I was running a cut and my Z didn’t raise. There were no physical issues I could find. I held the sled off my piece and paused with my phone but before the pause went through the left motor also stopped moving and the sled veered off into places it should not go.
After that I could not get the Z motor to move at all until I removed USB and power from the Arduino. Now everything works as before but I’m wondering what caused the two motors to stop functioning so closely together.
Just a shot in the dark so not 100% about this, but if you have one of the original MEGAs, I believe the Z and the left Motor work off the same “stepper”/driver chip. It is possible that it was overheating or is starting to fail?
That sounds like a great point to me.
Yeah, it had been running for about seven hours. I watched it with a thermal camera today while cutting and nothing looked unusual. I think it may have been the Arduino. It has the least airflow and if it was the shield I wouldn’t expect the Z to fail first since it was regularly about 20 degrees cooler than the side motor drivers.