So I built this CNC machine and it sounds a bit squeaky and creaky to me. I've never built one before so I don't know what to expect. Are these noises typical of a machine like this? It was really noisy and vibrated like crazy when I had it on full step with no micro stepping. Now I've got the drivers set on 3200 micro steps. That smoothed it out a lot but it still seems kind of noisy to me. It's moving kind of fast because it's going to be hooked up to a plasma cutter. Once the torch fires you don't want it to be gradually accelerating and decelerating right? Anyway check it out and let me know what you think. I could set the micro steppers to 6400 but I would be a little leery of losing some torque on these small motors. Not that it's going to need a lot of torque to just move a torch head around.
dial down to 8x microstepping, you don't need more than that. then you will be able to increase the acceleration and max speed too.
What stepper drivers did you use? (Some make the motors more noisy than others. IME the ones sold as DIV268 are particularly bad.)
The stepper motors were a mixed bag. The z-axis arrived with one already installed (very cheap for the whole thing at around $25) and the motor moving the gantry was a generis AliExpress buy. The other motor was from Stepperonline and the only one that had a documentation card. I would dial down the steppers but they get even noisier and with more vibration when I do.
If they’re real TB6600 (using the TB6600 chip) then they're really noisy: There are drives that are sold as TB6600, but don't actually have the TB6600 chip inside. They're actually smoother and quieter (not quite as powerful though) Both are noisier than a modern drive.
They look like the ones sold as TB6600, but aren't the TB6600 chip inside (not necessarily a bad thing). The TB6600 chip is very old and a bit of a dinosaur, and only goes up to 16x microstepping. https://www.grbl.org/single-post/tb6600-fake-or-not-but-who-cares You're probably picking up some resonance from the table, too. Once the air is on the plasma torch, you'll never notice
