Howdy, I’ve been having this issue for a bit now. Yesterday my Journeyman started randomly plunging into my workpieces, I did some digging on the site and found that most people that had this issue as well as it randomly moving up while asking it to go down the issue is cable related.
I removed all the cables, cleaned everything up and checked to make sure all wires looked before re-inserting them and ran another file. Successfully got through about 17 minutes of a carve and then it plunged itself down into my wasteboard and I was a little too slow to save my bit.
Anyone have any advice? Should I be looking into getting replacement wires, anything else I should be looking into?
Also note that cables not only fail on their connectors. A multimeter can help. Also be aware that neither Onefinity cable is made for permanent motion in a CNC. Sometimes replacing the curly Z cable, that can break internally, or retrofitting strain relief on the machine can help (or better retrofitting a drag chain system that runs cables specifically made for permanent motion).
I have been experiencing the same issue on my brand new journeyman. I thought it was maybe related to upgrading to the 1.1.1 firmware initially. It plunged into my spoilboard and hit the QCW frame, putting a gouge in it.
Following along to see any possible solutions. Certainly wasn’t expecting this issue with a brand new machine.
curly cables are usually made to accomodate a varying length (e.g. when using an electric shaver), but this is usually not how cables for permanent and repeated motion look like. Here in this case I would check if the inner wires of the curly Z cable break invisibly where they come out of the fixed plastic parts. That is where they are subject to their biggest stress. I would check here first, at least if the machine is not totally new. If it is new, I would rather think of the connectors, or the motor sockets, or EMI, e.g. as mentioned here or here.
For a stepper motor, I would of course use a thinner shielded 4+PE, instead of this thick 3+PE).
Many people here built their drag chains for Onefinity with these cables, you can find files to print 3D parts for free on the web and even in this forum.
Sure. The cables mentioned above are made specifically to be moved all the time, 24/7 for years. But it’s not only the cable, it’s also how it is laid to perform a certain movement and have their strain relief at each axis end and beginning. The problem with the curly cable is, you could say, as a hobbyist, it should last long enough, I’m not running it longer. The problem is, it is stressing the cable end because it is hanging around and you don’t know when it will be that it could fail, but it happens that it fails and it is offered as replacement part, and I am sure that a hobbyist can get more angry then than a professional that computed the expected lifetime of their power chain at installation time and exchanged the cables after a specific number of years.
The cables mentioned above are not expensive, many hobbyists use them. Hope I could help!
What firmware are you running? I have been having a similar issue after upgrading to firmware 1.1.1 a little while back after running flawlessly for a year. According to my extensive (time wise if not quality) research, including this forum and the Facebook Onefinity group, it appears that the issue may be directly related to the firmware that I was running. Onefinity released a new version (1.2.1) just 3 days ago to address the issues with anything above 1.0.9. I literally finished the process of re-flashing the firmware about 5 minutes ago. If you are already past 1.0.9, you have to reflash and not do an upgrade. Hopefully it solves my issue.