This is just to share some experience of moving on with the machine.
Generally everything went smooth - putting together QCW with folding legs and wheels, cutting and attaching the waste board, assembling axis and wiring. Upon the first start there was a problem with homing the x axis. Onefinity technical support was very responsive and on Monday I had a troubleshooting video session. The problem was that the end switch pin on the x axis was too short. Adding 2 layers of masking tape resolved the problem. Tuesday morning the same problem appeared again. Another two layers of masking tape helped and I hope this is for good. Onefinity said that the manufacturing team was informed about the issue (I was not the first) and they are working on a better solution than a masking tape.
One more hiccup was an incorrect setting of the motor stepper resolution for x axis. I had it set to 200 while it should be 125 steps/mm.
I am not too sure how the machine passed QC with this problems.
There are still a couple of obstacles. One is minor but annoying: the wifi network does not get back after restarting HMI. I have to press “Test” button to get it back. This is counter intuitive as well, there are two buttons “connect” and “test”. The “connect” one does not help but the “test” one does almost always. The second issue is with the joypad. I received it today and still cannot get it working. HMI detected it but there is nor reaction on pressing the buttons. I am going to look at it tonight.
Otherwise the machine looks impressive and promising!
Regarding the joypad, I’ve found mine is often unresponsive though recognized as well.
The solution so far has been to unplug and replug the USB dongle on the side of the HMI usually no less than twice but no more than four times and it becomes responsive.
This isn’t perfect, and there’s probably some work that needs to be done in the software, but in the short term, since it only has happened to me at startup it’s not a show stopper.
I tried unplugging and re-plugging and it helped. I observe the same behavior, at startup I need to do that and then it works fine. My concern is that the HMI USB connector will eventually stop working after some re-plugging cycles…
I dont have a gen 2 but I have a feeling if the motor resolution issue was a setting on the controller its probably that the machines get tested with a bench controller and its just your hardware.
Though I’m somewhat confident that Redline will improve the performance in the future, though I’d guess it’s a lower priority issue as they’re still rolling out features, you probably have thousands of cycles on a typical port before it becomes and issue.
That being said, maybe buying the adapter dongle and plugging and unplugging in that would at least relieve some of your concern about wearing the port out in your HMI. That doesn’t mitigate possible wear on the dongle itself of course, but that’s a less expensive part to maintain if for some reason you needed too.
Good idea, ordered! I just probably saw too many broken connectors in laptops and phone while I worked for Motorola.
I am a software engineer and my initial impression is that the HMI software has rather, to put it lightly, some room to be improved. There are imperfections in the UI (which are typically very easy to fix at the development stage and not let it go to production), counter intuitive workflow (like the one with wifi test button) and even bugs. Yesterday I spotted a bug (a minor one) and asked onefinity support how to file a report to redline (no answer so far). However I also hope that Redline will polish the software in the future releases.
I’ve found support at Redline to be very responsive and helpful when I contacted them regarding the RealTimeCNC software image for a Pi build as well as their documentation. Hope your experience with them is as positive as mine was. Contact: support@realtimecnc.com