So, latest update. I changed out the motor to a much bigger one, and it works.
My feeling is the mother board isn’t putting out the current needed to drive the smaller motor on the Z axis (no idea why, just isn’t) I did try putting the y1 motor on the z axis first to see if it was the motor and nothing changed.
Put the bigger motor on and it works. The bigger motor does get a lot hotter than the smaller factory ones, but it works… So for now we are in business again.
Thanks for everyones input and ideas to fix it.
David
I’m thinking of changing all my motors to these upgraded ones, as they run so much smoother. But I do use these CNC’s for production, they work hard for a little machine so a bigger motor may help my needs.
I have a suspicion, just a suspicion, that you inadvertently corrected an electrical or mechanical issue during the motor swap. I’m no stepper motor expert, but with all things being the same (driver, drivetrain, etc.) I don’t think a bigger motor by itself would correct this low power issue. You may have a loose electrical connection, that for the time being is corrected, could be something like a bad solder joint on the board itself or bad/intermittent piece of wiring. Glad it’s working and hope it stays that way.
Maybe, but it took 2 motor swaps to correct it. I do agree though, it’s electrical. I rewired everything both times, and it just worked on the bigger motor, which could be complete coincidence.
Either way it works and didn’t cost much but time and a few dollars to fix. So Its being put to work!
If you completely rewired both times (as in new wire, new plugs, etc.), then if it croaks again I’d really look at the pins on your control board. A bad solder joint can be really hard to trace and can work very intermittently. Even a solder joint that “looks” good can be bad. Time will tell, but glad it’s working. Funny story, I had an old VW Jetta that had weird turn signal “abnormalities”. They’d work, then they’d get “stuck”, then work again for months. I finally tracked it down to a bad solder joint on one of the legs of the blinker relay. Looking at it you could barely tell the solder joint was bad. A touch with a hot soldering iron and it was cured forever…or at least until I sold that car to my boss, but he never mentioned the issue either, haha!!!
yeah, i only changed the wires going to the new motor, as I had to splice in the clip, but i pulled it completely apart, checked everything and put it all together (using OEM wires) again. I just wanted to make sure the connections where good.
I personally think the motor just wasn’t getting quite enough power to go up, it seems strange that a bigger motor can, but maybe its slightly more efficient. maybe the solder joint like you said was a little bad, dry… who knows. I’ll leave that for the engineers.
as a helicopter Pilot, having weird stuff happen, then to never see it again is just something that you learn to accept…
