I was investigating an issue with my X-axis skipping on a couple of cuts when I ran into an issue. I went to initialize the machine and it started making kind of a grinding sound when moving along X and seemed to move the wrong way. Here’s a link to a video showing what happened.
Immediately prior to this, I had been moving the gantry manually trying to see if there were sticking spots or anything I could feel. It seemed to move well with no issues. I had also checked the set screws on the X-axis motor pulley, as well as both the Y-axis pulleys. None of them were loose at all. I’d also checked the V-wheels, which seemed fine - tight but movable with pressure. Lastly, the belts also seem in good shape and not loose.
The skipping only happened twice and the incidents were sporadic. The first was while I was doing a finishing pass with a bowl bit. It was taking off about .01 of material, so should not have been bound in any way. I was watching it and as it moved along the X-axis, it made a “clunk” sound and next thing I know, the machine is cutting through the right side of the bowl. I thought maybe the pulley had caught on some bits of wood so I cleaned everything well and it seemed fine after that for several other projects, and then it skipped again on a much larger cut two days ago. I was in the room but not watching it and I didn’t notice until it was finished.
I’m happy to check other things or provide additional details. I’m hoping someone can help.
I may have figured this out. My v-wheels on the x-axis had quite a bit of gunk in the groove. I cleaned all of them, x and y, and then did a bunch of test jogging, which seemed fine. I ran some small cut jobs and those also went well.
I’m still a little concerned about the grinding and backward movement in the video, but maybe that can also be explained by the dirty wheels?
When I clean and do maintenance on my SO3 I remove my X and Y belts completely. With those out of the way you can move freely move the machine through it’s full range of motion making cleaning, checking, and adjusting V wheel much easier. It also gives you a chance to flip those belts over and give them a good inspection while also checking the belt idler bearings and mounting hardware.
The video I linked showed what happened during an initialization. That was actually the second one. The first one, the router was near the upper left corner. It went up and started to move right to hit the homing switch there like it always does when you initialize, but it started grinding as it moved along the X-axis toward the right side. I turned the machine off, manually moved the gantry and spindle back to where I had them before the first time, powered it on, then initialized again while I took the video. I’ve never seen this happening while running a file and this is the only time I’ve ever seen it during initialization.
The homing switches all seem to work with a manual test. I always set zero to the center of my material by using the jogging controls. I’m not sure what you mean by “extents”, but if you mean was I too close to one edge or the other during a cut, then no. The two times that the X-axis seems to have skipped, the first was on a pretty small piece (12" x 5" or so) that was near the center of the deck. The second one was a larger cut, but also near the center. I’ve had material too far to one side or the other before and Carbide Motion warned me about that, but I never got those warnings for either of the times that the cut skipped.
I will say that I have run a few more cuts after this all happened and they have all run perfectly fine with none of the above problems.