My old PCB carbide motion controller broke (usb connection snapped off) and I bought a replacement.
When the new one arrived I immediately discovered some issues. The z axis was flipped - and also seemed to be off by a magnitude of 5. Meaning, when I told the machine to go down 1mm it would instead go up 5mm (or very close to 5mm). I wrote a python script that went through the output from carbide create and corrected this.
However, I’ve using it several times I’ve also noticed it is having way more issues with skipping steps or jumping a bit. The designs I’ve done since getting it have not been terrible complex (usually 3 or so different paths - maybe 30 minutes or so of CNCing) but I feel like about 1/2 of the time it wrecks the piece. This wasn’t happening before.
Is there anything this is likely to be? I did not change the software or computer I was using (an old Windows laptop with Carbide Motion 3). I even tested out some old .nc codes I had used before and the problems persisted. THoughts? Fixes?
Almost anytime your Z axis goes the wrong way you picked the wrong Z. The Belt Z and HDZ run the opposite way from a Z-Plus. So as @WillAdams suggested go into the configuration and send the correct configuration before trying to run the initialization.