Chuck rotary turns regardless of the steps, what am I missing

[Sandshark (Guy from the Netherlands)]

I’m trying to keep it short, but I need some help.

I have a rudia controller and a chuck rotary. I’m new to lightburn and now trying to get my rotary to work. In RDworks it’s no problem 10k steps, diameter and go.
But I’m stuck with the lightburn settings. The rotary turns 3.8 times regardless of the number of steps. Same machine with RDworks no problem

10k steps diameter 85mm 3.8 revolutions
5k steps diameter 85mm 3.8 revolutions
200 steps diameter 85mm 3.8 turns
1 step diameter 85mm 3.8 turns…
if I change the diameter it becomes less revolutions

What have I forgotten?
On the movies I’ve seen, the rudia doesn’t reset after every change.
rotary type chuck .ok.
enable rotary .ok.
y axis .ok.

[CadJoe]

uh, could be just me, but your values in screen shot don’t look right.

the pulses show 10.000,000 not 10,000.000
the diameter shows 85,000 thousand with a comma, not period

don’t type commas or period, just 10000 enter
and 85 enter

check your comma and periods

[CadJoe]

totally weird, all your commas are periods, and vice versa.

like idle speed of 300k, instead of 300 mm/s or 300.000 <300 point 000>

[berainlb (PY)]

I think that’s just a European vs American notation difference.

[Sandshark (Guy from the Netherlands)]

yes and no… I hope it’s that simple, although I’ve already thought of that.
if you look at idle acceleration it is correct (as we do in europe) 2(dot)000(comma)000 would be 2k ?
I’m going to try it right away to see if it could be that

[Sandshark (Guy from the Netherlands)]

I typed 85 but after pressing enter it says 85.000

[Sandshark (Guy from the Netherlands)]

Unfortunately it doesn’t matter, I even changed the region of my imac

[jkwilborn (Jack Wilborn)]

@Sandshark

rudia doesn’t reset after every change

Not sure what you mean here.

Once you have it set up, you can go to ‘tools → Rotary’ and enable it there.

Since it’s working with RDWorks and I know mine works along with numerous other people on the Ruida… seems to nail it to a configuration issue.

Lets double check that…

On the Y axes?

I’m betting you are sure it’s 10,000 steps a rotation. Seems high, but… it should change the rotation amount.

What are you sending it to move the rotary, manual ‘move’ buttons or a ‘layer’ to run?

I ran into the 10.000,000 thing a few months back. They had to explain it to me, but I don’t use it, so I loose it…

[Sandshark (Guy from the Netherlands)]

By “rudia doesn’t reset after every change” I mean. Do you have to reboot for the new settings to take effect. Meanwhile i don’t think so.

@jkwilborn

I’m betting you are sure it’s 10,000 steps a rotation. Seems high, but… it should change the rotation amount.

I’m not sure of anything anymore and try everything the forum suggests. I’m still learning. I’ve narrowed the steps all the way down to 1. (It didn’t matter). I checked the jumpers. According to the jumpers, it’s 5000 steps. But with the gears it could be 10,000 So if it’s a bug, could it be in the object diameter? If I bring that back, the rotations go down too.

@jkwilborn

What are you sending it to move the rotary, manual ‘move’ buttons or a ‘layer’ to run?

I have installed lichtburn 1.0.06 on my imac high sierra.
I tried it with a line on a layer.
I used test in the rotary settings.
I used a square 10mm by 10mm.

The error message is correct the laser is not switched on yet. it’s still early here

So the plan for today,

1. install lightburn on my laptop and see if that works.
2. Check if lightburn uses cm instead of mm (10mm=1cm)
3. Try not to throw the rotary through the garage door.

Forum thanks a lot for the good tips I appreciate it very much

[jkwilborn (Jack Wilborn)]

@Sandshark

Do you have to reboot for the new settings to take effect

NO, it will write them to the controller when you ‘enable’ the rotary from the Tools menu.

There is no ‘smoke and mirrors’ in the actual operation or configuration, we are just missing something…

If you have a ‘chuck’ rotary, there is ‘generally’ no ‘gear ratio’ to deal with. Generally the chuck and motor turn the same amount, since, in general, they seem to be direct drive with no gears. If yours is otherwise, let me know. Maybe a link to your device would be helpful…

Before you can do this, you need to know how many steps it takes for the ‘chuck’ to make 1 rotation. This is the purpose of the ‘test’ button. It should driver your ‘chuck’ 1 rotation and return back to the start when you click it. The machine does not need to know the diameter for the setup.

I don’t have this kind of a rotary, mine is a ‘wheeled’ rotary, so I don’t ever care about diameter.

This is my ‘motor driver’ hardware (DM556).

If you have the same motors, which you probably do, since it worked in RDWorks.

On the placard of the driver is how to ‘decode’ the switch settings…

For my machine, I can see it’s 2,000 steps/rotation. My gear ratio is 2.5 so I set my steps/rotation to 5,000 (2.5 X 2000). You should do similar. Many chuck rotaries do not have a gear ratio, but they are out there… This should be clearly stated in the documentation.

I assume you went through the Lightburn Rotary setup documentation?

We need to know the numbers are correct. If that doesn’t solve the issue, then we can look elsewhere…

Make sense?

BTW I’m running “LightBurn 1.1.00, built Wed 2021-12-29 @ 11:58”, so I’m guessing that you are not on the ‘current version’…

[Sandshark (Guy from the Netherlands)]

thanks for your response, I looked at the stepper motor driver yesterday and got 5000 steps. i think there is a gear but i’m not sure. (I also tried 500 of course) I’ve been working on it for a while today.
on a windows 7 machine
RDworks 10000 steps 65.9 mm diameter works perfectly
Lichtburn 10000 steps 65,(and .)900 mm diameter … 3.8 turns
I believe more and more that the diameter input is incorrect.

[jkwilborn (Jack Wilborn)]

The diameter I don’t think matters for the initial setup. I don’t think you completely understand what you are setting up.

To get to here you only need the steps for the motor to make 1 turn and the ratio. Assuming the correct motor, it should be the 5,000 steps as setup on the driver. You need to find the rotary, which I have no clue about yet and determine the gear ratio, if it has one. Since you came up with 10,000 steps and it worked with RDWorks, I hope you find it is 2 to 1. You need to be certain.

Lets talk about how a rotary works. It, in effect is now the Y axes. So the ‘surface speed’ of the object needs to be known (or computed) for the machine to ‘drive it’ like the Y axes ‘surface speed’.

On a ‘wheeled’ rotary the end product is one rotation of the driving wheel. When the software knows the diameter of the driving wheel, it can compute the wheels ‘surface speed’ which will be equal to the surface speed of whatever object you place on it. Once the setup is done there is no need to adjust any of these values.

On a ‘Chuck’, once you have it turning the ‘chuck’ once for the number of steps, you have to give the software the diameter or radius of the object so it can compute the ‘surface speed’ or how fast the Y axis needs to move. This must be done for any variation in the objects diameter.

As you can imagine a 50 foot diameter object would have a much higher surface speed to make 1 rotation that a pencil. This is where you need to know the diameter.

Not so with a wheeled rotary as the surface speed of the wheel will be equal to the surface speed of a mounted object since it’s driving it directly.

At this point, lets get the rotary acting properly.

Your setup should allow the ‘test’ button to rotate it one complete turn and then return to the start position.

What is concerning is that you get no difference between numbers…

Once we know all the data is correct we can chase down what else maybe configured incorrectly.

Make sense?

My Ruida homes on power up and there is no homing switches on rotaries, so it will fail to home if the rotary is plugged in when it re-boots.

Could you include a link to the rotary you have?

Noticed yours is a three phase motor, mine is two phased…

[Sandshark (Guy from the Netherlands)]

jkwilborn it looks obvious but
Rdworks works well with 10000 steps I don’t think I’m allowed to post videos so here’s the result (sorry I look a bit disappointed)

I’m going to go through your explanation again tomorrow at the machine. I don’t know if it’s 2 or 3 phase. But even if I fill in 1 step it turns 3.8 times

[jkwilborn (Jack Wilborn)]

You picture of the motor driver is a 3 phase connection and schematic… This shouldn’t be a concern, since the controller only has a few signals to the motor driver and it handles the motors, phases and all.

Looks pretty good to me. Especially after downing a few

[Sandshark (Guy from the Netherlands)]

my face on a can of beer isn’t going to look better. I also like that effect in the mirror. But I don’t want to use rdworks anymore. Da big gimping is good but with LD you get nicer pictures. If I have time tomorrow I’ll give it a few more hours and see what happens. I’m missing somthing and I’ll find out tomorrow

[Sandshark (Guy from the Netherlands)]

Worked on my rotary today. but it still didn’t work. Dismantled the rotary and came across this (see photo)

The shaft on the motor is 22mm the shaft on the chuck is 45mm.

I played around with the settings today, these are the results when I press test.
10,000 steps 65.9mm diameter gave 3.8 revolutions
5,000 steps 65.9mm diameter gave 3.8 revolutions
4,000 steps 65.9mm diameter gave 3.8 revolutions
2,000 steps 65.9mm diameter gave 3.8 revolutions
1 steps 65.9mm diameter gave 3.8 revolutions

10,000 steps 10.0mm diameter gave 0.8 revolutions
5,000 steps 10.0mm diameter gave 0.8 revolutions
4,000 steps 10.0mm diameter gave 0.8 revolutions
with 10,000 steps and 12.0mm diameter gave 1.0 revolution at last. Tried an image with these settings…it didn’t work

Also tested with a square but whatever I entered no difference I got a rectangle.

I just looked at what another roller rotary costs maybe I’ll give that a try. But I still don’t think this is possible

[jkwilborn (Jack Wilborn)]

Try counting teeth and computing the ratio that way.

21 teeth on one, 14 on the other ratio of 1.5