EDIT: @neilferreri 's suggestion was spot on, it was the pulley. I updated the video to show the solution. Thanks!
Good morning Team Carbide! I’m having issues with the X-axis on my Shapeoko Pro and I’ve run out of troubleshooting ideas. In this video you can see the hitches as I jog through the axis. There aren’t any problems with the Y nor Z axes. The stock in the foreground should have a 2" right triangle in the middle.
The end of the video shows some troubleshooting and the X-axis running smoothly by hand.
This is what I’ve tried so far:
I disassembled the gantry and removed, cleaned, lubed, and reinstalled the linear rails.
I reinstalled and properly tensioned the drive belt.
I checked the resistance of both windings in the motor, both are at 1.7 ohms.
I checked the continuity of the cables from the control board to the the motor while moving the gantry through its full range of motion (as you can see in the video), all four are good.
That has all the signs of a stepper wiring issue. Check all connections. If it happens in the same spot most of the time, that can give you a clue where the wire is broken.
Morning Neal, I actually hooked my multimeter between the connector at the control board and the connector at motor, then ran the x-axis through it’s full range of motion by hand. There wasn’t even a hiccup in continuity on any of the four wires.
Also, the location of the error migrates as I jog along the X-axis, it’s not consistent.
Could it be anything else? Or is another connection I can check? Thanks!
During operation, vibrations can cause a poor connector to provide intermittent connection. Make sure all your connectors on the X gantry are secured & protected from strain or being pushed against by a vac hose. Some people have found that zip-tieing the connector together helps to keep it reliable.
You can test the connectors simply by jogging the axis & fiddling with the connector a little bit. If the axis stops/stutters/makes a grinding noise, then you know that the connector is the issue. Simply measuring the continuity/resistance of the conductors while not in operation usually doesn’t show intermittent connections.
I had my SPROXXL for about a year before I had issues with both my X-axis & Z-axis… Both were due to the connectors not providing 100% reliable connections during operation. Once I got them solidly secured, I haven’t had a problem with them since. And even after moving my machine around a few times.
That’s exactly what it was, thanks! If you could, reply to this post with an appropriate description of that X-axis motion. Searching the internet for things stutter, skip, and slip didn’t get me to the solution.
I have the same issue from time to time and based on a similar reply on another forum, I figured this was due to the x-axis motor connections. I have them zip tied now which works until after several hours of machine running, I have to cut it out and redo it. To be honest, I am always worried when this would malfunction again and ruin my cut. See the pic for my solution.
