Aiph5u
(Aiph5u (not affiliated with Onefinity))
22
Good morning Tom,
as the issue you show on the workpiece looks like Z positioning faults and since you say you got the machine for a while, I would suspect the curly Z cable to be failing randomly because of an internal cable break. Such errors were already reported. Despite being a spiral cable, the Onefinity stock Z stepper cable is NOT a cable made for permanent motion, and if you ask me, I will EXPECT it to fail one day (and the result should look like your workpiece then. See plunge Z issue). Cables for drag chains, like IGUS chainflex® or LAPP ÖLFLEX® are explicitly made for permanent 24/7 motion in the industry for the use in drag chains.
When you attempt to replace the curly Z stepper cable, remember that an open-loop stepper cable has five conductors and not four like the stock cable, as you would take a 4+PE cable. And for a stepper cable, I would always take a shielded one.
I repeat from my other posting above, I would NEVER take the Original Onefinity machine in its stock state into service, with its stock cable management.
Many thanks for your input, I am ordering the flex cable right now. I totally agree that the Z cable will be the first to fail, and its great to have a shielded cable.
I had another EMI yesterday and my CNC has become so unreliable and a drag on my time that I will probably switch back to the Makita for the time being. I need to look into a metal housing for the VDF.
I have the newer version of the 1F cable with strain relief.
I do not agree in one point though, my problems have nothing to do with a broken cable. I went back to just do test runs of the toolpath on the same ruined piece of maple.
At one point the controller seems to get affected and go haywire.
Interesting fact is that the Z-axis got unhomed and the soft limit was removed, after I stopped the CNC I could run the Z slider against the top and the Z-position on the screen showed 166mm Z height which is basically much more than the Z slider can travel and more than the Z-soft limit allows.
Aiph5u
(Aiph5u (not affiliated with Onefinity))
24
Good morning Tom,
But a stepper cable with a cable break can fail randomly, which means it works most of the time and then the motor makes wrong steps. It can even run into the other direction if one single wire inside is affected in one moment.
How can you be sure it’s EMI? I believe this is extremely difficult to distinguish from other causes impacting the electrical signals inside the cable.
me too, but the molded-on connector housing are just a strain relief for the crimped pins. They do not prevent that the unreliable Molex connectors are subject to movement (at the left end of X axis) which is nothing that they are made for. I would in any case, if you have the opportunity, 3D print a strain relief that fixes the cables way before the connector.
I just finished carving the same model with a different resolution and no issues.
The only difference in the settings were the VCarve modeling resolution in the job setup, I changed it to to very high from maximum. The were too much data/nodes for the controller to handle.
