I have been very happily playing with my Farmbot for a few months and today (11/05/24) it has started to have z-Axis stalls. I have never had Z-Axis issues before.
My Z axis is powered all the time as I lubricated the Z rod and now it cannot hold itself up.
My Farmbot is in a poly tunnel and does get quite warm in in there. I am wondering if the motor could overheat??
I have done the usual steps of rebooting which has not fixed the issue.
Any thoughts anyone?
It seems coincidental that there was a software release on the 9th and within 2 days I am having issues. Probably unrelated but I have seen stranger things.
Something else that I have noticed - At the same time line of the Z axis issue my FB has started to pause randomly in the middle of a sequence. Sometime for up to 2-3 seconds. It has never done that before.
The pauses are random and I think I have identified what they are related to. When Z-axis stalls, the FB stops and attempts to do something about it. Checking through the log files, it appears that is what I am seeing.
All these issues started after I lubed the Z-axis. I think what that did was uncover a weak motor or something. I say that, because I used to run with the Z motor off and only powered when movement was required. Ever since then, the Z started dropping, the motor needs to be powered all the time and Z-axis now is stalling, even when in the hold position. I think the motor is failing maybe due to over heating as it does get quite warm when powered all the time and there is no low power mode (hold mode) so it is getting 100% of power all of the time, 24/7.
