Y axis stalling/hanging up

[tdnp]

I have been using a home built cnc and had some problems with the Y
axis stalling out. I changed the motor tuning and it seemed to help
it until now.
I just ruined a paying job as the y axis stalled/hung
again.
I have the setting at .6 on the x and y. This only seems to
happen on the y axis(gantry style) when both axis are moving at the same time, like cutting a oval

I have a couple of questions:

1.) Do I need to let these motors warm up, The machine is in my
basement and it is fairly cool, 50's?

2.)Will bigger motors help?

3.) Is there some sort of gear reduction box that I could run
through to improve my speed and reliability?

I am running all 23-200-ds8 motors with a 4aupc rev2 board and
1/2x10 acme screws.

I am new to this and any information that you might provide is
greatly appriciated.

[joecnc2006]

Well some pictures of all aspects of the machine would help, can not give advise on just what you posted, what drivers, power supply, and all equipment.

Joe

[tdnp]

I'm sorry I am new at this. I have a 4aupc CNC package from Hobby CNC. I looked in the box and do not see any numbers on the Power supply. The material list provided says Main power A/C DPST( 4 prong) and also includes a 35 amp 600v Bridge Rectifier and a Transformer that has the numbers a41-175-1822 and tdf 24175, I did not see a manufacuter on it.

I am running mach3 on the computer.

I know this is vauge but it is all I can find. Thanks

[aolshove]

I had this problem on my smaller hobby machine which uses a HobbyCNC 4AUPC, Mach3 and 80oz steppers. So, similar configuration as yours but scaled down. The Y-Axis would bind during combined moves such as you describe and I solved it by doing a few things. Firstly, I moved the HobbyCNC jumper off of the 1/4 setting down to the 1/2 setting on all axis. This provides a little more torque and apparently doesn't affect accuracy as the microstepping is more for eliminating resonance problems than providing higher accuracy. Secondly, I re-tuned the Mach3 motor settings, and Third, I oiled and checked the alignment on all of my leadscrews. I think the bottom line here is that the axis movement is getting fouled by wear or debris or whatever causing the motors to have to work harder to move the tool. I can kind of rationalize this in my mind, read: no actual in-depth knowledge, that multiple steppers share the output of the power supply so if they're all working harder to move the tool, somebody's gotta give up the juice and stall out eventually.

Another possibility that I've heard as advice from others when I had this similar problem is that Mach3 has to work your processor really hard to process multi-axis moves and so possibly you should check your PC's optimization. I would think this would manifest itself in Mach3 locking up or a system crash rather than just stalling your Y axis but I'm not 100% sure.

Good luck. Hope this helps.

[tdnp]

Thanks Aolshove, when you change the stepping did you also have to change the Synchronous mode?

I will try changing the microstepping today.

[aolshove]

No, I don't recall changing the synchronous mode but I changed the steps per unit settings in Mach3.

[tdnp]

Thanks again, do you remember what you set the steps per unit to? Mine is at 4000.
My microstepping was where you sugested. I'm thinking that it is either a power issue or the computer. The only thing it does not do it everytime????

[BobF]

if your board has auto current reduction, try turning it off. This helped get rid of my startup issue.
Pin 4 on the jumper block as I remember.