I ran into an issue where the z axis seems to be binding. We’ve ran many jobs before successfully and haven’t had this issue.
At the end of a job, the z-axis went down instead of retracting up. I tried jogging the z-axis up through the jog menu in Carbide motion and it went further down.
When we try to re-initialize the machine through the setup wizard, the z-axis seems to move up briefly then go down and gets stuck and doesn’t move further.
I have a shapeoko 4 xxl (z-plus) with very little use. When I manually lift the spindle, it take a great amount of effort.
The linear rail seems to be moving fine (although I am going to try oiling it). I can manually spin the lead screw counter-clockwise ok-ish, but clockwise is pretty slow.
In disassembling the spindle mount, I removed the antibacklash nut and the mount moved up and down easily as if the anti backlash nut is introducing a lot of resistance or binding with the worm screw. I am presuming that the spindle mount should lift up manually without great effort?
What else could it be? Any other things I can try besides oiling the linear rail bearings? I can’t even initialize the machine like I used to so I doubt it’s a configuration issue. I appreciate any advice. Thanks