I need some advice….. Sorry for the long post…and cross post to the Sienci community.
I have had my Altmil 4x4 about a month now. When I assembled the unit I had issue getting the Sienci spindle to turn. Kept throwing Alarm 14 (spindle not up to speed). I read multiple posts, played around with firmware settings but continued to struggle to get it to turn. Setting $395 default spindle to H100 should have fixed it but when returning to main gsender window the spindle selection drop down didn’t even include the H100 option. And, yes, I always power up the VFD prior to turning the SLB on. Everything else (X, Y & Z movements) worked fine. After several hours of frustration I powered everything down and took a break. When I came back and powered everything back on the spindle began to work as expected!
Did a few projects without any issues. Then decided to install my Haunyang 2.2Kw water cooled spindle. Ran into the same issue with not being able to start the spindle (same alarm 14 as above). After many attempts to change spindle in the firmware (including restarting Gsender, reboot PC and powering down VFD and SLB) I again took a break. Surprise, when I came back everything was working as expected. Including running an IOT relay to power up my water chiller, power the dust collector and even connected a flow alarm to one of the AUX limit switch inputs. Again, ran a few projects without issue.
Yesterday I decided to install the Vortex rotary. Had to make a few firmware changes and wouldn’t you know, alarm 14 starts again. Unhooked the Vortex thinking something with it was causing the problem. NOPE – spent the day trying to get it working again – very similar to the prior issue. Even reverted back to the Sienci spindle to no avail. Finally powered everything down and took a break to give the Harley a bath for this weeks road trip. Came back an hour later and once again everything is working again.
What am I doing wrong here? Am I not waiting long enough after VFD turn on before turning on the SLB? Thanks for any suggestions you all may have.
I will be in the wind for a couple of weeks beginning Tuesday (17th) so may not be able to respond to everyone right away.
I also read about more instamces where a setting would not take or an problem persisted untill someone left the machine frustrated and went doing something else. Being it a beer, firing up the bbq, do some taget practising, going for a good night of sleep.
These activities seem to be all solutions for situations you get frustrated with. So maybe the question is not, what am I doing wrong, but what am I doing right. Taking breaks is never a wrong thing, no matter how hard higher-ups would like you to believe otherwise.
I can throw around all kind of theories on why the slbext seems to have this weird magical element to it, but I think you allready hit the nail on tne head. It takes time for an SLB to die after you power it off. Maybe because the altmill slb is running 48V, it takes extra time. And we all know, we are not in our most patience state, when wanting to get past setup and start rocking the machines.
When shutting down the altmill to have it take new settings, taking a break is the right.. no, the only answer.
Eddie, thanks for the reply. Went back to the shop this morning and remounted the Haunyang spindle and reloaded the firmware I had saved when I initially got the Haunyang spindle working and wouldn’t you know - it worked.
Unfortunately, when I hook up the Vortex and change three firmware settings ($4 to Invert A axis stepper pins, $21 disable hard limits, and $37 to deenergize A axis stepper when stopped). How any of those could impact the spindle I do not know. I did wait half an hour and tried again but it still threw the Alarm 14.
I will let it set until I get home in a week or two and try agian. Maybe I really didn’t want a rotary afterall.
Wwwwell, I shouldn,t be reacting on slb or altmill topics and I should stay away from topics about the rotary even more. I don’t have such awesome gear and trying to troubleshoot something you don’t know a ything about is.. like.. facebookstupid.
You might be able to open a new topic on tje rotary in the rotary section, but it seems your problem keeps comming back at ya with every step you take. Maybe opening a ticket is a good step to take.
Update: Sienci tech support replied advising to NOT switch to ROTARY mode (which I had) and supplying a short gcode file to set some spindle firmware setting. Fiddled with the machine for a couple of hours after running the file without success. Took a lunch break and came back and everything began to work properly - even switched to my Haunyang spindle and connected the Vortex rotary. EVERYTHING works! I have no clue what fixed it other than not having switching to rotary. Seems like the long breaks have some powerful influence! Thanks to all who replied.
Jason at Sienci had me send a diagnostic report and he discovered that I was using grbl instead of grblHAL. Make sure you don’t miss that step before first connecting to your machine.
Also, for some reason I could not get a diagnostic report from my machine with the desktop PC I am using. Press that DOWNLOAD button all day and nothing! Took another laptop out to the shop and downloaded it with no issues - that is how Jason discovered I was running the wrong version of grbl.
Thanks to all who replied to my initial cry for help!
For everyone else’s future reference, the reason why switching to rotary mode wasn’t necessary was because Len has the closed-loop stepper motor Rotary which uses the SLB’s dedicated A-axis output, so turning on rotary mode isn’t needed in that case. The rotary mode was specifically designed in gSender for machines that use their Y-axis motor output to control a rotary axis, if you use it outside of that purpose then it’ll mess with your firmware settings in ways that you won’t want it to.
As well, it seems like Len accidentally had selected grbl instead of grblHAL firmware, so it was causing the spindle selector to be blank, not have the right communication to the spindle, etc. Glad to hear you got it all sorted by Jay on our team @Lenp !