Aiph5u
August 13, 2023, 6:31pm
12
Hey Tom,
please also think of connectors and cables possibly failing. Especially the curly Z cable! It can fail by an internal cable break and make Z positioning errors before failing completely.
Also think of connectors are only tin-plated and can have bad contacts:
Also as you can read in the document “Troubleshooting: Rail is getting hung, stuck, or out of alignment (x35/x50 machines) ”, there are some tips on cable and connector checking, and the Onefinity Elite uses the same type of non-shielded control cables with similar tin-plated Molex/Amphenol connectors and also with same lacking strain relief as the Standard Series, so I would have a look at some defects like these:
and also follow the tips for these:
Disconnect all wires on the rail that isn’t moving, from controller to motor, triple check all 4 pins inside each connector are present, straight, and leveled with each other. Then reconnect all connections, ensuring they fit very snuggly and 'snap ’ together. Here’s some pictures of a bad wire and a pin pushed in.
To check all of these cables/connectors, after having followed the tips from the manufacturer above which consists of reseating the connectors, inspecting the crimp on their pins, etc., and this leads to no success, I would thoroughly check them this way:
To check the cable, I would unplug it on the controller side and on the other end and check all four wires one by one for conductivity between both ends, by using a multimeter set to resistance (ohms). But it could be that you measure that everything is okay because the fault my appear only in certain moments, in certain positions of the cable, when you move it, etc. Usually it’s the motion on a cable that is not made for permanent motion that can make problems after a while, mostly where the individual wire is crimped into the contact, or between the contacts which unfortunately are only tin-plated which means movement and/or corrosion can wear the plating leaving the bare copper open to air which is even more prone to corrosion. In this case, a little amount of KONTAKT 60 and then KONTAKT 61 can help.
And finally think of retrofitting strain relief . The stepper cables on the side hang around freely during movement, that is not good for the connectors and the wires in them.
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