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Stepper Problems

edited January 2016 in Egg-Bot
I'm not sure if I require help or not.
I've been building an EggBot machine but I'm still waiting on a servo being delivered.
My question is ..... Does the EBB board rely on the presence of the servo being plugged in?
The reason I ask the question is because I expected the steppers to run in an orderly manner without the servo being present.
I get extremely erratic responses from the steppers when I try to run a simple (Hello World) file. In simple terms they (steppers) just behave badly.

Comments

  • The steppers do not depend upon the servo. Can you please describe how the steppers are misbehaving?  Is it possible that you have not adjusted the current yet?
  • When I attempt to adjust the current I either get a continuous rotation or the same bad behavior.
  • The Egg motor begins with a few steps in one direction and the same few steps in the opposite direction. it sounds as if the motors are cogging. I do not get any sort of "sensible" response from either of the two motors. 
  • The behavior that you are describing sounds like what I might expect with too little current, or too high of a rotation speed. If you have adjusted the rotation speed in the extension, try setting it to 300 as a baseline value.

    Questions for you: 
    1. Are you using the standard motors and power supply that came with the EggBot?  

    2. Does your EBB have a check mark on one side of the terminal block?

    3. If you disconnect the motor wires from the EBB, can you turn the motors by hand? If so, does the motion feel smooth and continuous (with very fine grain light cogging), or does it feel rough, stuck, or variable? If the latter, then your motor(s) may have been damaged in shipping.
  • Thank you Windell
    The mystery has been solved.
    I have built my own machine from scratch and the motors that I used (nema 17) had exactly the same colored leads as those shown on the EggBot web site. I had wired the motors as per the instructions shown in the Eggot assembly PDF.
    I have since discovered that although my lead colors where the same the actual wiring was different.
    The motors now run as smooth as silk.
    I am now smiling and thank you for your attention.


  • Great-- glad to hear it. 

    I was wondering if it might be a motor wire order issue, but that's rarely been an issue with our kits. 

    Good luck with the rest of your project!
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