Carver Air Carving

[WRW]

Good Day All
I have a carver that is trying to air carve when it starts. It was in the middle of a 8 hour carve and 3+ hours in it switched to air carving and registered a Z axix stall on the memory card. I cleaned and lube and restarted the project it goes through all the checks and then starts air carving. I did notice that when it was checking board height during bit selection that it appeared to move in a some what jerky motion on its way down. Any tips on where this may be coming from would be appreciated.

Thanks

[Fletcher]

Sounds like maybe some dust in the z-truck belt. Try blowing it out and also check that your belt drive gear has all of it's teeth intact.

The machine knows when it touches the tools off(ie: height measurements) by how much resistance it registers through the servo motor I believe. If there is dust in the belt or gears it could be sensing resistance too early which would make it "think" the board is higher than it really is.

Just a guess but worth checking....

Good Luck...
Darrin

[WRW]

Hi Darrin
Got the top of right now as far as I can see nothing stuck in the belt and still has all its teeth.
I will post end result when I put the top back on.
Thanks

[Fletcher]

Check your wire connections too...

[mtylerfl]

Hello WRW,

Could be a dirty or faulty bearing causing excessive resistance. You may want to check all the bearings for your Z-truck, since your belt seems to be free of debris. Check the bearing adjustment, too.

I had a frozen bearing the other day on the Y-truck on one of my machines (lower-left stationary bearing) which caused a Y-axis error. The truck had very jerky movement and hard to move by hand (with power off, of course). I loosened the adjustable bearings so I could spin all the bearings to check for free spinning. Only the one bearing was the culprit. It would only turn about 1/8" both clockwise and counter-clockwise. Figured it just had fine sawdust built-up, although it looked clean from the outside.

Sure enough, I squirted the heck out of it with WD-40 to "wash" it out, and it works like new again! Not bad - in almost three years, it was the first time I have ever had a bearing issue - the added bonus was how easily it was corrected. Didn't even have to take the machine top off - fixed the bearing "in place".

Hopefully, your issue will be just as easy to correct.

[WRW]

Thanks Darrin and Michael for the thoughts.

I checked bearings and cleaned and cleaned, no joy, back to the forum for another search and came across this little jewel of info.
(take off the back plastic cover of z motor, check for sawdust, mine was full of sawdust, giving me a z axis stall)
I removed the plastic cover and all though I could not see any dust I blew it out anyhow, thought I noticed a couple small fakes of dust but that was it. Put the machine back together again and have been going strong for about a half hour now.

Thanks again guys.

[mtylerfl]

Glad you got it taken care of, Richard. Good job!