Hi Community,
I was wondering if anyone could shed some light on an ongoing Issue I've been having with my CNC Router.
I'm not sure the exact manufacturer of my CNC as I purchased it used and it is a Chinese made machine. It is a 600mm x 900mm machine with a water cooled spindle (see attached photo). It's connected to my computer via a driver plugged into a slot in the back of my computer with a serial port attached. I use Artcam to create G code and export "multicam new .plt" files which I then use ncstudio to send the G-code to my machine. There are photo of my ncstudio settings below for reference.
The issue I'm having is that my machine randomly seems to forget where the Z home is, this can happen after I've restarted the machine, in between cuts, but most frequently it seems to reset in the middle of a cut. The X and Y axis seem to be fine, but the Z axis will drill straight through the material and MDF (see attached photo). This happens on average 1-3 times a week, and I typically run my machine about 6-8 hours a day. My first step, I suppose, is to narrow it down to either a Machine issue or a driver issue. I believe it's a machine issue as I can set the home position one day and come back the next morning and the home will still be saved, then another day the X and Y will be fine, but the Z home will drill through the MDF again. Initially I believed I may have had an issue with losing power for a split second so I purchased a battery backup which made no difference. My machine is 220V so I'm using a step up converter, which has a max of 1500W, my current assumption is that's not enough, so I have a 5000W step up on its way from Amazon. Lastly, My stepper motor parameter settings are weird. As you can see in the below photo of my settings, the X and Y motor parameters are set to .00625 and the Z axis is set to .003125. I don't know if this is common, I assumed not... When I purchased the machine I was having an issue with the Z axis cutting too deep, then with some messing around I changed the Z from .00625 to .003125 and solved that issue. My guess is that at some point the Z motor was changed...
I would really appreciate input from anyone who thinks they can help. Thank for taking time out of your day to read this.
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