[MikeW1966]

I just built a CNC router and everything worked fine until a couple days ago. I was cutting a 12 inch wide pedastal, and when I got to the middle of the part, I noticed a router bit was not touching the wood anymore. I started over and zeroed the bit and, by the time it got to the middle, it was off the wood again. It was supposed to be cutting a quarter of an inch deep.

I switched the wires from the Z to the Y, and then the Y axis was half an inch off in a ten inch span.

Does anybody know what could be causing this? I thought it might be the Gecko 201 drive. I checked all the wires, and they were fine. Is there anything else other than the drive that could cause this?

The machine only has five or six hours use. What would cause the drive to go bad this quickly?

Thanks in advanced for any advice.
Mike

[CarveOne]

There's always a few things to try, but here's two to start with.

1. Use a fine point Sharpie pen to put a witness mark on the cutter shank where it enters the router collet and try a cut again. When it finishes look at the reference mark to see if the cutter has slid upwards into the router collet. If the collet isn't gripping the shank tight enough it may be pushing the cutter upwards during plunges into the wood. Is the cutter center cutting? If not, it will need to be set up in software to ramp the cutter into the wood. Especially if it is a hard wood like oak and some dense tropical woods.

2. There may be binding in the Z axis in the downward direction, but not the upward direction. You can check for this by running the gcode in air without the router running, and listen to the sound of the Z axis while it is moving. If it has a very different sound in the downward direction that is a clue. After the run is completed, the tool should be the same distance from the table top as it was when it was started. If not, there is probably a mechanical alignment issue.

It is possible that there is a software issue that is causing the lost steps and more needs to be known about your setup before anyone here can help with that.

[MikeW1966]

I checked the cutter and it is not getting pushed into the collet.
It is pine that i'm cutting using aspire I tried a sample vcarve file and had the same problem.

I then changed the motor cables so that the y axis was hooked up where the z axis originally was and ran the g code again and the z was ok but now the y is off almost an inch on a 9inch wide board.
After cutting it goes back to ero and it was way off,

I don't know if it could be the breakout board or a bad connection some where

I checked that the wires were connected to the motors and drivers
I will take out the B.O.B today and check the wires

If My machine or control box wasn't grounded could that cause just 1 driver to mess up?

I have the control box and computer bolted to the machine so it should be grounded.

[pending]

I don't know much about gecko stepper drivers but make sure the step amount is the same as your others(for instance 1/8th step or 1/16th step). Usually the drivers have a selector switch to choose which amount to step. If that isn't the case you'll have to get out the oscilliscope and do some troubleshooting.

[CarveOne]

Your parallel port needs to be one that outputs +3.3 to +5vdc logic levels. Not all of them do.

If you measure the step and direction input signals at the breakout board parallel port input pins with a digital multimeter and it shows less than +3.3vdc and more than about 0.7vdc the will be getting marginal signal levels and could be losing steps for that reason. Some parallel ports on desktop computers and many laptops don't output the full +5vdc/0vdc logic levels. I had the low voltage level problem, but it was caused by having an incorrect Active High/Active Low box setting in Mach3. In my case it caused the X and A axis slaving to get out of synchronization.