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Answered X-axis homing issues

Discussion in 'Troubleshooting' started by biancosplanco, Nov 13, 2017.

  1. biancosplanco

    biancosplanco New Member

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    Hi all,

    First post here. I bought a brand new Robo3d R1+ this weekend and I've been having a recurring x-axis issue. Sometimes when I home the printer, it'll stop at seemingly random locations along the X-axis and think that it's homed before it reaches the end stop and clicks. Other times, it'll home totally fine but when I run a print, as it does the 9-point calibration it'll attempt to go beyond the length of the x-axis and make a horrifying grinding noise. The times that it has done everything correctly, it still doesn't home where I assume it's supposed to- it's always slightly off center of the white box on the build plate. I'm wondering if this is a software problem or if theres a deeper issue at hand. I was hoping it'd work right out of the box but that doesn't seem to be the case! I looked at a lot of other posts about x axis issues but I wasn't able to find one that has my same issue so forgive me if this is a repost.

    Thank you!

    Matthew
     
  2. Rod Smith

    Rod Smith Member

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    I have no solution, but I noticed something similar once or twice with the Z-axis on my Robo R1+ that I bought last week. I powered it off, powered it back on again, reconnected, and it seemed OK. I haven't run into this issue recently, though. I did my initial testing via MatterControl running under macOS, but have since switched to OctoPrint on a Raspberry Pi, so it's conceivable that this change caused the problem to disappear -- or maybe it's just fairly rare and I only happened to run into it once or twice in my earliest testing.
     
  3. mark tomlinson

    mark tomlinson ༼ つ ◕_ ◕ ༽つ
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    Sounds like your X axis home sensor is not getting triggered. Now -- to be clear -- X is left and right, Y is along the long axis of the bed and Z is up/down .. so you DID mean X... right?
     
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  4. biancosplanco

    biancosplanco New Member

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    Yes! It is the x axis, I am certain of it. I'm not a total newbie to 3d printing- just the Robo3d! How would i go about fixing the home sensor not getting triggered?
     
  5. WheresWaldo

    WheresWaldo Volunteer ( ͠° ͟ʖ ͡°)
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    There are two issues at play here
    1. The white square is just aesthetic and has little to no relationship to the actual heated print area
    2. All the axes in the firmware used on the Robo R1/R1+ are overstated causing the homing to not be exactly in the center of the bed.
    The first you cannot do anything about, the second has two types of solutions. First you can make sure your slicing software has the actual dimensions in the printer profile, which on the R1 series is approximately X~220, Y~236 and Z~230. This solution will still not home in the center as Robo has defaulted the firmware to X240, Y254 & Z240. The second solution would be to download the firmware from this site (either Robo's Official firmware or the Community provided one) and edit the maximum positions then compile and upload the new firmware to your printer. You still need to make sure your slicer does not exceed the actual measurements.
     
  6. mark tomlinson

    mark tomlinson ༼ つ ◕_ ◕ ༽つ
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    That is what I was looking at, not the comment about the centering. As Waldo points out that is irrelevant.
    The settings for the printer need to be checked in the slicer, but the fact that it is grinding intermittently and/or stopping when homing before getting to full travel is my concern. Something is triggering the X home. It is a mechanical switch on the size of the carriage :

    X endstop.jpg


    Sometimes the wire bundle that goes to the extruder will stick out and trigger this when the carriage is trying to home the X. If that is what is causing your issues you need to use Z ties to snug up the bundle of wires tighter to the frame. There is a long screw that sticks out from the side of the carriage to trigger this switch. Look at it closely while manually sliding the extrduer back and forth a bit and I think you will see what I mean.
     
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  7. biancosplanco

    biancosplanco New Member

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    Thanks for your responses everyone. So I've done a few things since I posted based on feedback:

    One- I made sure the settings inside matter control for bed size were correct. They were exactly what they should be (I'm at work right now so I can't confirm the numbers but I assure you they were correct.)

    Two- I made sure the wires were clear of the end stop switch. That was the first thing that I did, and I know that the wires were clear of the end stop switch at least two times that the issue was happening.

    Also, just to be clear- the printer will home fine most of the time (although on two occasions it stopped about halfway across the x axis and reported that the end switch was triggered, again with no wires in the way), but when it goes to do the 9-point callibration before a print, it will attempt to go beyond the x axis limit and produce the awful grinding noise. This occurs on the three callibration points which are at the end of the x-axis. I checked and made sure that the wires are nice and snug on the end switch, but I'm thinking I might need to open up the bottom panel and make sure the x wire is connected properly on the other end and didn't get jogged in the shipping?

    The extruder is now clogged, so I haven't been able to replicate the homing issue since I last posted. Going to try to find some free time tonight to fix that and move this discussion further.

    I will keep you posted as this develops. I have to say, this is a lot of issues for a printer that was supposed to be plug and play!
     
  8. mark tomlinson

    mark tomlinson ༼ つ ◕_ ◕ ༽つ
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    Not sure those exist in this price range really :) Although sometimes you get lucky.

    If it reports the X is homed then either the switch really did get activated or the wiring to the RAMPS is loose or the RAMPS is having issues and reading a switch activation that did not occur. Usually it is something brushing up against the switch, but the others are not unheard of.
     
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