Smoothieboard firmware not flashing and other problems

[Evan Scott]

Hi all,

 

 Every time I power the printer and try to home, or any jog/movement, all the steppers move, but very coarsely. (sounds a bit like losing steps, but they do move. Although not nearly as fast as they should.) It’s as if the stepping frequency changes or something. The z-axis, however, does the previously mentioned coarse stepping but it also moves in random directions. Moving one direction for long or short distance and the other for a random distance. this only happens with my z axis and happened on every driver I tried it on, even a verified working one. So I thought it was possibly a short in my wiring (I had used shielded cable and I thought the shielding was shorting a coil of the motor.)

After rewiring it works! However, I ran G32 to use the Z-probe and during the first G28 Manuever it made a loud vibrating noise and all the motors locked up (I assume losing steps.) Now the Y-axis is exhibiting the same symptoms as the Z-axis previously. Now I think it must be a smoothie problem. I’ve reflashed the firmware, updated the config, changed feeds, tried different SD cards and checked all my wiring but nothing is helping. I even tried a brand new Smoothieboard! ( I have a CNC Machine that I am in the process of converting to Smoothie from Mach3) I’m not sure if it is a Hardware issue as the problem persists on working drivers. 

In addition to this issue, when I load firmware.bin, it does not flash to FIRMWARE.CUR . It will randomly flash but usually not and recently, when it was flashed, it un-flashed firmware.bin and changed it to firmware.bin.bin! 

Any help would be greatly appreciated as this is getting very frustrating. Thanks!

[Triffid Hunter]

If you've replaced the entire smoothieboard, that only leaves the firmware, your mechanism, your computer and your config as common elements for the symptoms you describe, and hundreds of people have been using smoothie firmware on various boards including smoothieboard every day for years without seeing anything like your described symptoms.

As for firmware.bin.bin, I don't believe smoothie is even capable of doing that, the bootloader doesn't have long file name support from memory, and smoothie itself doesn't rename anything unless you explicitly tell it to.

Perhaps you have antivirus software doing something strange to the SD card?

Try another host computer, and make sure the SD card is unmounted while you're printing as SD card access can sometimes cause smoothie to stutter or stall.

[Arthur Wolf]

On Tue, Sep 8, 2015 at 4:15 AM, Evan Scott <essc...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi all,

 

 Every time I power the printer and try to home, or any jog/movement, all the steppers move, but very coarsely. (sounds a bit like losing steps, but they do move. Although not nearly as fast as they should.) It’s as if the stepping frequency changes or something. The z-axis, however, does the previously mentioned coarse stepping but it also moves in random directions. Moving one direction for long or short distance and the other for a random distance. this only happens with my z axis and happened on every driver I tried it on, even a verified working one. So I thought it was possibly a short in my wiring (I had used shielded cable and I thought the shielding was shorting a coil of the motor.)

This sounds * a lot * like a common problem : when only 3 out of 4 wires of the stepper motor go to the stepper motor driver, it causes exactly what you describe. This can be caused by a bad cable, or a problem in the connector.

After rewiring it works! However, I ran G32 to use the Z-probe and during the first G28 Manuever it made a loud vibrating noise and all the motors locked up (I assume losing steps.)

Can you try lowering your homing speeds ?

Now the Y-axis is exhibiting the same symptoms as the Z-axis previously. Now I think it must be a smoothie problem. I’ve reflashed the firmware, updated the config, changed feeds, tried different SD cards and checked all my wiring but nothing is helping. I even tried a brand new Smoothieboard! ( I have a CNC Machine that I am in the process of converting to Smoothie from Mach3) I’m not sure if it is a Hardware issue as the problem persists on working drivers. 

In addition to this issue, when I load firmware.bin, it does not flash to FIRMWARE.CUR . It will randomly flash but usually not and recently, when it was flashed, it un-flashed firmware.bin and changed it to firmware.bin.bin! 

Any help would be greatly appreciated as this is getting very frustrating. Thanks!

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[Jason Barnett]

I have had issues with not being able to flash firmware and having very strange things happen too. In my case, it was a counterfeit Sandisk microSD card that was the problem. I copies the files off of it, re-formatted it and put the files back and it began working properly... who knows for how long... :)

I would recommend trying a different microSD card and see if that helps. Not real likely, but worth trying.

Jason 

[Arthur Wolf]

On Tue, Sep 8, 2015 at 10:10 PM, Jason Barnett <jason.b...@gmail.com> wrote:

I have had issues with not being able to flash firmware and having very strange things happen too. In my case, it was a counterfeit Sandisk microSD card that was the problem.

How long ago did you buy your board ? The very first batch, long ago, had counterfeit cards, but since then we fixed it and have legit cards.

What happens however, is they have a weird formatting, and formatting them manually usually helps.
 

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[Jason Barnett]

Sorry for the confusion. The counterfeit card was not the one that was shipped with my board, it was one I bought off of Ebay.

On Monday, September 7, 2015 at 7:15:37 PM UTC-7, Evan Scott wrote: