So after years of sitting around collecting dust, I finally set up my xcarve. It is the old style, gshield and Arduino variety.
It is almost up and running, but when going through the Easel setup, I’ve hit a snag. The X axis and Y axis both move properly, but when I try to move the Z, it only moves up.
During the setup you can hit both up and down, and it moves upward for both buttons. I tried the reverse polarity option in the setup, and it still only moves up.
Anyone have any ideas?
One of the four motor wires is inoperative
After fiddling about with it it started working intermittently, then after I pushed down on the transistor below the Z axis connector , it started working constently, and if I moved it around it would revert, then work again after pushing on it, enough to run an hr long carve.
So I think there might be a bad solder or broken pin on it. Don’t trust it to stay working. Anyone know what spec of component it is/if it is easily accessible, or am I just better off getting a new gshield?
What transistor are you pushing on?
I thought it was a transistor, looking up the number printed on it, it seems to be an electrolytic capacitor. It was the one with the zaxis connector on one side, and power input on another side of it.
Now i’m not so sure that is the problem. Maybe when I push on it, i’m actually pushing the board down better on the arduino, or maybe the wire connector is bending.
Most likely a bad connection in your connector. Have you, with power off, removed the motor wires from the shield and put them back?
I removed and reconnected them, and also swapped with another axis to seeing the fault would follow.
And?
Z movement became normal using y controls, y moved correctly in one direction, the other one it didn’t move backwards, but it did a rough jitter movement.
I’d remove the shield and visually inspect any soldering on the Z connector. Check the arduino too.
