I have high powered driver and have backed the nut off tell there was a visible gap.
The machine was stalling bad when first put together then for no obvious reason it began to move. Surfaced the base plate last night. All was fine
Today I went out in the shop and it won’t jog in ether z direction. I pulled the cover off the control box and made sure the z axis had a high powered driver. I went ahead and put another high powered driver on the x axis.
Fiddled with backing the nut off no luck. Finally turned the lead screw by hand with the machine off about a 1/4” then turned the machine back on it would only jog at 5 ipm. Then after running it some I was able to get it up to 25ipm. But no faster
With the nut loose lifting up on the spindle it moves up and down freely is it possible the nut attached to the spindle is binding ?
@Kebouc01 Thank you for checking that Z axis locknut. There’s a few other things you can try to get things moving again.
Check to see if the Z axis motor coupler is tight by gently tightening the 4 screws. If it’s not then the motor might be turning but there won’t be enough engagement to turn the ballscrew.
If everything mechanical is in order, swap the X and the Z motor cables on the back of the electronics enclosure. Then move the Z axis with the X axis controls, and the X axis with the Z axis controls. If the Z axis runs and the X doesn’t, then the Z motor driver might not be working correctly.
If all of those check out, then we’ll look into sending you a replacement Z-Axis lead screw assembly.
Exactly the same as OP here. Z axis, under jogging. Worse when faster. Stalls predictably during rapid. The z axis ball screw on mine couldn’t be turned by hand or with pliers at all until I unbolted the spindle mount from the linear bearings. Still very difficult to turn. Seems like a lot of friction in the anti backlash assembly, but tough to tell.
@dyno If that were my machine I would take off the spindle and the spindle mounting plate and see what is binding. There are 4 linear slide blocks and the nut for the leadscrew that could all be binding. The two lower slide blocks do get exposed to chips and might need to be cleaned and lubed.
When you take off the spindle you’ll see this plate (mine is slightly modified with two extra holes at the top):
The pair of holes at the center is for the leadscrew nut. The 4 sets of holes in a nearly square go to the 4 linear slides. You can safely remove the whole plate and put it back on. Warning, the bolts going into the linear slide might be torqued quite hard. They are M4 bolts with 3mm heads, be careful to make sure that you don’t strip them.
Be careful if you slide them off of the bottom of the linear rails, they each contain dozens of 1/8" ball bearings.
@AlexW good advice, thanks. I did take it apart, and I found two issues with the lead screw. Appreciate it if you and others can chime in and say if they have seen different or similar things on their machines.
There is interference between the plastic collar on the anti backlash nut on the Z axis lead screw and the spindle mount. See picture below. This interference is putting a bend on the lead screw. Seems possible this is the cause of my original issue, documented here.
Sorry, I haven’t had issues with that part of my machine so I haven’t taken the nut assembly apart. Normally anti-backlash nuts have a way to be adjusted. Given that this is a fairly new machine and you’ve identified multiple potential issues I would probably just call support and see what they suggest.
