I keep running into problems with x and/or y grinding and losing steps when cutting at .5mm depth and 10mm feedrate on MDF boards.
I see videos of people cutting aluminum with the mpcnc, and I can barely cut fiber bards with shall cuts. I’m using a 48v 400watt spindle powered by a 48v 500watt powerspply so the spindle has plenty of power.
That makes me think it’s the nema 17s being too weak. So I decided to split the x and y motors and wire them up with separate drivers (one for each motor).
Now it seems I have less power in the motors. I have the drivers each turned up to where they just start to heat up when being used. Any more power and they overheat and shot down.
One thing, I do have x and y in 1/32 microstep. Would lowering them to 1/16 or 1/8 give them more power?
Are there any other suggestions for increasing the power of the x and y movement?
You are in the estlcam firmware thread, is that what you are using?
I highly suggest you do it the way I recommend before you try this beta firmware. You give no information on any of the wiring scheme, control board, drivers on that board, or the size and rating of your steppers or pulleys. Without a lot more information the guys that do use this system can’t help.
I highly recommend you try my setup as recommended and if you still have problems there are a lot more of us that can get you rolling quickly in the troubleshooting forum.
As to your questions, we have all tried it many different configurations and have determined if there are any differences most of us have not noticed or been able to prove it one way or the other. I have done my best to recommend What I feel is the best, if 1/8 stepping was better I would ship/reccomend it as it is free to do. I found for me and the tests I have done I prefer 32nd stepping.
Hey guys i just loaded the estlcam firmware. Everything is Great!!! except m106 and m107 dont work to turn my laser on and off. I was using repetier with no issues. Any one know what i need to do. I see the it using the m03 and m05 but im not sure if that will work for the laser…
FYI I did start messing with the D23 spindle pin, however i cannot seam to get to output full and it wont trip the relay board im using and the status led on the relay bored is only dim not bright like it should be.
I have a problem with ESTLCAM (newest available version): From time to time the “Set current position as home” seems not to work. In the erronous situation I move to some point in my working space, press “Home->Set current position as home”, drive away, press “Restore last start position” and the milling head moves to a completely different position, sometimes triggering my endstops!
I can’t find any deterministic way to get the “Restore last start position” working again (reprogramming the Arduino Mega, Reboot of the arduino board, restart of ESTLCAM), …
I’m using the RAMPS 1.4 board and everything works very well most of the time but sometimes I have this weird problem.
One way to fix that a little bit seems to be to machine a ESTLCAM project, pause that and abort it.
After that the “Set position…” command followed by a “Restore start position…” seems to work but the speed the drill moves to the formerly set position is very slow.
This effect is so odd. Am I the only one who sees that?
Ok. Problem was not a problem but a misunderstanding of what “Restore start position…” means. I had to enter a command “XYZ” in the console instead to move to the zero position. Thats a bit counter intuitive but it does the job for me.
A question to the controler_settings/input_switches tab (up to V10.047):
The triggered flag, which should indicate a triggered input does not work, but the endswitches do work. This is not realy a problem, but would be nice to have.
Is there any way to use e0 as a secondary Z axis so we can use this on a ramps board and a Lowrider? I am loving all the functionality this gives us on a Ramps but I need 2 Z drivers instead of 2 X drivers.
Would the limit switches then work independently per driver to allow for auto squaring based on the correctness of the limit switch positions?
My ultimate goal is to have a Lowrider with auto squaring, z probing, spindle on/off, running Estlcam on a tablet. Tablet gives touchscreen control of the machine and connects via wifi to grab the CNC files from my Google drive.
I plan to use Estlcam together with Arduino Mega 2560 to steer my XYZ milling machine, I use NEMA motor drives. I know the output current from Mega 2560 is not enough for my Motor drives so I have build a buffer circuit. Now I need to know on wich pin on the Mega 2560 the dir and pulse signal and the other functions are.
Most likely this problem is because I am dumb, and missing what is probably an obvious thing… This is a copy of a direct email to Christian, I haven’t heard back yet so I figured he was busy for Holidays.
First of all, let me say that I am VERY Impressed by EstleCam. I FINALLY found easy software that works with RAMPs!!! This is so exciting because a quick firmware re-upload and I can use my RAMPs for my 3D printer experiments (I like to build my own machines). Please Please Please keep working on Arduino\RAMPS support Christian!!
I had begun saving up to purchase MechCam when I happened to find estlecam.com through a Thingiverse article which led me to Vicious. The workflow makes sense to me, and I love how you trace what you want cut out. The buttons are straightforward and the tooltips are very helpful. You have done a FINE job here Christian. I have run into a few (newbie) issues I was hoping you could explain?
I have experience with 3D printing, but when It comes to CNC I am a little confused (it’s in reverse! lol). I have a machine that is close to the Openbuilds C-Beam machine. I have finished the build and I have everything plugged up… the machine moves and homes correctly (the limit switches took some trial and error), but I cant get past the dry run testing. (PS – it would be GREAT if there was some command to test the limit switches, and probe – also where do you plug the probe in on RAMPs? Somewhere on AUX4??).
Let me try to explain my confusion:
Where do you set the material thickness? I am confused by the toolpath depth, and start depth and how they correlate...
In an example case - my material is 5mm thick. What do I put in there?
When I try to put 5mm I get an error popup saying: ”The piece is outside the work area -5 to 140 ....“. I have tried a couple different ways of going about it. I can’t figure it out! :( I KNOW I am missing something simple here.
EG: I home the machine, then I tell it to go automatically to the start position (X10mm, Y10mm, Z5mm)
I mark my paths in estlecam (milling a 20 x 60 plate with 3 holes)
I send to machine - then I get the above error! :(
I have the limit switch for Z at the top, and I have it set that the limit switch is UP. Correct?
My Machine Zero + Spindle + Endmill goes about 0.5-1mm-ish into the top of the waste board. Correct? Lower?
EG: If I am milling at Z=0, the endmill should go into the waste board a little bit right? What do I do if I have different length tools? Adjust the start depth somewhere?
When I import a 3D model and I let it do its calculations, it always wants to mill the TOP of the piece.. how do I tell it to JUST mill the sides?
Thank you for your work on EstleCam, and thank you in advance for your help!
You have a few questions in there that are not exactly beginner questions. I have things laid out in a fairly simple progression to learn all if not most of those techniques. In that email you are asking for a ton of information. As for as I know he does not have a Ramps board to even test with, it is a few generations behind the current boards and we are pretty lucky he helped support us for as long as he did.
You really should just start with using marlin and no endstops. Start on my software page, follow it to the crown page linked at the bottom of it, then onto some of the more advanced milling pages.
Thank you Ryan, I appreciate your prompt response. I will go through and read through your tutorials and see what I can figure out. I may have shot myself in the foot by not asking the question I specifically needed answered for now.
Honestly I avoided your marlin stuff because it seems it was setup for your MPCNC (with double motors on both X/Y) and wasn’t sure if I could edit it correctly. When I saw that estlecam could do its own firmware I jumped right on it.
Really i’m just confused as to why I try to mill something it gives me that error. I figured it was a layout and setup issue.
The firmware doesn’t know how many steppers are hooked up.
The system you built doesn’t have a preferred board and firmware? It would be really easy to use your system as specified and just learn whatever CAM program you want. But going out on your own changing everything might be pretty rough specially since none of use or have your system. It should be really similar so if you want to put up some pictures of what you are working with and how you have it wired I am sure we can help but you haven;t given enough info. But if you want hardware help this isn’t the best thread for it, starting a new one is better.
I can tell you finding help using Marlin as a firmware will be easier than estlcam on ramps. Most use the uno setup he recommends.
@Terry: Sounds like many problems you describe are CAM setup issues. I found it complicated using Fusion 360 CAM to output a good 3D gcode file that ESTLCAM would correctly use. Some settings would produce good code that looked fine in a viewer, but had problems in ESTLCAM viewer and subsequent machining problems. I also produced some code that looked fine in ESTLCAM viewer, but also had machining issues like spurious tracks. You should ensure you can make 2.5D parts with ESTLCAM before trying 3D code.
I gave up on ESTLCAM using RAMPS and went to the UNO setup primarily because getting the spindle control to work required additional hardware. (RAMPS was really made for 3D printers and I use it on mine) So far, the UNO with CNC GRBL shield works fine with ESTLCAM. I run the x and y motor pairs in parallel which tends to help keep them in sync and find about 1 amp through the pair is plenty powerful.
Hey looks like I got it working after reading through your tutorials. There was one key element that I was missing in the basic settings that I hadn’t noticed before: I had the ZAxis origin set to “Workpiece Top Side” instead of “Machine Bed”.
So what was happening is EstleCam thought the workpiece was “inside the bed”, which was triggering the software endstops. Once I changed to “Machine Bed” everything started working as intended. EstleCam also started asking for the Material Thickness once I changed it to “Machine Bed” as well.
So all I have to do is: set how deep I want the cut in the Toolpath Depth, then set how thick my workpiece is in the dialogue at the end (usually the same for a cut out). Everything else happens automagically.
I noticed my bed was about 0.5 mm higher in the back left corner than in the front right so I went ahead and created a flat 1mm thick project that covers the entire carve area (then told the machine the Z was 1mm more than the original) and let it run to level the bed for me… sorta the opposite of a 3D printer raft. Now all my pieces are perfectly level.
I have run through a couple tests. I machined a butterfly for my daughter, and a set of gears. - so far so good!
@Bill - I went ahead and ordered an Uno and a CNC Shield. Do you happen to know where to hook things up for the probing??? I don’t have a controllable spindle - I use a Dewalt router with a precision head mounted on it for these tiny endmills. Do you use the Estlecam firmware with the Uno?? What Voltage\AMPs do you have set for your motors? I have NEMA 23s… suggestions??
That “Grass-Skirt” looking thing around the router is to cut back on dust until I can build the walls around the machine. Works really well!
@Terry: Congrats on getting it to work. I did the same thing to level my bed. Your picture looks like one of those C-beam kits from OpenBuilds. I’m using MPCNC.
The UNO shield has a spindle control ON/OFF output which I use a solid-state relay to turn the Makita router ON/OFF. (biggest reason I went to the UNO vs. RAMPS) I don’t try to control the speed except with the dial on the router.
The ESTLCAM CNC settings page shows the pin outs for everything. Be sure to use pin layout “GRBL 0.8” as that is the connection layout ESTLCAM supports. I use a small coax cable for the probe with the center going to the probe plate and the shield connecting with an alligator clip to the router bit. (I rarely use the probe) Twisted pair goes to the limit switches. I have not had the falsing problems some have reported.
I’m using a 12V 4A supply (looks like a laptop supply) for the whole thing and have the motor current set to about 1A for both X & Y motors which are wired in parallel and 0.5A for the Z motor, all NEMA 17 with 12 ohm coils. (Higher than 12 V exceeds the UNO supply rating which means you will have to run it from a separate supply.) This seems to work pretty well and keeps the motors and drivers running cool while providing adequate torque and high speed moves. (X,Y 5000mm/m, Z 300mm/m) which is well under the max I tested. (Use the procedure described in the ESTLCAM to find your max speed and accelleration parameters).
I think that answers everything.
I like the ‘grass skirt’ dust shield. Looks like its made of paper?
(PS – it would be GREAT if there was some command to test the limit switches, and probe – also where do you plug the probe in on RAMPs? Somewhere on AUX4??).