Stepper Motors not responding on X-axis

Troubleshooting
1

Hi y’all.

I’ve owned my Genesis XL 1.6 for a while now and I’ve managed to self-troubleshoot based on a lot of what’s in this forum, so thank you to the community. This latest issue is mind-boggling though.

I had a sticky 2nd X-axis motor - it was perpetually falling out of sync a few steps, leading to the gantry twisting and a total X-axis stall.

Did some troubleshooting, swapped cables between the X-axis, swapped the motors around, and have verified that all motors are still indeed working.

However, now after troubleshooting when connected to the X-axis wiring, when sending a command to move, BOTH x-axis motors refuse to turn over - they just vibrate in place.

I can connect either of these motors to the Y-axis wiring and send a command there, it turns over smoothly.

This tells me I’ve either got a software/firmware problem or a wiring problem, but only on the X-axis. The odd thing was that X1 worked fine before I started troubleshooting, and now both X1 and X2 don’t work.

What are some thoughts and ideas? I’ve tried reflashing the Farmduino from the interface, but that hasn’t seem to work

2

Hi,

I’m just now setting up my Genesis-1.5. I had a weird X-axis problem that ‘suddenly’ showed up after a period of normal operation, and it turned out that the ‘length’ parameter of the X-axis was set to an absurdly low number. This must have happened when I did a ‘find length’ operation that didn’t complete successfully. The symptoms in my case was that the x-axis refused to move, or if it did move, would always go in the -x direction, and wouldn’t stop until it hit the hard stop. Punching in a reasonable value for the length fixed it.

-Mike

3

Thanks - I’ve double-checked that and it’s not the problem.

Basically after a whole bunch of troubleshooting, it seems the X-motor ports are fried. When I route the cables from the Y-motor ports, the motors respond and move.

I’m looking at getting a replacement Farmduino.

4

The reason for the vibrating motors is usually that one motor coil is not energized because of a broken wire or a defective driver.

So the Y-Motor with its Y-cable is also not running on the X1 and X2 ports at all?

5

Yup - basically whatever signal is coming off the x-ports aren’t correct. If I connect the Y-cable and thus Y-motor to X1/X2 output - the motor behaves that same way - that in-place vibration without any turning of the belt.

I’ve even wiped the Farmduino with the Arduino IDE to then reflash with the Farmduino firmware. Problem still persists.

6

Right, thats not a software issue I guess. Maybe damaged connector on the board? You could try to take the board out and check the soldering points on the downside. Also check for bent/misaligned pins inside the connector.