XY Plotter - X Axis Moves Left When Right Button Pushed

#1

Hello,

IT MOVES! – kind-of.

So I have the XY Plotter Jogging well in Y, both forwards and backwards. X is a different story. When I push the right arrow button on the keyboard the plotter head moves to the left. When I push the left arrow button on the keyboard it doesn’t move at all but I can see the GCode values de-incrementing by 10. I swapped the motors and it wasn’t them. I swapped the motor drivers and that wasn’t the cause either. I replaced the cables and that wasn’t the cause. Any ideas on what could be the cause of this would be greatly appreciated!

Steve

#2

Hi, I was going to reply to your post about the software. On the page http://learn.makeblock.cc/xy2/ is a link to download the zip file with the software for Orion or ME boards. Further down are some screenshots showing the pin numbers for each field in the settings tab.

I suggest you download the zip file and use that software, both in the Gcodeparser arduino folder and the Gremote folder, as there are some settings different.

In your specific problem I was immediately struck by your saying the right arrow is moving the plotter to the left, because this is the reverse of what it should be doing, assuming you mean right when you are facing the baseboard controller with all the wires on. It does suggest to me that you still need to check the settings for all the pins. Also, you need to be sure the GcodeParser you upload to the board is the correct one for an Orion.

I also tried to get the GitHub software to run, thinking it would be more current than the software pointed to by the instructions page, and after doing a diff analysis of all the files saw that it was actually an earlier version. Another diff analysis of the processing code versus the java code suggests the processing software is even more out of date. I have now got it running (Processing), by replacing most of the Processing source with chunks from the java source.

#3

Hi Adrian,

Thanks for your post. Many of your assumptions are correct. I believe the issue may be a bad port on the Uno/Orion board. I have quadruple checked the motors wiring, the stepper controller, the wiring from the stepper control to the port, the pin settings in the GCodeParser and GRemote applications. All to no avail. I have an extra Orion from another kit, but that board doesn’t seem to be recognized by the computers. I tried to install it on a Mac and a PC both. It just beeps when I plug it in, and never comes up under the com ports. One step forward two steps back!

All the best, Steve

#4

A suggestion here. I think you have introduced too many levels of unknowns with yet another board and different computers. Try this:

Go back to the setup you first had at the start of this thread, where the X-axis is going left when the right button is pressed. Record what works, such as Y+, Y=, Servo up/down, and record what doesn’t work properly.

Centralise the pen into the middle of the plotter area.

Exchange the two stepper motor RJ11 plugs on the board, and exchange the two limit-switch RJ11s.

Power up, run GcodeParser.ino, then start Gremote. See if the problems have now switched from the X to the Y axis.

#5

HI Adrian,

I’ve only been working with X and Y. I believe Z is hooked up but it is not necessary for my purposes. I did swap the RJ11 plugs and confirmed that the motor can move in both directions when fed from Y motor controller. Then the Y axis, which was driven by the X stepper motor controller, would only move in one direction.

I have replaced the stepper driver board, cable to it, and the Orion board itself. Since I have confirmed that the stepper can move when driven by the other stepper driver board I know that the issue is not in the motor or the wiring to the green plug. I re-downloaded fresh source code (Orion v2.02) from the site and uploaded it to the board.

What is really strange is that when I reverse the “dir” and “step” pins in GRemote for either the X or Y axis the motors moves in the opposite direction. This leads me to believe that the controller board may not be sending true step and direction signals. Step pulses are sent for the value of steps to move in a direction and dir is just 0 or 1 for which direction to go. At least that was my understanding of it from other CNC machines I’ve built. When I did that switcher-oo I expected nothing to move, instead it moved in the opposite direction. This leads me to believe that steps are being sent through one wire for one direction and through the other for the other direction.

No-one else is having this problem?

#6

Im also having this same problem, did you ever find a solution?

#7