I spent an action packed few days building the MPCNC after receiving the kit. I love how brilliantly this is made. I was trying to get it done before I leave on vacation (which is in a few minutes from now). Following the steps line by line I got all the way to hooking up all the electronics and saw the line about what to do if the stepper motors are reversed and thought “hmmm… I imagine that could appear more catastrophic than this makes it sound”. Especially with the belts all connected. So I disconnected the belts and indeed, the opposing motors were turning in a way that would have been a tug of war smoke-off.I wasn’t too surprised but it also proved that my version of intuitive and FluidNC did not align. Not a bad thing, I just haven’t read enough yet. A couple questions:
Is there a standard tutorial for configuring the yaml for MPCNC around here? I realize this thing is so dynamic that no one config will work for everyone but for the MPCNC, for the most part all we’re dealing with is scale, right? For now I’m consulting ye olde Google and ye olde Tube.
Austin, TX here. Home of the insane number of days above 100ºF as well as the ice-pocalypse (aka-tree-mageddon). I have this set up in my non-climate controlled garage. How much do you figure this is going to get out of whack as far as squaring because of gestures vaguely at all the weather.
Not a question. I posted a funny little anecdote on my FB about how I should have figured out how to make the thing stop before I began trying to make the Z axis move. Unscrewed completely and fell into my hand. LOL Yeah, all good. No fire, no harm, andno robots destroyed in the making of.
This has been super fun so far. I have a BAD tendency to try too hard or to work on re-inventing the wheel when many answers I need could be even here and I haven’t learned to ask the questions yet.
Congrats on the build! It looks really good. In MN the system in my garage comes inside for the winter, but it lives in the garage the other 1/3 of the year. For your movement tests, a handy power switch works well to stop any smoke from appearing. I’ve seen a couple YAML files posted on the site, though I don’t have a link for you. All to be offered is the encouragement to go out and find. Well done!
Surprisingly enough, the motors won’t actually smoke if they’re turning opposite directions. Especially if you only tell it to go only 1 or 2 mm. You just hear a lovely grinding noise as the belts hop teeth on the gears.
In fact… A 1/4" end mill digging through a steel screw head makes WAY worse noise.
If you built yours from the kit, then you should be able to load Ryan’s config directly from Github and/or the proper config likely was loaded from Ryan before he shipped it.
Welcome! Looking good so far. This summer has been pretty brutal and way too dry. I actually stayed out of the garage most of the summer mainly to not deal with the heat so I need go through my whole build and check that everything is secure/operational.
I did notice a few parts have become loose, possibly due to thermal cycling. I bumped one of my loose end stops so I’m going to have to re-square. But besides that I haven’t really seen any issues with the elevated temps so I believe you should be ok.
Make sure you don’t over tighten any of the screws/bolts. That is except for the grub screws. Crank those down and be sure to use Loctite!
