For the purpose of this troubleshooting, the ‘Advanced/Manual Chain Calibration’ would be enough.
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Sounds pretty clear that the motors are moving, but I’ll ask anyway and hope it doesn’t come across as insulting. Are you sure the motors are moving and you aren’t just hearing the sound of the motors? My L/R motors make noise when the Z-axis moves.
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@brazz04 Let me ask if you unplug the Z axis and preform the same function do the other motors still move.
Thank you
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Thanks for all the input everyone, It is working now, I ran through the full calibration with 1.03 and it seems to be working as expected now. I didn’t realize that without the calibration values that it would cause this much craziness when just testing the Z-axis. But it looks like everything is working properly! @madgrizzle not insulting at all, I totally get where the mistake of the motors making noise and not moving could come from! I have something pretty cool planned that I have been working on and I hope to get it cut and show everyone soon!
Again thanks for all the help from everyone, I guess I learned to calibrate before troubleshooting!
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Fantastic! I’m glad to hear that solved it.
I wish I had a better understanding of what exactly was wrong beyond that something was of with the calibration so that I could try to prevent it from happening again in the future. If you ever see the issue again and find a way to replicate it, let me know and I will take care of it!
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Is there any chance you could get back a copy of the groundcontrol.ini file that was in use while the issue was present? It might have some clues or provide a starting point for replicating and eliminating the issue.
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I think our first reaction to hearing a report of wonkiness is to get a hold of the ini file and then work on solving the problem… this way, we have something to work with afterwards
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I do have it as I renamed it, I am away from home for the next two days, but once home, I will upload both the working and non working .ini files.
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Hi all, back in the garage playing with the Z-axis and I think I found an issue with the steps per revolution in GC 1.03 or the issue is how my new motor is calculating the steps. If I change the number of encoder steps, I get no difference in rotations at the motor. For example, I’m using a half inch as my test Z distance and when I set the encoder steps to 2096 for my motor, I get 23 motor turns. If I change the encoder steps to say 200, I still get the same 23 rotations. When I change the pitch though, I am seeing a difference being applied. Having the pitch set to the correct 3.17mm per revolution, I get 23 turns. By changing this value to 20, I get 5 turns from the motor. Has anyone tested if the encoder steps are being applied or is it possibly how my motor is reading the steps?
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groundcontrol BadZ.ini (892 Bytes)
groundcontrol.ini (821 Bytes)
Also, as requested, the GC.ini files are attached, the one labeled “BadZ” is the one that was used when the Z-axis was moving all the motors, the other is the current one I am using.
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If you are able to reliably show this, I’d go ahead and submit an issue for it on github. I’ve glanced at the code and I don’t see any glaring issue, but I imagine others could test it fairly easily.
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How many turns should you be seeing for your test Z distance?
There was a recent change in how settings were sent to the firmware and my initial guess is that the update for that field is not being sent properly. However, I couldn’t find any specific error there. I think the controller reports its settings in the log. Perhaps scan the log for $20 or something like that and see what value is associated with it.
I have been trying some various things and I’m really stumped on this whole thing. Stumped enough that I bought a Z-axis kit and am just going to try to go back to the original setup. The thing that I really dont get is that the motor must not be sending any information for the encoder steps. I can change the encoder steps in GC from say 100 to 100,000 and the Z-axis motor will turn exactly three times (regardless of if I try to move it 1mm or 100mm). Same for the screw pitch, changed from 3.17 to 20 and still get the exact number of rotations from it. I have tried 1.03, 1.00 and 0.97 just to see if it is the software but I believe it has to be the motor or the encoder giving bad readings. Any other thoughts? I may just have to wait for the new Z-axis and go from there. Thanks for all the input already!
After rereading the topic I don’t see where the Z encoder is being tested. I’m guessing that the motor test looks for something coming from the encoder but how well does it actually test it?
Is it possible the Z pulses/rev were hardcoded somewhere and the config value isn’t used everywhere it should?
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Is it possible Z is aware it can’t go beyond a certain point so it ignores unreasonable values?
Thank you
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The same motor test for all three - record the pulse count, run the motor full steam for a set time, check that the pulse count has changed by a general amount in the expected direction, the do the same in the opposite direction. This is a useful basic test, but not a calibration in any way.
For a more accurate test, set up your machinist’s dial and a gcode file something like:
G21
G91
G01 Z3.175 F30.0
G01 Z-3.175
G90
That runs back and forth one full revolution. The Z values are appropriate for the Ridgid 22000 routers, 3.175mm per rev. On my rig, the resulting numbers want some study…
I can confirm that changing the PPR for the z axis in the Advanced Settings changes how far the z moves by the ballpark of the expected amount (divide by two, divide by four…).
not to hijack this post, but is the encoder type / pulses per revolution set for each encoder or 1 file for all 3.
and what type of encoder is on the motor, maybe ground control cannot see the pulses correctly and not accurately tracking the revolutions
There are separate settings for the z-axis. If the ‘Test Motors’ Test passes the z-axis then the encoder pulses were arriving, and in the expected order.
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Well after ordering this motor:
Everything is now working as planned. The only thing I can think of is this one must have a different encoder type since it has a 64 CPR motor rather than the 16 CPR that I bought originally. The good news is I was able to use the 131:1 ratio gears on this motor and gain a lot of Z-axis speed. The cut I was doing before was taking about 3.5 hours and now its around two hours with the faster motor! I’m just glad everything is back to operational!
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