Eccentric Workshop Forum

Have you tried using something other than UGS? I've not had much luck with it so I've used Candle or one of the other alternatives. Without knowing more, it sounds like a bad Arduino or bad connection to it.

If other software doesn't work, do you have another Arduino you can try?

I haven't heard of anybody using optical limit switches but many are using 3 wire inductive switches. I'm assuming they are similar with power, ground, and signal. It should be a matter of connecting the signal line to the limit switch port on the shield and tapping into power and ground. For troubl...

The best and easiest way is to run a second driver off the Y axis ports.

I'm not sure about the switched X and Y; it hasn't come up before from anyone. The GRBLDuino Uno Shield schematic (last page of the attachment below) shows them connected to the Arduino's D9 pin for the X limit and D10 for the Y limit which matches the pin mapping found in the cpu_map.h file of GRBL...

I don't see any reason why it wouldn't work as long as you can get a good solder joint between them.

After that, behavior was (unexpectedly) still the same. No motor response to anything until I squeezed that corner, then arcing/popping and motor twitching while I held it. Could this be an issue with the factory soldering, or something broken inside that part of the screw terminal component? It se...

Sounds like a bit of progress. It is starting to sound like a power issue. Have you tried turning the current adjustment potentiometer while trying a movement? Certainly not the best way to set things, but it is a good way to diagnose. It may also be the microstep settings are requiring more current...

The first question is have you set the current limit on the drivers? There is a section on how to do it on the Pololu page ( first link on the Resources tab under Recommended links). If the steppers aren’t making noise or jittering, it leads me to think it’s a power issue. Do the steppers lock up on...

The stepper enable pin is the top most pin on the left side of each stepper driver socket. It's shown on the schematic on the datasheet in each A4988 Carrier block.

What do you mean by enable pin? To enable what? GRBL has a coolant enable which goes to the coolant terminal block. There is also a stepper enable/disable which is routed from the Arduino Uno pin to the stepper driver pin. It will controlled automatically by GRBL and your software. GRBL doesn't dire...