I’ve been playing with this for a bit now, but i’m stumped, i’m very new to all of this.
i start a job and after a little white into the job easel seems to loose its position and starts cutting its 2nd or 3rd pass in a new location. could this be caused by a bad internet connection? or do i have something else going on?
thanks for any advice you can give this helpless noob
Check and see if your belts are slipping
I havent gottenmy machine yet, but I have been checking the forum regularly and have come across a couple of possibilities.
Belt tension and feed rate.
Belt tension is supposed to be guitar string tight Kind of subjective but without the proper gauges…
Feed rate would be both while cutting and when in rapid transit. Coupled with belt tension, you may be jumping teeth on your belts if it’s zipping along too quick.
Thanks for the replies :blush
I thought of that also and tightened the belts and lowered the feed rate to ten and it still did it, it seems to do it with a large job. I ran something small and it worked fine.
I have the worst internet in America so I was thinking maybe I was losing connection with easel during the job. Is that a possibility?
It was a little hard to tell from the picture, but is it only changing position in the Y axis? If so, there are a few threads on here about that. I’d take a look at those, but some things they tend to mention is check belt tension for sure, make sure the y carriages are riding smooth and not loose, and there is a pot that controls power to the Y axis, that can be tweaked a hair higher.
Good Luck
Yeah, my Y axis has been the hardest to tune. The last adjustment I made was actually to loosen one of the eccentric nuts, but it was easy to tell that it was too tight b/c you could hear the belt skipping when it tried to move.
I don’t know the inner workings of Easel, but hopefully once your gcode is generated, it isn’t reliant on an internet connection. You could test this by loading a project, zero-ing your spindle well high above your project (without a bit), starting it up and disconnecting the computer from the internet.
If that does appear to be the problem, you might want to investigate some offline tools for sending gcode, like Universal Gcode Sender (UGS). It also might be a decent Easel feature request to have it allow you to export the gcode.
Don’t have mine yet, but in a similar question about internet - they told me I could load my project into easel on my laptop, and then be offline for the cut. You just can’t make any changes to the project or it can’t save.
You can export the G-Code from Easel. Click on the Machine “menu” and then select “Advanced” in the bottom right corner…
@DavidLair hey Dave,
Had the exact same problem with larger jobs to small jobs. Turned out I had to tune the belts of which to me was pretty tight. You should almost hear a tune when you pluck them. I was only cutting MDF, but Zach told me to decrease the depth of cut and increase my inches per minute and that worked. Hope that helps.
well guys i think my Y axis just needed a little more power 
thank you all for the excellent ideas and help solving this issue. i’m making a practice cut as i type… so fingers crossed 
Easel does not need an Internet connection to send jobs to the machine. This issue is typically caused by:
@DavidLair Would you be willing to share the step by step process, or even photos on how you did it? Did you have to adjust the pot? It’s one step I did not take, but would like to know in the future how to do it. The instructions weren’t very clear on which dial to tune etc. Any help would be appreciated.
here is what helped me:
just slightly adjust the Y potentiometer by turning it clockwise by a small amount until the Y-axis moves smoothly at rapid speeds (link when moving a long distance while Z is retracted on a large job)
Do not over-torque these pots - they are tiny and gentle and will break. The pots have 270 degrees of rotation.
See here for more detail:
Edit: The pots are usually set at 50% and I just had to tweak mine to maybe 60%
This procedure fixed my machine as well, thank you Zach for pointing me to this thread.
For me I used the Universal GCode Sender to perform this. Once connected I set the step to 20 and backed off the screw on the X and Y axis (my Z was fine) until it would barely move. I then increased it until you could tell it was moving with a roughness to the motors. I then decreased until they just got smooth. Problem solved, no more losing square.
I have same issue but its random and even does it when doing a dry run up in the air
Losing position randomly in x and y but not necessarily both at same time…it will be moving ok and then abruptly moves way off toolpath…
Belts are tight…i…will double check the set screws on stepper pulley…when i jog machine everything sounds and moves ok…
Z position is fine
Mine is 2015 xcarve
Another observation…would be nice for inventables to incorporate the limit switches to act as machine stops while in machining mode…too many times my machine goes haywire and loses position then smashes …if the limits would turn machine off then this would not happen…
Take some time and read about homing and soft limits.
thanks larry …i am aware a bit about those two however those are useless when it comes to losing steps or losing position
im looking for a mechanical / electrical shut off that will shut off no matter what if the switch is engaged …this would save my machine from crashing due to software and flimsy belt design whihc loves to slip
i never use the homing switches they are pointless to me
i would like to convert them into shutoff switches…ill research it sometime
The switches can be both homing and limit switches, it is just a matter of changing one grbl setting.
erik
oh cool…so there is a way to make machine shut off once the switch is made?..
if so is it an easy process?..can you assist me?
only issue would be that i only have limits on z up and y front and x left
i would have to desgin limit switch setups for the other 3 positions???
