Wobble in the Y axis

[mike_greschuk]

Hello ,
I'm having trouble when my bot goes around a corner from X movement to Y movement. I have loosened the y carriage bearings and tried the opposite end of the scale (Tightened). I have taken the motor off the Y carriage and tightened the set screws as tight as I could. When the motor is off as in the picture without power there is a little play in the gear. When powered up there is a slight jiggle in the the Y carriage. No movement in the X. The jiggle goes for about an inch and the cut is fine after that. Since readjusting the bearings on the Y it is better than the picture shows. Is it the stepper motor? I'm cutting at 400 IPM Any help would be greatly appreciated

[Brady Watson]

Are you 100% positive that the pinion is all the way up against the rack gear before you tightened it up? Sounds stupid & obvious...but this happens quite often. You really need to wiggle the motor into the rack and push up with some pressure while tightening the motor onto the plate.

If you power it up and wiggle the Y axis, you should not feel any slop. You'll always hear a little slop due to clearance in the motor gearbox, but you should not be able to feel any.

-B

[tlempicke]

The gear was designed to be softer than the rack. That way it wears out first and the much more expensive rack does not.

[mike_greschuk]

I will try mounting the motor with a little more force and I'll try and get a new gear on order. It seems a little less jerky when I reduced the feed speed to 350 IPM. I don't think the bot should have trouble handling 400 IPM. Thank You for your suggestions.
Mike

[Brady Watson]

You're moving at the upper end of what a good running Standard tool can do, especially if you are cutting in a single pass. If you have an Alpha, and you are getting 'fishtail' like your pic shows, that is a sure sign that you are asking the tool to do more work than it has power for - so you'll need to slow it down.

You may gain some smoothness in the corners by changing the Slow Corner Speed value in VR settings from 65 to 35 or 40. See if that cushions things a little for you.

-B

[mike_greschuk]

Thank you Brady I will try that! I should have mentioned that i'm running an alpha.

[ken_rychlik]

It should cut fine with the factory settings. Something is wrong with that machine, or it is possible for the material to be moving and cause that.

If you lock in your controller and can't rock the spindle/router left and right easily, I would be looking at material movement. It looks like a rough finish on the material and vacuum may not hold it well???

[mike_greschuk]

Kennith,
Shouldn't be the material plenty of vacuum. this happens every time it rounds the corner coming out of the X travel and goes into the Y travel. This happens even on large pieces. It just started happening recently. I did maintenance on it and will try again today and see if I get better results. Thanks for your imput

[mike_greschuk]

Tightened things up and slowed corner speed and it smoothed things out quite nicely. Back up and running at 400 IPM. Thanks for all the great responses.:)

[Brady Watson]

Great! Thanks for the follow up - others may have the same problem.

-B