Hey, all. My Nomad (original Kickstarter unit) has been sitting mostly unused for quite a while, but I’m trying to get back into using it. Last weekend, I did some test cuts, and everything seemed to work fine. Today, I was trying some Carbide Create paths, and everything started fine… then about 5min in, suddenly the spindle stopped during one of the vertical clearance moves – in open air, not in contact with the stock (soft pine).
Well, I scrambled for the E-Stop, scratched my head, and decided to start over, watching it more carefully. And that’s when things got weird. The Nomad homes perfectly well, and does the first half of the Probe fine. But during the move back towards home after climbing away from the probe, the Z axis moves downward, making a “grinding” noise, until the cutter hits the stock and stalls the axes. It’s done this three times in a row now.
The Z axis’s “grinding” noise is not like a physical jam, or a stalling/cogging stepper motor. If anything, it sounds a bit like I would expect if one of the motor wires was shorted, or getting “leakage” (somehow) from the X or Y stepper driver.
I’m still using an old copy of CM 3, and there’ve been no changes to this computer, or to the Nomad, in over a year. And like I said, it ran about an hour’s worth of test cuts last weekend. I have a bad feeling my GRBL board may be starting to fail, or (worse!) a wiring harness or junction. I’m going to have to start opening up the enclosure and examining the hardware in closer detail.
But in the meantime, has anyone ever seen anything like this? This Nomad has never seen much use, and the only issue it ever had was that I had to replace the Z motor a few months after it arrived b/c the lead screw was slowly coming off the motor. Aside from that, it’s been flawless.
