Getting this error when I try to load a configurat

So I shut down the computer over night and came back to it and now at least the program is launching. I'm not sure if it was because I restarted the computer or because I changed the power up procedure (turn on computer > 24v field power to the board > launch CNC > close 'enable servos' relay)

2 things are occurring and one of them I find EXTREMELY alarming. I noticed this happening yesterday before I had gotten LCNC to launch and I didn't really think much of it but this morning I investigated a strange sound. As soon as I trip the relay that brings power to the servo amps, I start hearing a strange 'whirring' sound. It sounds mechanical which worries me because NOTHING should be moving(and nothing appears to be either). When I looked into the gantry it sounded like it was coming from the y axix but I can't be sure if it wasn't coming from more than one place. Although the ball screw wasn't moving, when I put my hand on the planetary gear set that connects the ball screw to the servo I could feel some kind of vibration that was consistent with the sound. This vibration could possibly have also been coming from some other location though.

Ignoring the fact that I was told by a reputable source that the x and y axis were 'jumped' to achieve movement and verify operation sometime last year, I'd otherwise seriously think that one of the planetary gears was missing and the servo was effectively disconnected from the ball screw and just spinning inside the planetary gear set. That seems kind of crazy but it's my knee jerk reaction. It didn't seem like I had unintentionally powered up an element of the waterjet pump. It's a giant pump and motor so I'd imagine any noise it made would be much more than a soft whirring.

I really have no idea what's wrong but I'm praying this is a trivial issue.

The second, much less serious issue is that after LCNC launched and I powered up the servos, although they didn't actually move, LCNC was registering them both moving at an approximate slope of 1.

Now that I'm typing this out, I'm really worried that the last person to work on this lost some parts/didn't reconnect the servos correctly and now LCNC is just CORRECTLY registering movement of the x and y axis.


I'm not really sure what info is relevant so I'll just include this as well: The hal and ini files were written with the intention of operational limit and home switches. I have not connected them yet which is why I assume when I went to enable the drives in LCNC, it refused to 'un-grey' the jog buttons and threw an error about limit switches.

Okay, wrong again. The servos ARE moving but it would probably take about 3 minutes for them to complete a full revolution.

They're doing this when the board is connected but linuxCNC isn't running. I hope this doesn't indicate faulty servo drivers...

Actually "creeping" servos is a good sign and completely expected _IF_ you dont have the drive enables
wired properly.

When the drive enables are properly wired, the drives should be disabled at all times when linuxcnc is not
1. Running
2. In a motion.enabled state

gnipsel.com/linuxcnc/tuning/servo.html

Is a good tutorial for the next steps

Note that getting the drive enables working is a machine and human safety issue

Well that's good news!

Basically, this is a FLOW waterjet and the way it was described to me was that in the wiring shematic provided by flow,the drive enables were hard wired ON and then basically controlled with the CRM. So the kill switch still cuts power to them but theres no way to send power and enable seperately, it's all on one relay.

I still don't know why LCNC is suddenly loading but when I go to enable the servos, it immediately says "Joint 0 following error". Right now my ferror and min_ferror are 2 and 1 respectively. This already seems comparatively high but I'm thinking about adding some zeros in there just to see if I can get the damn head to move via a command. I don't really care if it's accurate or precise.

Or maybe this has to do with LCNC picking up on the drift? although the head probably only moved about 8 inches total, LCNC was showing something like 1100 inches moved.

I very seriously suggest you do these steps in the following order as shown in JTs tuning tutorial:

1. Get encoders working, scaled right and in the right directions

Do this with drives disabled if possible

2. Get drive enables controlled by linuxcnc

So linuxcnc can disable the drives if there is a fault

3. Set per axis following error limits wide enough to allow tuning (say 1 inch or 20 mm)

No more that this or you are likely to hurt yourself or the machine

4. Verify feedback direction (expect runaways) you may have to change the sign of the analog outputs

I still don't know why LCNC is suddenly loading but when I go to enable the servos, it immediately says "Joint 0 following error". Right now my ferror and min_ferror are 2 and 1 respectively. This already seems comparatively high but I'm thinking about adding some zeros in there just to see if I can get the damn head to move via a command. I don't really care if it's accurate or precise.

This could be a very bad idea if the feedback is not correct (instant runaway into the stops = crash)

I must have misunderstood, I thought in order to complete step one of that list I needed to at least jog the servos SOME distance to see with direction they were set to go and their scaling?

No, encoder scaling should be determined with drives disabled if at all possible

Initially there's a 50% chance that your feedback is incorrect so a jog with a large ferror limit
may just run-away and crash you machine (or worse, hurt someone)

Also you want to get the encoder direction right first so you dont have to fuss with feedback direction more than once

Jogging is something to do when tuning after all the preliminaries have be done