[Lessons]

Hey all, looking for all you Spectralight owners out there.

Picked up an old Spectralight 0200 locally. Saw it run, looked good to go. I've since broken it down, cleaned it, lubed it, and reassembled it. When running some initial test runs (G83 peck drill), I'm seeing some pretty poor performance. The Z axis stalls heavily when it goes to change direction at the top of the (chip clearing) stroke. It makes a fantastic sound as well during the process.

Some other issues with the steppers:

• Z axis stepper has a constant whine at idle, more so than I would expect for it trying to hold position.
• Steppers seem to have a useable range of 5-10 ipm. Anything below seems to resonate (steppers missing steps???), and anything above will cause periodic stalls.

I'm fairly new to the whole stepper driven cnc... anyone help me out on this?

P.S. I'm looking for trying to make this setup work. I'd love to go buy a Gecko Drive right now, but I'm trying to hold off on throwing out a good controller setup here.

Thanks in advance.

[shannon_haworth]

I have the same mill and can confirm that the Z axis is a bit underpowered, however what you describe goes beyond anything I have seen. I do not see "stalling" when changing direction on the Z axis. My mill emits no noise at idle and I've cut wax at all speeds that the software will allow without issues (.01 - 12 ipm).

This is my first and only mill and I've only had it a few months - I have little practical experience to offer. With that in mind here are some thoughts:

Swap the Z-axis motor with one of the other ones (be careful, the electrical connectors are fragile). Doing this should isolate the source of the noise to either the electronics or the motor itself.

I had some binding issues as well after I broke my unit down and cleaned it. My problems turned out to be mechanical, I had to readjust my assembly (sorry I've forgotten the details).

Do you have access to voltage meters or better yet an oscilloscope? We can compare readings.

Good luck,

Shannon

[Lessons]

Shannon,

I will swap out the motors tonight, seems like a good move.

For binding, everything turns and slides smooth by hand, so I'm still placing my chips on a electronics issue. I have yet to adjust the backlash nuts, however, so that is on my to do list.

I luckily have both an oscilloscope and a DMM... I will set up the oscilloscope and verify if the motor seems to be missing steps.

Thanks for your help.

-Joel

[Lessons]

An update:

Swapped the motors, no difference, Z axis continues to make a buzzing at idle regardless of which motor is used. I hooked up the oscilloscope for a quick look of the signals at idle (between the x and z steppers), and both look very similar.

On another note, I opened up the control box to find both a stray pencil and a small termite mound or similar insect structure over top some of the diodes (literally a bug in the machine). Got that cleaned up, but unfortunately, no magic solution from that.

I now have another new problem... whenever I use the constant jog, every time I initiate a jog in any axis it changes the position by 8.195" off the bat. For example, if I tap the x jog, then tap the x jog again, then tap and hold the x jog, my 'position' would be 8.195", then 16.390", then 24.585" + the standard change for however long I hold down the button. Anyone have any ideas on this glitch??

I'm currently using WSLM, v1.0b4 to control the machine. Is there a newer version of this out there?