, moving, and plunging in so it didn’t cut the test cut. I told it to recut and the second time it did what it’s supposed to and cut the measuring slots. Seems to be a few bugs that I don’t know how to chase down exactly.