[Nico13]

After having trouble with slow speed steeping problems on my DIY CNC for some months when stepping any more than 1/2 steps I'm interested to know
what others are stepping at and if they also had issues with fine stepping at slow speed.

DO YOU

Full Step

1/2 Step

1/4 Step

1/8 Step

Or More

Had Issues

[tommylight]

I use full step only when i have no other choice or when i have the motors working over the resonant speed, otherwise i use 1/2 or 1/4 for almost anything.
Tom

[Nico13]

Thanks to those who have posted.
More info re why the Poll
A bit more of an explanation is now evident after more research. A friend had loaned me a couple of old G201's to try on my machine to see if I could
resolve the issue of loosing steps at slow speed when attempting to step any finer than 1/2 steps, this is the oposite to what is meant to happen
as most will know.
While looking up the setup info for the G201 some of the info talked about the trim pot that allowed you to adjust the controller to set a null point to
help overcome the exact problem I have of low speed course stepping and lost steps.
Now I never fitted the 201's after reading this and further testing at 1/2 stepping was proving to be quite satisfactory.
My setup is
3 x M542H drivers.
Nema 23 290 oz inch Wantai Hybrid steppers
48 Volt switching power supply
5 axis BOB
LAN Smoothstepper
Mach3 on a Win 7 laptop.
If you want to see the machine it's here on my build blog, DIY CNC Router | Ken Nicholas Nico13 Photography Astro Photo & DIY CNC

See this sample video of some V carving at 36 ipm and I had also done it at 43 ipm with no issues,
it could have gone faster but no need for my purposes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7H4yMFb4n88

[ger21]

Have you tried dampers?

[Nico13]

Hi Gerry,
Yes I did try a damper, I made a tunable damper with a rubber mounted damper weight that could be relaxed of stiffened up via a tension adjustment.
Unfortunately all it did was make it worse.
Everything I've read on this says it should not be happening and that by stepping 1/4 or 1/8th steps or finer should reduce it but all it does is make it worse.
All I can put it down to is a mismatched motor driver combination if that's possible, an inductance problem that doesn't suit the driver I have.
I'm considering a fourth Axis for my machine and I may well try a different driver and motor that I can exchange with what I already have but at the moment
It seems to be working ok with half steps so I'll stick with that for the time being.