Hey all! I finally got the mechanical and electrical components all set up. I was able to test everything out to make sure that it works. But now, I dont really know what to do next. How do I set up the home location? How do I make sure that home and $H are in the same spot? It seems like there are still a few things I need to do before I can actually start milling. But I havent been able to find anything on youtube on those pieces. I have an Arduino CNC shield v3.
Thanks Peter. Maybe you can help with this as well. Last night I was going to try and get set up. Plugged my CNC shield into the computer, tried to jog my X-axis one way. As soon as I hit the button to move the axis, I heard a pop and the stepper driver started smoking. Checked with my multimeter and its toasted. (Unfortunately, this also broke my laptop too). It was the 2nd time that happened for this axes. 1. Any idea what could cause the driver to blow up? 2. How can I prevent whatever it was that happened from breaking my next computer? Thank you Dave
Could you give us some more details of your cnc shield and stepper drivers? If you have the V3 "protoneer" cnc shield I'm guessing it's a chinese clone as a genuine one would be V3.51. The V3 isn't completely compatible with the latest version of grbl. If you have the small "step-stick" drivers that plug into the shield they are not really capable of providing the power your steppers will need to drive a workbee. There are a few options - you could keep the Arduino and get some separate stepper drivers (and a decent power supply) or you could replace the whole controller with something better. Have a look at the blackbox from Openbuilds - BlackBox Motion Control System Alex. (Although it says Openbuilds Team next to my name - I am here purely as a volunteer - the recommendation is based on my independant opinion - I don't work for openbuilds and wouldn't recommend the blackbox if I didn't know many people use it without problems)
Get a BlackBox. Time is money, replacement laptops too. You won’t be sorry. CNCshield drivers are way underpowered anyway
Bad quality PSU with surges exceeding the safe voltage envelope of the drivers? Short circuits in wiring?
@Peter Van Der Walt i decided not to waste any more time and get a black box. It’s great. Wish I would have gotten it sooner. Today I went to run my machine for the first time. I used the cnc hello world design to give it a go. After I set my zeros I moved the machine and then returned all to 0. It seemed to be accurate. However when I went to run the job things got all funny. The machine started milling right away rather than going to the moving up to the position where it should have actually started milling. I have a work bee 1510, with black box.
I figured it out. I’ve got a screw driven machine and the default settings are for a belt driven machine.
