I have purchased/“inherited” this unbelievable MPCNC. It sort of came all disconnected and in pieces, and I’ve got it powered up now. It looks like parts all came from you. The electronics and even LCD and marlin all ready to go. Using the LCD controller I can move the X,Y,and Z in the correct direction. It is unfortunate that I didn’t do the complete build, because I still a newbie. I don’t even have 3d printer experience.
I’ve been on DIYCNC, instructables, watched the videos on Vicious1.com, and read all the ‘Getting started’ posts. I realize I need G-Code knowledge, and studying up on that. I’ve got Sketchup going well and learning about SketcUCam.
But I still don’t know how to use this thing. I get on the Marlin/LCD controller and move the X,Y,Z and they move great and in the right directions. When I hit ‘Home’ on the controller, the gantry goes to the correct corner. I was just in awe! But when it gets to the corner the Z starts to lower until it made that awful grind noise and I quickly unplugged it. It has two mechanical endstops. One at the X minimum and one at the Y minimum. No endstop on the Z.
I think if I could figure out how to set ‘home’ or zero this, it could make some progress. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Yes, I seems like to prepare a cut, I first need to let the CNC know where I consider z for the X, Y, and Z. I don’t know enough to even ask the question right.
The firmware is not mine, but if it was running before you should be okay. The LCD says mendel ready, mine says something else. Don’t worry about it for now I hope to release a new one after I update the build instructions.
So home is where it is, or where you power it up. Hard to explain really, until you figure it out.
When you power it up the screen reads 0,0,0 that is home. If you move it with your hands it is still home, screen still says 0,0,0. if you use the lcd or software to move it, it is not home anymore and will return to it’s last 0,0,0. Hope that makes sense.
This is not set up like a 3d printer in that regard. This does not home before every job (it can but best not to).
To start a job move the head to exactly where you want it to be x,y,z by hand. Turn it on. Start your GCode. Thats it! It starts from exactly where it is.
I hope that makes sense, if not I’ll have more coffee and try again.
You can manually move the gantry to what you would like to be 0… or with end stops you can click home on X and Y and manually set z 0 what you want to be 0.
So for example… You can move everything to where you want it to be. Unplug the USB cable then plug it back in and that will reset ramps and all axis will be at 0
LOL you can disregard this me and Vicious posted at the same time.
Don’t you risk losing square when moving x or y by hand? Before powering the cnc, I push x and y to hardware home, so I know they are square. From there on I move to my zero using motors. I’m on Uno + estlcam and I set zero on the Cnc control gui by double clicking the three coordinates. Ive also experienced that moving gantry by hand too fast can lead to blow up drivers.
