Thank you! I beat my head against the wall many times over the last month. I thought I would be done by the end of Jan. Nope. I worked harder on the weekend than I did during the week. I took Monday off. As old as I am it takes me a day or two to get back in the groove. Cheers!
Around the first weekend of Feb was my first attempt to get things moving. Moved 5mm on the Z and she moved flawlessly. Tried the Y moved like a dream. Tried X and the motor made a loud grinding noise and barely stammered did not even move one rotation. Needless to say the rest of the weekend I was switching wires trying to diagnose the issue. X moved fine if I put on the Y axis motor controller, put the Y on it same thing. I thought maybe my wiring was suspect, or my soldering on the smoothie was junk. Rechecked the solder joints, made a new wire harness for the X from the smoothie to the controller. Nope. Ordered another motor controller, so the next weekend started unhooking the wires and bingo After inspecting the cable it looked like I didn't even solder it. Who knows what I was thinking at the time. Made a new one and it she moved beautiful. Now I have an extra controller. Then I had the motors going the wrong direction, that was no problem, as I just switched the wires on one of the poles to the motor. Last weekend tried to home it in Bcnc and thought I was going to rip the machine apart. Spent all day Saturday playing with Bcnc trying to get it to home, no luck. Sunday I started looking at the config file for the smoothie, and it darn near poked me in the eye half of the lines that I needed to home the machine were commented out. Uncommented them and it homed perfect, calibrated the steps, and tried my first cut last Sunday about 5pm and it worked flawlessly. Needless to say I barely slept Sunday night I was so pumped. Now the learning begins
Great Build! You wouldn't know by the looks of your unit that it was your first. Anyway I am hoping to be in your position in a while. Still researching. Looks like patience and virtue is a man's best friend. Also you know what kind of whiskey to enjoy! EH.
I'm sure glad this was your first machine - if it was your 10th, I'd say you could improve things by some minor change - BUT since this was about as perfect as it could be, all I can say is WOW and bow in humility. Very, very nice job! BTW, Kyo is my goto guy for problem solving too. His help is always spot-on.
MrCalm Seriously! Thanks for putting down the things that went wrong. In many ways these comments are more useful to others than a perfect build! We all learn by your, and other's, mistakes. Really pleased you worked it all out. Well Done. Gray
The only reason it turned out half as good as it did was coming to this site and reading about everyone else's build. I spent two years studying the builds here. Were it not for the instructions Kyo had I would still be scratching my ..... Honestly I wish I knew something about electronics. I have an Arduino that I play with, but when I read "put a 4.7k resistor here or a 10k here" I am out in right field.
Thanks for the nice compliments, but I still have much to learn The force is strong now... Acro or the minimill look like something one should have. LOL
Very nice and clean built! Definitely nicer than when I build it! I'm intrigued by your needle-nose pliers. Are these for left handed persons?
That's why I enjoy this site. You are always learning. Once you think you have absorbed everything, someone brings up another angle. It makes it fun!!
I did somewhat the same thing. I spent over a year reading the forum and studying what other builders did rather than rush in. I wanted to do it mostly right the first time and I believe that made for a better build that I have only had a couple minor problems with. Great build!
Now I have to learn how to use it! Speeds and feeds, toolpaths, bit selection, grbl when will it end LOL. I supposed I could just go watch TV, oh wait...I don't have a tv.