Newbie trying to get started - going from bad to worse

Software
1

Hi, I’m eager to dive into the world of cnc, but I am a true novice; been struggling all day with various user error issues regarding zeroing the machine out (previously foreign term) and getting x and y confused. I thought I had those issues sorted out, but there has been no successful carve to prove it; indeed, I seem to have landed in major malfunction territory. I I’m only trying to make the iphone stand project that is a Meshcam tutorial. Here is what came out when I hit L as I attempted another crack at it - I hope someone can make heads or tails of it.

Test Waiting…
<Alarm,MPos:0.000,0.000,0.000,WPos:0.000,0.000,0.000,Buf:0,RX:0,Ln:0,F:0.>
error: Alarm lock
CarbideMotion 0.9g
[’$H’|’$X’ to unlock]
___________$X ___________
<Alarm,MPos:0.000,0.000,0.000,WPos:0.000,0.000,0.000,Buf:0,RX:0,Ln:0,F:0.>
error: Line overflow
error: Alarm lock
ok
error: Alarm lock
ok
error: Alarm lock
ok
error: Alarm lock
ok
error: Alarm lock
gc_motion
___________N0G0X-120.000 ___________
ok
error: Alarm lock
ok
error: Alarm lock
ok
error: Alarm lock
ok
error: Alarm lock
<Alarm,MPos:0.000,0.000,0.000,WPos:0.000,0.000,0.000,Buf:0,RX:0,Ln:0,F:0.>
error: Alarm lock
<Alarm,MPos:0.000,0.000,0.000,WPos:0.000,0.000,0.000,Buf:0,RX:0,Ln:0,F:0.>
error: Alarm lock
ok
error: Alarm lock
ok
error: Alarm lock
ok
<Alarm,MPos:0.000,0.000,0.000,WPos:0.000,0.000,0.000,Buf:0,RX:0,Ln:0,F:0.>
error: Alarm lock
CarbideMotion 0.9g
[’$H’|’$X’ to unlock]
___________$X ___________
<Alarm,MPos:0.000,0.000,0.000,WPos:0.000,0.000,0.000,Buf:0,RX:0,Ln:0,F:0.>
error: Line overflow
error: Alarm lock

2

I’m really sorry for the trouble- we’ll get it working for you.

Looking at that log, it’s difficult to make out what’s going on. Can you make sure to try the beta of CarbideMotion V2 from http://carbide3d.com/downloads

Did you do the wrench tutorial with the provided gcode? Was that any different?

-Rob

3

I’m not sure if I will be able to help - but my Nomad is arriving tomorrow (so says FedEx), and my plan is to start documenting my journey into CNC from the ground up. I’m brand new to this as well, with the exception of having some experience in working with a small machine shop a number of years ago to make me some custom aluminum parts for Ford Mustangs.

In any case - I do videography on the side, so the plan is to record each step of my journey with the Nomad. I should be starting my first cut later this week, so I’ll post back with my experience and will also have some video to share.

4

Darren:

I look foreword to seeing how you adventure goes. If you have time could you show some of the basic machine setup for both hardware and software? What are you going to be making first?

5

For sure I’ll do that. My plan is to document every step, including the unboxing! I have a Mac though so not sure the software setup will apply to everyone.

And I think my first cut will be the wrench. Then the 2.5d face. From there, I have some files I got for animal shapes that I am going to cut out of the synthetic wood.

I also ordered the vice so my plan is to load up some wooden toy blocks I have to see if I can do some engraving.

6

PS - I also ordered an edge finder from Carbide with the vice so hopefully that helps with edge finding.

7

Darren:

I also use Mac’s so I am doubly interested in seeing how things go for you. I was expecting a unit to ship
last week, but no notice yet. I should get it soon, and then will also share my adventures.

Do we need to disable the Mac screen saver for Carbide motion to run?

I have been going through all the documentation I could find, the you tube videos, and CNC sites. I have
also been designing some simple things to practice on when the machine arrives.

Good luck tomorrow!

8

Thanks for the quick response, Rob. I’ll try the wrench tutorial next - tomorrow, I hope. I was attempting the Meshcam tutorial iphone stand project because I thought I should become familiar with that program at the same time; maybe I should have tried the wrench first.

I am using CarbideMotion V2.

Here are some details from my experience that may or may not be helpful:

When I loaded the iphone stand dfx into Meshcam, the xyz coordinates always wound up not in the lower left hand corner of the model, but way off to the side, not over the ‘territory’ of the model. This threw me off, and the Nomad seemed thrown off too, though maybe for other reasons!

When I thought I had zeroing figured out, (and before and after getting x and y squared away) as I started the job in CarbideMotion, I would get the ‘project running’ screen showing up to 15% complete while the cutter would be moving around and spinning, but not cutting wood, and often moving far away from the stock. Am I right to assume that the cutter should immediately move to the right place and cutting should begin immediately? Please forgive the question, but I just wanted to confirm that I need not wait to abort in such a case.

Finally, to try to work around the problems I was having, I used the Carbide auto toolpath tool in Meshcam to make the gcode. This seemed promising at first, until the Nomad started doing things that have me concerned. I would hit ‘begin project’ in CarbideMotion and the tool would start moving to the right place, but then my screen would stop showing ‘project running, x%’, and go back to the ‘connect nomad’ screen. The Nomad would be in a state of hanging, just spinning and stopping for short intervals, not moving in any direction. Power cycling the Nomad and the computer often didn’t resolve the hanging, though sometimes it seemed to. I tried several different usb ports to no avail, though none coming right off the motherboard - would that make a difference?

My obvious concern is the sudden and severe connection problems. Along with losing contact mid project I got this message frequently before I could do anything: ‘GRBL error: cannot open port for Nomad’. Checking the device manager, I see there is an unknown device under the usb controllers that says ‘Windows has stopped this device because it has reported problems. (Code 43)’, under device status. That seems relevant, right?

I’ll be very grateful for your help - sorry for the tedium.

9

I’ve never seen that kind of connection problem so I’d check the cabling first. If you can connect directly to the PC then that may eliminate a flakey cable. While doing that, be sure to unplug the Nomad cable from the Nomad and reinsert it to make sure it’s seated well.

When running a job, the cutter will move back and forth a few times to calibrate, then begin cutting.

Regarding the Mac- just make sure it isn’t going to sleep and it should work well. Some users have used the “caffinate” command from terminal to make sure this is the case. OS X is currently our primary development platform so it’s well supported.

Rob

10

When I loaded the iphone stand dfx into Meshcam, the xyz coordinates
always wound up not in the lower left hand corner of the model, but way
off to the side, not over the ‘territory’ of the model. This threw me
off, and the Nomad seemed thrown off too, though maybe for other
reasons!

Make sure you are setting the Program Zero before you generate the gcode. It doesn’t matter where the geometry is in 3-space–gcode is generated relative to the Program Zero.

The basic steps are:

  1. Import the geometry
  2. Define the stock, which will be in relation to the geometry
  3. Set the Program Zero, which will be in relation to the stock
  4. Generate the gcode, which will be in relation to the Program Zero

You can verify the position of the Program Zero on-screen. There are two multicolored axis triads. The unlabeled one is the geometry origin and the labeled one (X Y Z) is the Program Zero.

Randy

11

Hi, all. Well, I re-positioned my Nomad so that I could access the usb ports that come off the motherboard, used a different usb cord, and took a crack at the wrench project. And… Suffice it to say, I’m in major malfunction territory. I was encouraged that everything seemed to be working as expected until the cutting started, when the failure of the spindle to spin without interruption produced a terrible straining and wrenching. This really looks to my untrained eyes to be a serious issue, and it’s harshing my mellow!

Here are some videos showing what’s going on: https://youtu.be/JU0QVeFNB9c

I would love it if someone out there can tell me A. they know what’s going on here, and B, I won’t have to send the machine back, but I guess I’ll take whatever I can get.

Thanks for the info, Randy.

12

Maybe tonight I’ll try to control the nomad with a different computer, until I’m advised to do something else…

13

Peter, just an onlooker’s view. From the Youtube video it looks and sounds like the spindle is bogging down to the point it isn’t cutting, and then the axes are cogging becuase they are trying to drag the stationary cutter through the material. But that much is probably obvious to you!

Is the wrench a canned gcode file, or is it a part you process through MeshCAM? Either way, the cuts as set up should be well within the Nomad’s cutting ability (the wrench is after all a confidence-building exercise…).

Assuming the gcode is “proper” I can think of a few possible causes:

  1. Z zero isn’t set at the correct height relative to the stock’s top surface. Result: too deep an attempted cut that overloads the spindle.
  2. Spindle motor drive circuit problem. Result: not enough torque for the attempted cut.
  3. Cutter bit larger than intended for the gcode file (I have read of mislabeled bits on the forum here). Result: too wide an attempted cut that overloads the spindle.

I don’t see a communication problem as a likely cause of the problem. There were attempted movements in the material, and retract and re-plunge into the material which seems to indicate that the Nomad was receiving commands (or does the Nomad spool up gcode then run independently from the host PC?)

Randy

14

The Nomad’s onboard GRBL board is drip-fed from Carbide Motion, which does interpolation work from the G-code to adjust for tool-height sensing and work-offsets, just FYI :wink:

I’d suggest checking for #1 and #3 first. Peter, did you jog the machine and “zero-out” the axes first before running the file? If you didn’t, that would explain it pretty quick!

15

[quote=“UnionNine, post:14, topic:198”]
The Nomad’s onboard GRBL board is drip-fed from Carbide Motion[/quote]

UnionNine, thank you. The more I know, the less clueless my suggestions can be! :stuck_out_tongue: As I’ve mentioned, I’m a MeshCAM guy and not (so far…) a Carbide guy. But I do have experience on a good number of CNC machines, both home-converted and commercial, and in my professional life I am called upon to make “root-cause” analyses. And I’ve dealt with stepper-driven machines (both in professional life and hobby) since 1985…

Randy

16

Thanks a lot for considering my problems, guys. Since I posted the videos, Jorge has come to my aid; he Skyped with me and we went through the wrench project step by step. It didn’t go wrong in the exact same way as the video, but it did go wrong. It doesn’t seem like zeroing out is the issue, because he and I did it the same way I had been doing it once I finally figured it out. One of the things I find odd is that the Nomad malfunctioned when controlled by 2 different computers, but in different ways. Jorge was going to send me a computer he can vouch for to run the wrench project from - if there are still problems I’ll probably have to send the Nomad back.

Pete