Hi all - I am having a couple of issues with my Z axis and was hoping you could help.
Occassionaly and for no reason by Z axis decides to plunge straight down at high speed until the collet nut hits the workpiece obviously ruining it and yesterday when I was jogging the Z axis up, it suddenly moved at high speed up, ignoring the limit switch until the spindle mount hit its bracket.
This has happended once before and as it is a braked Z stepper I could not manually move the axis down and ended up dismantling the axis so I could move the mount down far enough to clear the limit switch.
The other problem I am having is when I do a carve there are artifacts left and some machining marks left - in the pictures I was using a 6mm end mill for roughing and a 0.75mm tapered ball nose for finishing.
I use a toolsetter so there should not be any discrepency between the height of the roughing bit and finishing.
These issues are probably unrelated but would greatly appreciate your views on how to stop problem one and resolve problem 2.
When do you see this “plunge up or down”? I have seen this right when I try to home after I power up machine. I clean out the homing sensor and un-plug the z stepper and reinstall and issues goes away.
A Few things, One , that youtube did get some details on using the Tool setter and the Touch probe but still a lot of details missing, Like Tool bit numbers, and details about the two enable check boxes in the tool setter enable window.
Two the problem I am having is Before doing anything, just reset the stop and try to home, Getting Z step error, “Sometimes” Not aways
Woodpecker - many thanks for the response.
The first time the plunge into the workpiece was just after starting the machine, set the zero’s and iniated the job - just plunged straight down.
yesterday I got a Z step motor error and found that I had raised the Z to fast and bumped the top of the homing pin on the Z, if that makes sense. If I slowed down when changing a tool and raised the Z slowly to get room to change the tool it all worked a lot better. I am following the process as well and getting a lot better results.
Thanks Scott - in retrospect I think thats maybe what I did, but I would have thought that once the sensor had been tripped the machine would be quick enough to put a stop on the z jog command.
