I finally got my X-Carve all assembled and did a few practice cuts. The first one looked pretty good, but I noticed some wiggle in my Z-Axis and found that the eccentric nuts had loosed a bit. I was excited to give it another try with a real project.
Once it started it went off the material (it seems like it didn’t use the set home position from the ‘carve’ process). I tried stepping it back over to try again and found that it makes a ‘grinding’ noise when it attempts to move to the right…
With the power off, it slides in both directions along the X-axis.
Triple check your stepper wires from that motor to your Arduino/G-Shield. Mine came loose a few times just moving the power supply into its final position.
Forgot to update! I tried to change the current limit but am not sure I moved it enough to make a difference. I also noticed the belt was slightly looser than I had originally set it. So I undid the screw and retightened it.
Everything worked fine again for a short while and it stopped again. I checked the belt again and it once again was a little loose.
I tightened it once more, but pulled on it this time and it started to come loose very easily, even though the teeth were engaged.
Tightened everything up again and zip-tied both ends and haven’t had any issues since.
You may want to put a washer on the set screw used to hold the bracket in place.
Sometimes the set screw is just a hair to long and bottoms out in the t slot.
If you move the bracket you may see a small scuff in the bottom of the slot that shows this was happening.
Adding a washer fixes this.
