New Altmill for Newbie needing Help

I just finished assembling my Altmill and was looking forward to doing some projects but I am having some homing issue with the machine and was hoping that I could get some troubleshooting help. I have already submitted a ticket to Sienci Labs but was hoping to get feedback from the community.

I am getting multiple errors and alarms when I click on the home button and getting the the spindle stalling on the x-gantry. I am getting mainly 10, 14 and 15 Alarms. I also have a strange intermittent noise on the x gantry motor. I have not been able to home the machine with the home button for all axii. When do use the main home button I get the alarms mentioned above.

When I home individual axis, the issue mainly goes away but I still get the movement of the spindle on the x axis to stall and not completely get home and at times it stalls when jogging on the x axis.

I have adjusted the inductive sensors. I have checked the wiring. I have adjusted the soft and hard limits as well as made adjustment to the homing cycle switches. I have put them all back to default. I have also reduce the homing search seek rate to 4000 from 4300.

I have looked on the forum to see if there is a solution but have not been able to find the same problem that I have.

I am still looking at the documentation online to see if I can find a possible solution.

Any help would be greatly appreciated at this time since I have been trying to solve this issue after work for the past couple of days.

Eddy

Hello, welcome to the group!

Bear in mind I haven’t any experience with the Altmill only a LongMill Mk1 but I was wondering if the X axis has problems when jogging. You may have to disable homing if you can’t unlock/skip the homing in order to jog around.

My thinking is that if the X axis is having some problems, maybe that is causing the homing problems. I use homing on my LongMill and it homes the Z first and then the X and Y together. So if it does the Z fine and then messes up, the X stalling could be the main problem?

Issues that cause stalling on the LongMill are usually because something is too tight or crooked. I’m not familiar with the Altmill construction but you should be able to turn the lead screw by hand with the machine off without much difficulty. The anti backlash blocks being to tight or a little crooked are common issues on the LongMill.

Michael,

Here is how the scenario plays out:

I click on the main homing button for all axii.

Prior to start of movement:
X is about 1/3 of the way out on the cutting area
Y is about 1/3 of the way out on the cutting area
Z is 3/4 down

Z moves first and homes
X & Y start to move simultaneously to home after Z homes
X moves about half way back to home before stalling and then stopping all together
Y continues to move to home position.

The next scenario is jogging the machine separately

Prior to start of movement:
XYZ are in the home position

I then jog the machine in the Y axis (rapid) about 7-8 times
I then jog the machine in the Z axis (rapid) about 7-8 times
I then jog the macine in the X axis (rapid) about 4 times before getting the first issue of missed steps (I think) and about to jog it about 1-2 more time and the X axis stalls.

Hopes this gives a better understanding.

I have supplied Sienci with videos of the way the machine is responding. Hopefully they will give me suggestions on how to resolve this issue.

Eddy

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Thanks for the info. The X axis stalling when jogging would seem to support my thinking that the X axis could be the root cause.

It could be a bad stepper or driver on the control board. I think if I were in your position I would try swapping the Z and X axii at the control board. My thinking on that would be if after the switch the Z has trouble then it is likely to be a control board problem. On the other hand if the X still has issues then I would think the problem is in the drive train on the X axis making it too hard to move. That or a motor problem. Another clue that would probably be drive train related would be if the X axis always stalls in same location.

I would disable homing and soft limits for that test. When using the Z to control the X I think you would hit the Z limits without being able to move the X that much. That and maybe there would be an error when when it takes a ‘mile’ to home what the board thinks is the Z axis.

If nothing else this might give you some relevant info to pass on to Sienci. I’m sure they will get you sorted as I’ve always heard good things about their customer support.

2 Likes

Did you resolve the issue? If yes, what was the solution?
I have a similar issue with my AltMill with PwnCNC VFD and 222k water-cooled spindle. Last night I could jog the spindle but could not run the spindle, it would produce an alarm 10 and I could reset the alarm only immediately see it again. This morning I cannot reset the alarm 10. I’ve powered off everything, rebooted my PC, restarted the VFD and SLB.

Sienci shipped me a new SLB but that did not resolve the issue.