Need Help sabre orientation issue

[Dan Mitchell]

Help!
When orienting, the carriage moves to the front of the sabre and then to the left as its suppose to, however the z axis moves down instead of up and errors out. I have replaced the driver board and swapped servo motors to see if they were in issue and its still doing the same thing. Two grand into this issue and no improvement.
One day I was routing and it stopped receiving the jobs from my computer. I would have to restart the sabre to get them the jobs to go thru then the orientation problem occurred. any advice would be appreciated!

 

[chadorama]

I second that. Check your limit switches and their connections. I had similar problems with an x axis. Everything tested fine but when you fired up the machine and pushed “a to orient”, that small movement would wiggle a limit switch connection. Try swapping your z cables with your y cables at the cabinet also. If your problem moves to the y, it’ll tell you that your problem is at the table, not in the control box.

 

[Dan Mitchell]

I had this issue once caused by a failing driver. It would overheat my motor on the x-axis and the machine would suddenly invert that axis directions, seriously ruining everything.
But if this is happening every time on boot up, it sounds like a limit switch issue. Can you locate the limit switch on the machine to see if it is physically stuck, then if you can trace the wires back to the board, you should be able to put a meter on it set up for a continuity test, go over to the switch and click it, and see if your meter is beeping along with the switch. If not, the switch is likely bad. To verify if it should be 'normally open' or 'normally closed' put the meter on the switches for the x or y axis.

Where exactly is the limit switch? Im running a Gerber sabre 408. Is it on the controller board?

 

[chadorama]

Where exactly is the limit switch? Im running a Gerber sabre 408. Is it on the controller board?[/QUOT

 

[chadorama]

When you orient your machine, the trigger travels up until it enters the slot on the magnetic switch. The switch triggers then reverses back down until its back out of the switch and tells the control board "this is the zero position". If that switch is bad and tripped, the board is telling the z axis to move out of the switch to find zero. Bad switch = machine never finds zero...

 

[chadorama]

It's really pretty simple. You can swap limit switch connections at the control board and if the problem moves from the z to whichever axis you swap to, that will tell you if its the switch. If the problem doesn't move, it's a problem in the control cabinet. If it indeed turns out to be a switch, there are two on the machine that are not necessary for operation. The y axis at the end of the machine (easiest to get to) and the x axis on the right side. Just do a swap with one of those and you're back in business. It could be as simple as the plastic connector of the switch also. My machine was riddled with errors and it turned out to be a limit switch plug in connector that just needed some attention and a light squeeze with a pair of pliers... Haven't had a single issue since.

 

[chadorama]

Thank you sir! These tools make money but only when they're operational...

 

[Dan Mitchell]

Thank you sir! These tools make money but only when they're operational...

Thank you for the help, we are getting a new control board, the limit sensor and its wire do not seem to be damaged.

 

[chadorama]

Hey Dan Mitchell, can you keep us all posted on how things go? Hearing "the final fix" can indeed help the rest of us when problems arise...

 

[Dan Mitchell]

Hey Dan Mitchell, can you keep us all posted on how things go? Hearing "the final fix" can indeed help the rest of us when problems arise...

I can tell you that I put in the new control board and its still doing the same damn thing. We are several thousand into this, getting very frustrated.

 

[chadorama]

Dude... will you email me please? I could’ve saved you a bunch of coin here.

 

[Dan Mitchell]

So to sum it up I swapped out the z limit switch sensor with the y axis limit switch sensor and the orientation issue was solved. Thank you Chad.

 

[chadorama]

I’m glad this fixed your issue and now you can send all of those expensive parts back!