So I finally got everything assembled and plugged in. I bought some suspect bearings and squaring was impossible. Buying them directly from Ryan helped (luckily I have family who came from the US to South Africa ). I am also using the jackpot controller and wiring bought from V1
So I squared everything and it was feeling super smooth, but as soon I put the belts on everything felt really tight and didn’t move smoothly. I imagined that was the steppers being unpowered but when I powered it up the x and y barely move without “assistance” of my hand.
So in summary
Squared off core and everything ran amazingly smoothly
Added belts and with very low tension the axis felt super tight
Wired them all up, got the stepper directions working and the motors skip horribly without some hand persuasion
With a sharpie mark confirmed the stepper shafts also jitter so its not a belt skipping issue
So my questions are
Is the build, powered off with belts attached supposed to feel very tight? I.e is there something iffy with my mechanics
Where do I start debugging? I’m pretty new to this. It could be trash motors (rated at 40N.cm (56oz.in)) since I bought them from the same place which stymied me with bearings
Hi
Do the steppers skip and judder if they are not connected to the belts? Some steppers have different wiring order/pin-out to the coils. If you think that is possible there are some easy tests to confirm.
Remember to power off before you disconnect and reconnect anything, particularly the steppers.
Thanks for the message. No they seem okay, its just under load that they skip.
I also apparently had the belts set a little too tight. With lower belt tension they run the full workspace. But they skip with very minimal resistance (my hand), I’m worried that cutting loads would be too much for them.
I also see that the wiki suggests 50oz.in + and mine are only barely over that. Is it possible that I just underspecd my motors?
Thanks for calming my nerves about buying underspecc’d haha good to hear someone else had some success.
And it really doesn’t ever move easily. Everything got super tight when I attached the belts. I can move them when the controller if off but it takes a bit of force. I can also force a skip when the controller is on.
Should it move as easily with the belts attached as without them, if so maybe theres a mechanical issue / pulley alignment issue?
No, it doesn’t move as easily since the motors slow it down even even powered off. Don’t push them too fast though, they generate current that could fry the board in the worst case.
I can also force the motors to skip steps, even with bumped up current, so no worries, everything sounds okay.
but the motors won’t move the core around without skipping, then…
It could be your steppers are not spec’d correctly - not necessarily the torque though - they should be more than powerful enough for just moving the core around.
With everything powered up, the jackpot will hold the motors in position - even without you sending movement commands. Over a few minutes the steppers should become warm to touch. If they stay cold then you might need to start looking at tweaking the settings on the jackpot -namely the run and hold amps, but it’s kind of a last resort. So I wouldn’t start that without ruling everything else out.
Can you post a photo of your stepper motor label perhaps, maybe someone has the same ones.
Sooo… I’m a bit of a numpty it seems. In maybe my rush to rebuild everything after having to re-buy quality bearings, I routed the belts incorrectly so they were being shoved into the plastic rather than being directed away from it, so the friction was just too much to overcome… Very silly of me indeed but its working perfectly now!
So I’m just adding photos incase someone else is feeling like a numpty like I was.
This however is not correct and the documentation is correct in saying that you should do this part while assembling the trucks. It was a mess to do later.
). I am also using the jackpot controller and wiring bought from V1
and the documentation is correct in saying that you should do this part while assembling the trucks. It was a mess to do later.