Hey guys and gals. My bits have been driving into my projects now and then when i hit the hit the go to XY button any one else have this issue ? If so did you fix it ? i am scared to hit the button anymore as i have broken quite a few bits now.
Running the Altmill 4x4, gsender 1.5.4. Usually happens after I manually move the gantry and want to go back to 0. It does have limit switches, soft limits disabled hard limits enabled not that that would matter. It has actually been doing this on and off a few months. It’s 3 months old and controller has been replaced.
@Mark_R Not sure I understand the issue. Are you saying that when you press the goto xy0, it does that without raising z to the safe height and hits your project? Or does the z axis plunge down when you press xy0?
There is a safe height setting in gSender in the Basics section that will tell it how much to move when using the goto’s. Read the notes for that setting because with homing enabled, the value is an offset from the top and not how much it moves up. I have mine set to 5mm.
@Mark_R Nothing in your description definitively points to gSender. I could well be missing something. However, you are getting replies, so I will your question stay where it is. As you have not replied to any of my questions, I’ll bow out of the discussion.
@Mark_R If safe height is set to 2", then the spindle will move 2" from the top before moving in the xy direction. Depending on the spindle location, that may mean it moves up or down to get to 2". Change it to 0.25" to see what happens. Mine is set to 5mm, which is a bit less than 1/4".
@Mark_R No apology needed, Mark. Tks for adding the info. It will help members to help you out of this. Please report back when you have resolved the issue.
So I lowered the safe height to .5 . It did move just the xy and z never dropped. It will take some time as I said it was an intermittent problem. So it may do it in the next 1 or 2 times or it may be the next 10 we shall see. I am a little concerned about missing the clamps now when I use them after job finishes.
Here’s what I suggest you do in order for you to get comfortable with the operation of your CNC and be sure it’s working as it should.
Clear your spoilboard of any obstructions
Jog to the centre and lower the spindle as low as it will go.
Set all three zeros at that point.
Jog to some other x-y position and keep the z low
Use the goto buttons to move back to XY zero
If it’s working as it should, the spindle should move to the top (actually 0.25" - the safe height value- below the top) and then move to the XY zero position that you set.
Keep in mind that the safe height setting in gSender is only used for the goto movements. It is not used for park nor for the four built-in corner movements. For those, the spindle raises to the top regardless of the safe height setting. This is explained in the notes at the right of the setting in gSender.
Is it possible that you used both the corner movements and the goto movements in the past? With the 2" safe height that you had, a movement to a corner would move the spindle to the top whereas a goto movement would only raise or lower the spindle 2" from the top. In that sense, it could be observed as being intermittent.
This happened to me one time when setting up for a carve. I think it was on v1.5.2. But I never did figure out exactly what happened. I assume that when I hit the goto xy zero button I accidentally got close enough to the goto z zero button and the touch screen (gControl), thought I was pressing that button instead. Since then, I’ve been extra careful when tapping that goto xy button and it hasn’t happened again yet to me. Not sure it exactly matches your situation but wanted to share my experience in case it helped.
I will give it a shot but using an old bit or no bit even. I have never even tried to use the corner buttons at the top. This only has happened after zeroing everything running a project, moving to change a bit or just out of the way then trying to move back to xy.
I had the same issue, z crashes intermittent and after x, y, z had been zeroed. After zeroing I sent the it to Home then to XY0 and it didn’t crash the z. The Z crashes resolved itself after a couple of weeks when I replaced a faulty Y sensor ( indicator light stayed red all the time and all the others were green).
I’ve had the same issue. I found that If I hit the jog button for x or y for just a short jog (1 or 2 short taps after ensuring the bit was above the work) and then used the go to buttons I had no problems. If I skipped this and went straight to go to then more often than not it would drive the bit forcefully down into the work. None of the other suggested fixes have helped. I’m using an xcarve pro with gsender 1.5