Peter, Once again, and in the middle of the night, you came to my rescue again! Suddenly started having lots of skips. In fact, one of the X-axis motors would suddenly stop turning in one direction. Stop what I was doing, and went back to visit your outstanding video. After reviewing your video, decided to that all the motors off, marked the zero location on the motor frame and shaft as you demonstrated in the video, and ran a long program. Afterwards, found two motors not returning to zero (one X motor and the Y motor). X motor was sever, but Y motor just a little. Then swapped motor that returned to zero with motors that did not, and repeated test. Problem was traced back to driver electronics. Replaced drivers with spares on shelf, and back in business. You make it so easy to troubleshoot. Thanks so much for sharing and educating us. Mike Kansas, USA
I got Minimum wrong size of cutting material issue，2mm become 2.4mm,not big deal,but it's killing me,G codes is find, step setting find,structure okay,I don't know,may I need try lower speed setting
Hello Peter, By listening to your video, I finally understood and found the reason my stepper motors were missing steps lately. It was a combination of items. When I finally reduced the power to my stepper motors by half (motors were big enough anyway), the cutting errors were greatly reduced. At first, I just thought it was the heat in the motor that caused the motor to miss steps. But then I heard your presentation and heard you say sometime about power supply. BINGO! I had upgraded all four of my stepper motors from 425 oz-in with 3 amp drivers to 651 oz-in with 6 amp drivers -- but failed to upgrade my power supply to deliver the required amps. So by reducing the power to the bigger motor from 6 amp each to 3 amps, the old power supply could keep up. Otherwise, it would run a little ragged. Thanks for mentioning “power supply” in your video. If I truly want the full power to the motors, I will have to buy a larger power supply. The second source of problems was the motor velocity and acceleration settings in Mach3. Mine was set too high. Reduced them also in half, and now I get very clean cuts with no missing steps. The system takes a little long to cut, but hey, it is faster than I can keep up with the sanding and other tasks. Thanks again for another wonderful video and the help you give to the community. Mike
Thanks Mike, Great to hear you solved your problem and the video helped you out. It is encouraging to get feedback and know that it helps. Thanks for the feedback and all the best with your upgrade. Cheers Peter
Great general tutorial on how to save a few brain cells when figuring out what busted on your CNC. :) If you have a factory made or kit one, first check the manual that came with it. Often the real problem could be simply something like the V-rollers being too tight or too loose. Too tight is a common problem with belt drive ones using small steppers. If a cure is not there THEN do as this tutorial suggests. Its a general thing not specific to any CNC but does cover a number of common issues. NOT covered but I ALWAYS use the blue thread lock on ALL screws. :) One thing about all steppers is something called a resonance point based on step rate frequency. You can usually find this in the docs for the stepper. At some specific step rate a stepper will stop somewhat dead in its tracks and vibrate back and forth between two points. If you go on past this point the stepper will act normally. In Mach 3 and possibly in other control software you could hit this point by messing with the ramp rates. THERE IS NOTHING WRONG and your not doing damage if this happens so dont panic, just slow down the ramp rate.. :) It can also happen if you set your rapid rate high enough also but its not likely on small ( under 4 feet long ) cncs. There are ways to run steppers at rates far above this point but Ive never seen it on small ones. This WILL DEFINATLY cause lost steps and you WILL HEAR it. Its a loud buzz. The fix is simple, just slow things down. With belt drive CNCs its highly unlikely you will ever see this as the step rates to do it will usually make an axis take off like a rocket. With lead screws with high pitch threads its possible with really high rapid travel rates. So if you hear a loud buzzing and nothing is moving, you are at that resonance point. The Micro stepping settings also have huge effect on this, the more micro stepping you use the lower the travel rate will be when you hit it. As he DID mention briefly micro stepping I do not recommend more than a divide by 2 setting. at 2 your power loss from the no micro stepping is about 30%. The greater the micro stepping the greater the power loss. Often by backing off on the micro stepping you may solve the problem but ONLY after covering what is stated in this tutorial. Do you really need micro stepping or not? With belt drives, most likely so. With lead screws, not necessarily, It all depends on the resolution you need. With wood and most plastics .010 is all you really need. Thats about the thickness of 2 or 3 sheets of printer paper. To get the resolution requires a bit of math. A typical stepper has 200 steps of 1.8 degrees for a full rotation. For belt drives you have to work out how big the pullys are to translate the rotation to a linear travel with a bit of trig. The bigger the pulley, the father you go. BUT bigger pulleys mean less torque. With lead screws the finer the pitch, the slower you go compared to the same settings on a corse pitch with the same step rate. The math is easy on lead screws. As an example I use a 1/2 10 pitch 5 start acme rod.. The math - a 10 pitch 5 start rod means one full rotation gives a half inch of travel so for a full inch you need 400 steps. now 1 divided by 400 gives gives .0025 inches per step with NO micro stepping and NO power loss. I actually use a micro step of 2 which means it takes 800 steps for an inch for a resolution of .00125. WELL within the range of high precision metal work and well below what can be accurately measured on he typical .001 dial indicator. Reality is factors like friction do reduce things. In the end .002 is what the overall measured accuracy works out to be. I DONT NEED micro stepping past 2 to get decient resolution for mostly wood. :) Lead screws also have a multiplying effect on force too in addition to locking things in a fixed point with no power. With the 450 oz/in steppers I use its easy to snap 1/4 bits clean off by hitting a clamp thats well locked down..Done it a couple times being stupid. :) I can get easily rapids in the range off 300 IPM easily also but with a bit over 2 feet of travel and the required ramps its actually overall slower than the 120 IPM I use. :) I had to include the stuff about the stepper weird resonance issue and the micro stepping stuff as it can be a factor, espically on the first power on trials. :) Rare to see but it can and does happen. The only other thing Il add is if you have 2 different cam ( g-gode) programs try the same project with both with the same exact toolpath settings from both. I use mostly V-carve desktop and one called cambam. For the downright serious stuff I use fusion 360..
It turned out I had 2 problems. The first was that the acceleration for the “Z” axis was set to high. The second had to do with how either I or Vetric scaled text. The width of my text changed from wide to less wide as it cut to the right. Because the width of the text was less, the depth of the cut became less as it cut to the right. I used a “45 degree V” bit. I need to be more careful scaling text. Thanks for your video and response. They set me on the right track.
Peter, I have relied on your videos a lot over the last 4 years. Once again you have come to my rescue. I am having the exact problem that you describe here. Now Off to try to run it down. OBTW, great explanation on the pulse duration setting. I have never heard that. I'm currently set to 0 so I'm guessing that might have something to do with this issue.
Good one. Note that pulse Duration only applies when using the parallel port. If you are using a motion controller then the durations are automatic. Cheers Peter
@@cncnutz Always great to hear back from you Peter. I tried turning off X & Y in ports and pins, and then ran my program only on Z. It didn't work like you suggested. Y axis just ran away and kept climbing, Z never moved after a few initial moves. This was a pretty simple program, cut an ellipse, advance Z deeper after the first go around. At that point, when the Z steps down, it seems to be losing a step or two. Any suggestions on why the disable X,Y didn't work for me?
Hi Jim The only thing I can think of if that you didn't disable the axis. If you did disable the axis and they are still moving then either Mach3 is corupt or you have an electrical issue with the axis. Neither of the seem likely as the X & Y were not your problem. If you get really stuck email me. Cheers Peter
Peter, I'm having a severe step loss problem. I think most of it is because my motors are under powered but what's weird is that i can jog the heck out of it all over that table at quite high speeds(for the motors\lead screws) and not lose steps but when i try to run the road runner in M3 it gets all out of kilter. This machine has never run before. Gantry is quite heavy for the motors but it thought i could get it working without load. All of this is without cutting just air cutting. Cheers, Lyle
Nice video, I have tried this, but wen I run the machine to move to 100mm after calibration, it moves but if I run it to move 150 and 200mm it jump to 152 and 202mm also if I calibrate at dat 150 and 200mm and run the machine to 100mm it stop at 99mm. Please I need your help, please your reply is really appreciated.
At 19:32 of this video you mention something that sounds like "Shear Line Mode". I don't know what that means, and don't know where to look for it. I use the Ethernet Smooth Stepper and am loosing steps in the Z axis. Thanks. Really like you videos.
The sherline mode setting is located on the first screen of the ports and pins settings, in Mach3. It is located to the lower right side of the pop up window.
Thanks for the video. Might actually help solve 1 month worth of frustration. By any chance would you happen to know the version of the ESS driver that you used to sort out this issue?
I can't remember any more but it was a long time ago but it might have been SmoothStepper_v17fe I'm not sure. I still have it for some reason so if you can't find it contact me through my website. Cheers Peter
+youness agouzzal Gcode does not cause lost steps ever. Some types of Gcode can show show up the problem more than others. eg in normal 2D cutting the an axis may only move 1000 times throughout the cutting process and a lost step or 2 here or there may never be noticed even after years of machining. A 3D model may move an axis 1/2 a million times or more and the accumulation of lost steps will stand out. Nothing has changed but the accumulation of lost steps now may make a problem that was invisible before look like a disaster. 3D Gcode is usually made up of thousands of very short moved constantly changing direction and nothing shows up lost steps more than these types of toolpaths. Hope this answers your question. Cheers Peter
Pete, I have to say out of all of the videos I have watched on CNC including those that are professional CNC'ers. This gave the Best diagnostics for debugging missing steps. Having watch your video on using the correct steppers and drivers and are they paired correctly makes justifying this video important. Why? cause not having the correct combination of motor and power supply you might have well put your self on the CNC table give oneself a labotamoy for being so stupid.
@@TheSteve457 His Stephen, here is the video that he talking about. th-cam.com/video/CgYHTCeWMoA/w-d-xo.html If you follow the link under the video you can see the write-up that goes with the video. Cheers Peter
Peter,
Once again, and in the middle of the night, you came to my rescue again! Suddenly started having lots of skips. In fact, one of the X-axis motors would suddenly stop turning in one direction. Stop what I was doing, and went back to visit your outstanding video. After reviewing your video, decided to that all the motors off, marked the zero location on the motor frame and shaft as you demonstrated in the video, and ran a long program. Afterwards, found two motors not returning to zero (one X motor and the Y motor). X motor was sever, but Y motor just a little. Then swapped motor that returned to zero with motors that did not, and repeated test. Problem was traced back to driver electronics. Replaced drivers with spares on shelf, and back in business.
You make it so easy to troubleshoot. Thanks so much for sharing and educating us.
Mike
Kansas, USA
+Mike Falkner
Great news Mike.
Glad it helped you out.
Cheers
Peter
Lost stips from the stippa motah. great video.
So much to learn,as long as these videos stay for reference we will all be great, learning lots thank you
+Bernie NUFC
We should be right so long as Google doesn't close.
Cheers
Peter
I got Minimum wrong size of cutting material issue，2mm become 2.4mm,not big deal,but it's killing me,G codes is find, step setting find,structure okay,I don't know,may I need try lower speed setting
Hello Peter,
By listening to your video, I finally understood and found the reason my stepper motors were missing steps lately. It was a combination of items. When I finally reduced the power to my stepper motors by half (motors were big enough anyway), the cutting errors were greatly reduced. At first, I just thought it was the heat in the motor that caused the motor to miss steps. But then I heard your presentation and heard you say sometime about power supply.
BINGO! I had upgraded all four of my stepper motors from 425 oz-in with 3 amp drivers to 651 oz-in with 6 amp drivers -- but failed to upgrade my power supply to deliver the required amps. So by reducing the power to the bigger motor from 6 amp each to 3 amps, the old power supply could keep up. Otherwise, it would run a little ragged. Thanks for mentioning “power supply” in your video. If I truly want the full power to the motors, I will have to buy a larger power supply.
The second source of problems was the motor velocity and acceleration settings in Mach3. Mine was set too high. Reduced them also in half, and now I get very clean cuts with no missing steps. The system takes a little long to cut, but hey, it is faster than I can keep up with the sanding and other tasks.
Thanks again for another wonderful video and the help you give to the community.
Mike
Thanks Mike,
Great to hear you solved your problem and the video helped you out.
It is encouraging to get feedback and know that it helps.
Thanks for the feedback and all the best with your upgrade.
Cheers
Peter
Great general tutorial on how to save a few brain cells when figuring out what busted on your CNC. :) If you have a factory made or kit one, first check the manual that came with it. Often the real problem could be simply something like the V-rollers being too tight or too loose. Too tight is a common problem with belt drive ones using small steppers. If a cure is not there THEN do as this tutorial suggests. Its a general thing not specific to any CNC but does cover a number of common issues. NOT covered but I ALWAYS use the blue thread lock on ALL screws. :)
One thing about all steppers is something called a resonance point based on step rate frequency. You can usually find this in the docs for the stepper. At some specific step rate a stepper will stop somewhat dead in its tracks and vibrate back and forth between two points. If you go on past this point the stepper will act normally. In Mach 3 and possibly in other control software you could hit this point by messing with the ramp rates. THERE IS NOTHING WRONG and your not doing damage if this happens so dont panic, just slow down the ramp rate.. :) It can also happen if you set your rapid rate high enough also but its not likely on small ( under 4 feet long ) cncs. There are ways to run steppers at rates far above this point but Ive never seen it on small ones. This WILL DEFINATLY cause lost steps and you WILL HEAR it. Its a loud buzz. The fix is simple, just slow things down.
With belt drive CNCs its highly unlikely you will ever see this as the step rates to do it will usually make an axis take off like a rocket. With lead screws with high pitch threads its possible with really high rapid travel rates. So if you hear a loud buzzing and nothing is moving, you are at that resonance point. The Micro stepping settings also have huge effect on this, the more micro stepping you use the lower the travel rate will be when you hit it.
As he DID mention briefly micro stepping I do not recommend more than a divide by 2 setting. at 2 your power loss from the no micro stepping is about 30%. The greater the micro stepping the greater the power loss. Often by backing off on the micro stepping you may solve the problem but ONLY after covering what is stated in this tutorial.
Do you really need micro stepping or not? With belt drives, most likely so. With lead screws, not necessarily, It all depends on the resolution you need. With wood and most plastics .010 is all you really need. Thats about the thickness of 2 or 3 sheets of printer paper. To get the resolution requires a bit of math. A typical stepper has 200 steps of 1.8 degrees for a full rotation.
For belt drives you have to work out how big the pullys are to translate the rotation to a linear travel with a bit of trig. The bigger the pulley, the father you go. BUT bigger pulleys mean less torque.
With lead screws the finer the pitch, the slower you go compared to the same settings on a corse pitch with the same step rate. The math is easy on lead screws. As an example I use a 1/2 10 pitch 5 start acme rod.. The math - a 10 pitch 5 start rod means one full rotation gives a half inch of travel so for a full inch you need 400 steps. now 1 divided by 400 gives gives .0025 inches per step with NO micro stepping and NO power loss. I actually use a micro step of 2 which means it takes 800 steps for an inch for a resolution of .00125. WELL within the range of high precision metal work and well below what can be accurately measured on he typical .001 dial indicator. Reality is factors like friction do reduce things. In the end .002 is what the overall measured accuracy works out to be. I DONT NEED micro stepping past 2 to get decient resolution for mostly wood. :) Lead screws also have a multiplying effect on force too in addition to locking things in a fixed point with no power. With the 450 oz/in steppers I use its easy to snap 1/4 bits clean off by hitting a clamp thats well locked down..Done it a couple times being stupid. :) I can get easily rapids in the range off 300 IPM easily also but with a bit over 2 feet of travel and the required ramps its actually overall slower than the 120 IPM I use. :)
I had to include the stuff about the stepper weird resonance issue and the micro stepping stuff as it can be a factor, espically on the first power on trials. :) Rare to see but it can and does happen.
The only other thing Il add is if you have 2 different cam ( g-gode) programs try the same project with both with the same exact toolpath settings from both. I use mostly V-carve desktop and one called cambam. For the downright serious stuff I use fusion 360..
It turned out I had 2 problems. The first was that the acceleration for the “Z” axis was set to high. The second had to do with how either I or Vetric scaled text. The width of my text changed from wide to less wide as it cut to the right. Because the width of the text was less, the depth of the cut became less as it cut to the right. I used a “45 degree V” bit. I need to be more careful scaling text.
Thanks for your video and response. They set me on the right track.
Peter, I have relied on your videos a lot over the last 4 years. Once again you have come to my rescue. I am having the exact problem that you describe here. Now Off to try to run it down. OBTW, great explanation on the pulse duration setting. I have never heard that. I'm currently set to 0 so I'm guessing that might have something to do with this issue.
Good one. Note that pulse Duration only applies when using the parallel port. If you are using a motion controller then the durations are automatic.
Cheers
Peter
@@cncnutz Always great to hear back from you Peter. I tried turning off X & Y in ports and pins, and then ran my program only on Z. It didn't work like you suggested. Y axis just ran away and kept climbing, Z never moved after a few initial moves. This was a pretty simple program, cut an ellipse, advance Z deeper after the first go around. At that point, when the Z steps down, it seems to be losing a step or two. Any suggestions on why the disable X,Y didn't work for me?
Hi Jim
The only thing I can think of if that you didn't disable the axis. If you did disable the axis and they are still moving then either Mach3 is corupt or you have an electrical issue with the axis. Neither of the seem likely as the X & Y were not your problem. If you get really stuck email me.
Cheers
Peter
Peter,
I'm having a severe step loss problem. I think most of it is because my motors are under powered but what's weird is that i can jog the heck out of it all over that table at quite high speeds(for the motors\lead screws) and not lose steps but when i try to run the road runner in M3 it gets all out of kilter. This machine has never run before. Gantry is quite heavy for the motors but it thought i could get it working without load. All of this is without cutting just air cutting.
Cheers,
Lyle
+Lyle Feucht
Check your acceleration. If it is too high you will loose steps.
Cheers
Peter
Thank you, You are a Great Help
Thanks roddy
Thanks again for an excellent video.
Nice video, I have tried this, but wen I run the machine to move to 100mm after calibration, it moves but if I run it to move 150 and 200mm it jump to 152 and 202mm also if I calibrate at dat 150 and 200mm and run the machine to 100mm it stop at 99mm. Please I need your help, please your reply is really appreciated.
some times with new stepper motors they, sometimes, they resonate at a particular pulse rate;
i had to go into mach3 and go to lower speed.
Great one again Peter
+Tom S
Thanks Tom
At 19:32 of this video you mention something that sounds like "Shear Line Mode". I don't know what that means, and don't know where to look for it.
I use the Ethernet Smooth Stepper and am loosing steps in the Z axis.
Thanks. Really like you videos.
The sherline mode setting is located on the first screen of the ports and pins settings, in Mach3.
It is located to the lower right side of the pop up window.
Hi Peter,
Another informative video! Thanks. Now, about that monitor sitting on your table?
Thanks for the video. Might actually help solve 1 month worth of frustration. By any chance would you happen to know the version of the ESS driver that you used to sort out this issue?
I can't remember any more but it was a long time ago but it might have been SmoothStepper_v17fe I'm not sure.
I still have it for some reason so if you can't find it contact me through my website.
Cheers Peter
hi, there is no relation between the g-code and step losing?
+youness agouzzal
Gcode does not cause lost steps ever.
Some types of Gcode can show show up the problem more than others. eg in normal 2D cutting the an axis may only move 1000 times throughout the cutting process and a lost step or 2 here or there may never be noticed even after years of machining.
A 3D model may move an axis 1/2 a million times or more and the accumulation of lost steps will stand out.
Nothing has changed but the accumulation of lost steps now may make a problem that was invisible before look like a disaster. 3D Gcode is usually made up of thousands of very short moved constantly changing direction and nothing shows up lost steps more than these types of toolpaths.
Hope this answers your question.
Cheers
Peter
So how did that Mr Murphy guy get on this Air Force Base anyway he's been no help at all... 🤬
Pete, I have to say out of all of the videos I have watched on CNC including those that are professional CNC'ers. This gave the Best diagnostics for debugging missing steps. Having watch your video on using the correct steppers and drivers and are they paired correctly makes justifying this video important. Why? cause not having the correct combination of motor and power supply you might have well put your self on the CNC table give oneself a labotamoy for being so stupid.
Thanks Don
Please where is the video on what steppers and drivers to use
@@TheSteve457
His Stephen, here is the video that he talking about.
th-cam.com/video/CgYHTCeWMoA/w-d-xo.html
If you follow the link under the video you can see the write-up that goes with the video.
Cheers
Peter