Starting a new thread in the hopes that my struggles will help other new builders.
1st…The lowrider 4 has been one of the funnest builds I have undertaken in a while. The engineering and thought behind it blow my mind!! Hats off to Ryan and the Beta Team.
So I think my trouble is the amount of places I need to look and the countless threads to sift through in order to feel like I know what I’m doing.
I’m currently building a full sheet gantry and am currently doing housekeeping on the wiring. once that is complete, I need to make sure I understand the controls and can get the gantry operating as intended. I’m using a jackpot board running FluidNC. I can’t seem to get the steppers to move when I connect to the Web UI. I can shoot a quick video to show what’s happening…
so 1st Q, Is YouTube the only way to add videos here?
So, I can actually home the Z axis, won’t even try the x or y since the belts aren’t properly installed on a table…
But I can’t manually move the Z. Does everything need to home before I can manually move things?
Note the black, green, blue, and red wires are y1, z1 the black wires are y2,z2 with the white stripe corresponding to the black wire on the steppers. All of the limit switches match their respective stepper…
EDIT: Of course when I go to record a clip, the Z works as expected. I guess the issue was I was clicking on the arrows of the Z display and not the steps … Both directions work fine. I’m sure I am overthinking this… Honestly because I want this to be as plug and play as it can be when I go to the HS to set it up on the table. I will most likely wind up with a bootstrap setup of 3 sheet of plywood on the stage floor to cut out the actual table. So, I don’t want to have additional troubleshooting to do that night.
Now does anyone have ideas for a portable full sheet table that could be transported in a wagon?
I will say, there are alarms on FluidNC, I don’t have a pendant, but on the web version it shows the alarm. If an alarm is triggered you can’t move any axis until you clear it. I’d say next time it won’t move, check by connecting your phone or whatever to it then see if there is an alarm.
Welcome and congratulations on your build! If you had the Z working for even a single try, that means that you had your wiring correctly connected and you were using the interface properly. If it stops working after that, then it could be an alarm issue, and if not an alarm issue, then possibly intermittent functioning may indicate a loose connection somewhere.
Alarms sound alarming, but don’t be alarmed by alarms. An alarm can be generated by something as simple as, you tried to home, and the homing process did not complete in a satisfactory manner. They also can be thrown by trying to probe with a probe script that calls for more travel than the machine thinks is still available given where it homed to, and your available travel distance defined in your config file.
Congrats on your LR4 build journey, it’s great to see people are having fun getting their builds up and running!
“in a wagon”, sadly no, I don’t understand Tardis level physics/engineering. Barely managed to fit my LR3 quarter sheet table, plus a Colin Furze, inside my the bank’s truck
A few progress pics… my focus is now shifting to the design and construction of a portable full sheet table. Looking to keep it to 7-8 pieces. 2 long box rails, 2-3 box styles, 3 thin torsion boxes…(1x2 for the frames, 1/4” Luann for the sheeting T&B). I just need to figure out the connection points so that it assembles quickly and repeatedly accurate.
and the Denim Blue too! I may print the “mod” side-plates in the denim and gray… Need to confirm that they will protect the Y limit switches during transporting of the gantry…
I figured with the Kobalt router it would look good.
