How I made a Drawing Robot controlled by encoders and LinuxCNC
I'm so happy to finally understand how to control encoders, now every printer is a robot waiting to happen!
I understand some may not like a 40 minute video and I realize that but consider I wanted to make a very thorough video on everything I did to make this robot and every shred of information I had to learn and research myself. I feel even though its technical and boring at times its necessary to understand how much effort went into this as a whole. I didn't want to make a fancy montage and leave a lot out.
LinuxCNC Etch Config Folder: https://drive.google.com/drive/folder...
TinkerNut's video on Making a MiniCNC stepper motor Drawing Bot: • Hack old CD-ROMs into a CNC Machine -...
I try to post my latest projects on Twitter: Twitter.com/SirSpunk
Troubleshooting Advice:
Problem: X and Y axis work perfectly but Z axis works in only one direction.
Solution: Possible weak direction signal/pin on port or weak power supply. You can try to do what I did and out all inputs on the PCI card port and all outputs on the motherboard parallel port.
Problem: LinuxCNC was rounding all the corners of my object when it drew it.
Solution: "G64 P 0.001" at the beginning of your gcode solves it. "G61" should work too as both of these gcodes are exact path modes.
Problem: Drawing is stretched, squished, or not in proportion.
Solution: In LinuxCNC go to Machine,Calibration,INPUT_SCALE and change the input scale of the X and Y axis until the object dimensions are correct. If you want to set permanent values you have to change the input scale in the config files.
Problem: Motor runs away randomly or in a weird way/too sensitive.
Solution: Try to reduce the input scale on that motor, that's a common problem if the input scale is too high. If LinuxCNC is not detecting movement from the encoder itself it will also make the motor run away uncontrollably.
Problem: Getting a lot of following errors or frequent/consistent following errors.
Solution: This can be a number of different things, but common things are a weak power supply, too high of an input scale, too high velocity or acceleration on an axis, or too low of an "FERROR" and "MIN_FERROR".
Problem: How do you reverse an Axis?
Solution: Multiple ways, either swap both motor power wires and encoder sensor wires or you can try putting a negative sign in front of the axis's input scale in LinuxCNC.
Problem: How do I figure out the correct wires to connect to on the parallel port?
Solution: I use my multimeter on it's continuity mode and check every wire until my multimeter beeps.
Help support me so I can make more videos:
Twitter: / sirspunk
paypal: [email protected]
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Music: Mich - Sea of Envy