Cannot move Z down after homing

I have my Longmill MK2 set up with the Inductive Sensors and $20 (Soft limits Enable) is turned on. For various reasons, I could not have my Home position to be in the back right corner so I turned on $22-‘Set machine origin to zero’ in order to make the front left my Home position.

I initiate Homing and the machine cycles through all three axes correctly and then sets the Machine coordinates to 0.00 for all 3 axes.

I can then move/jog X right and Y back without problem but when I try to move Z down towards the table I get an ‘Error 15 - Travel Exceeded’.

What I believe is happening is that when moving Z down, that makes its position negative. Because Soft limits are turned on, moving the coordinates to negative is appearing that the axis is at its limit and that’s a no-no. That would be fine for X and Y because moving them away from Home is always positive. For Z, moving away from Home is always negative.

I’ve looked through all the Firmware settings and the only ones that I thought might have helped were $23 - ‘Homing direction invert’ and $3 - ‘Step direction invert’. Neither of those worked. As soon as I turned them on for Z, my Homing immediately headed for the bed - Emergency Stop!!!

Does anyone know how to correct this?

PS: I just realized that when I move in X and Y, both sets of coordinates change (Blue & Grey) :frowning: . I’ll have to look into that as well.

I thought I had a eureka moment when I realized that Z was trying to move in a negative direction but the $132-Z axis maximum travel was set to the positive value of 120.

Therefore I tried changing $132 to -120…and got an error that it was an invalid value because it was <0 :frowning:

So I’m still stuck. Here’s hoping that someone can help me through this.

Thanks in advance,
Rob

Is this a new machine or was all working well until you installed the switches?

It might be worth a shot if it’s a new build to turn off homing, hard, and soft limits and make sure all the axes move in the right directions.

You mention changing the homing and travel directions but it’s not clear if you tried them separately or at the same time. If you did them at the same time having to stop the homing may have prevented you from seeing if the step direction helped.

As far as both sets of numbers moving in gSender, that is normal. When all is working the small numbers (machine coordinates) will be zero at the home position and the large numbers (workspace coordinates) will be zero wherever you set them for the project. They both change when the mill moves but the offset between the two sets stays the same.

1 Like

I’ve had the MK2 since just after it was released. I then upgraded to the SLB as soon as that was released. I hadn’t been having any problems moving or Carving with it. It’s only when I decided to turn on the Soft Limits. I’m wanting to use the Tool changing functionality so I purchased a TLS and Sienci’s Inductive sensors. That’s what has led me to here :).

When I turn off the Soft limits again, I’m able to move around normally and Carve without any problems.

To be honest with you, I have tried so many things that I don’t recall exactly what I did and in what order. I do come from a technical background so troubleshooting one change at a time is normally how I think but you never know.

I know that initially when I turned on the Soft Limits ($22-Set machine origin to zero was off) and tried homing, it correctly went to the front left and upper positions. I found I could move Z fine but X and W would give me an error 15 that I had exceeded their travel. I determined that that was happening because the Machine coordinates were being set to the limits of those axes but as negative values. From what I understood that was correct based on the fact that traditionally the home position is in the right back corner and homing took me to the front left corner.

That’s when I found out about $22-Set machine origin to zero. As soon as I turned it on, I could then move X and Y successfully but then Z wouldn’t move. It was now giving me the same problem as X and Y had been.

I can’t recall turning off the hardstops since I first turned them on so I’ll give that a try as well.

So it turns out that the hardlimits ($21) was the issue. In the Installation video for the Inductive sensors, they indicated that Sienci recommends that you turn on both the Hard and Soft Limits. Well…It turns out that hard limits are not all that useful without physical limit switches :slight_smile:

Anyhow. All is good now. My Inductive sensors are installed. Soft Limits and Homing are working, and I can move in all directions for all axes.

Thanks @_Michael for nudging me just enough to go back and revisit the installation from the start instead of just focusing on where I thought the problem must be.

Rob

2 Likes

Oops! I didn’t notice your posts from a couple of days back but I’m glad you got it working!

I learned something out of this too. My machine, a Mk1 with the regular LongBoard, has worked fine with hard and soft limits turned on but I just tested it with hard limits off and it works fine. I guess after homing the soft limits cover both ends of the axes which makes sense now that I think about it.

Happy carving Rob!

1 Like