I cringe anytime i have to use this god damn machine. wasted money on wood to build the workbench it sits on, bought a dedicated laptop for this, a 3000$ dust collector not to mention the square footage it takes up in my garage.
This was working fine for the first few times, but now anytime i use it once, then re-cut something else i get errors with homing switches.
I hate how you close topics after a month as well, it would be nice to see if someone who may have had the same problem resolved their issue…
My machine is square, all homing switches light up, i read it could be heat, but who knows. I live in AZ if that matters.
I’m about to drag this god damn machine behind my truck at 55 mph and sharp turn and brake so it flies into the desert.
HM001: The machine could not pull off the homing switches.
I feel your frustration. Have you had the machine long? Interestingly, many issues derive from missing a small but significant step along the way which affects the final outcome. Sure, you may have got lucky and cut a few things but your machine is not consistently doing what you ask it to do. There must be some aspect of CNC machining that you are not seeing/configuring or carrying out in the right order.
A CNC machine is a very effective tool and it only does what you ask it to do. A CNC machine does nothing without your instruction. CNC machines are not a single use tools like a hammer or a screwdriver.
I had a lot of issues that seemed to come and go when I first got my machine. I did not know enough to understand what my contribution was to the issues. Sometimes the holes in the Swiss cheese aligned and I got something useful done but it was mainly by chance and luck.
Now, I am four years further on and I can plan and make whatever I want to make in any material I choose, Using a CNC machine is at once exhilarating when it does what you planned for it to do and frustrating when it doesn’t. There are a well understood set of skills that you need to learn and bring together to make the best use of a CNC machine.
You will ruin your machine by dragging it behind your truck at 55mph. That action cannot recoup your investment. Sell it to someone who will put in the work to make it viable poposition and get some of your investment back. The alternative is to work a little slower and deal with your issues one at time so that you gain enough knowledge to fix what is not working for you. /rant
machine has 4.5 hours of use with no issue. i simply turn it on load my file and cut, then when done, i hit resume where it runs the gantry to the back. I click stop and yes and then turn it off. when i come back an hour later and try a new cut where turn on, init machine, it blows up with that error.
note i had problems from day one before i was able to even get 4.5 hours out of it. they had to send me a new hdz unit and wiring harness, but after reading other posts similar to mine, it seems like it’s the controller.
what i’m doing is very rudimentary, i’m simply just cutting out patterns for precision, nothing fancy, i just don’t see how it losing or always has issues with it’s homing switching. this time it seems to be with Y2 where it’s always enabled even though the gantry is not touching the switch.
If you’ve managed to get some hours of use from the machine, I would think the controller is not the problem.
The most notorious culprit of issues I have found with the my SO3XXL & ProXXL is the wiring harness connectors. I’ve had connectors which worked fine for months & a lot of hours of machine use devovle into agents of chaos - seemingly working fine one moment, then not so much the next.
They are easy enough to test just be flexing/twisting gently on them to see if it causes changes in the status of the sensors or a stutter/grinding/stopping of a stepper motor while jogging an axis.
The connectors should be secured, especially the ones closest to the steppers, & protected from anything which could put strain on them. However, when in use, the vibrations from machining can be enough to cause a bad connector to cause problems.
Some users have had success zip-tieing the two sides of the connectors together so they literally cannot flex apart. Others have gone the full-monty & cut the connectors out to hardwire the conductors together, thereby eliminating the connectors as a point of failure. But that may void your warranty & it also makes it difficult to dismantle the machine at a later date.
Anyway, I hope this may help you in getting your machine running reliably. Good luck!
I thought that to be the case too, but I just went through the process of testing continuity with my multi meter and all wires are passing. I will try to replace to switch and see like it was suggested above.
I swapped wiring harness to the original one that was sent, but Y2 is still lit up. I also did the following:
Swapped Y2 with spare switch
Swapped X with Y2 using both new switch and original Y2 switch for X
All tests yield the same results, Y2 is always lit up. If I init machine and go to debug, or I set up new machine and start the process all over again, Y2 is always lit up.
Thanks for creating a support ticket, I’ll wait to hear back. It’s just really frustrating to waste weekends troubleshooting every so often.
Just out of curiosity, what is the state of the Y2 when you don’t have the switch connected at all to the wiring harness? Or even just disconnect the Y2 cable from the controller?
Your testing suggests a fault on the controller board - like maybe a pull-up/pull-down resistor had a bad solder joint & no longer makes a proper connection to the signal input line or perhaps a capacitor shorted out.
It also lit up when not connected. I verified all pins and they seat well when connected. I could cut them and replace with my barrel and pin deutsch connectors, but they think that is an extreme measure after the tests I carried out, so we’ll see what support says. I could also do that mdi g28.3 to finish my work but what I’m cutting is my cut out kitchen for my overland drawer so I don’t want to mess up this alum since it was expensive.
Hang in there fellow 12’s member. Go Hawks!!!. I have seen the same issues with my 5 pro as well, at first it all worked great and then the errors started popping up. I did the easy troubleshooting and then reached out to the support staff and in less than 3 hours we had the controller identified as the fault. I rec’d my replacement unit and they emailed me a shipping label to return the old unit. The support staff is awesome and they will get you back up some.
Thanks man! Go Hawks! Originally I was on with support when I originally received my machine where they sent me a new hdz and wiring harness. Then I was rolling for a few days/hours but now I have this new problem.
I don’t think I’m doing anything wrong, I simply open CM, turn on machine and init machine every time, but this time I can’t get past init machine. When starting up, gantry and hdz are always at back right where machine jogs to this position on each shutdown.
I had the same error which was due to pulling a pin out of the X homing switch. Had to use the spare they sent with the machine. My fault though since I think I pulled it when moving it.