Tuning ClearPath Motors on a Paired-Axis CNC Machine | Avid Benchtop Pro CNC 

I used to work on multi-million dollar industrial gantry robots. We used 45lb plates for ballast when swapping components to avoid retuning axes. I chuckled when I saw James bolting Rouge plates on his machine.

Love that TIE fighter sound. I could watch a newly built CNC pointlessly move around for hours. I would tell others I’m “testing” it, but we all know the truth.

You are working really hard in the background to make your shop look more like a Mad Scientist Lab. I'm all for it.

I'm building my own from scratch and was all excited to find this video. Alas, in my machine, the X axis ballscrew pitch is 10mm, while the Y axis is 5mm, ruling out this approach. The Clearpath Customer Support guys helped me out, though, remoting into my PC and while I moved the gantry back and forth, they tuned the servos. Worked out great, thanks, guys!

The weight measurements are awesome...nice touch!

I've been using ClearPath motors on my DIY CNC for a few years now. I did tune them up after I installed them, but a refresher is always good. I've never needed to replace any of my motors but I'll make sure I have backups of the configurations. Very good to see this and your other videos.

As always, it's great to have your expertise in the community! This helped me tremendously in tuning my Clearpath servos. I would have hit esc real quick if I had not seen this. YES it is scary seeing my mill behave like that but now it's silky smooth! Thank you good sir!!!

This is an excellent video tutorial on dual-axis tuning. Well done! Jim W. Teknic Applications Engineer

It made my day when you said about the tie fighter noise literally as I was commenting about it. Keep up the good work James, your channel is awesome

The process for tuning the servos on a multi motor drive axis is one that has been plaquing me for a while. Your method has taken the anxiety out of my planning for my next build. Since I will using dual motors on both X and Y I was very concerned with how to do the tuning. After watching your video I now have a plan that I can believe in for the tuning. The machine is a little wider and longer than yours, but is conceptually now different. The idea to use a single motor driven axis with appropriate mass load to allow for the load to mimic the individual forces that will be applied to a multi motor driven axis is elegant and easily implemented. I love elegant and easy! It always beats complex and difficult.

What an amazing channel to follow. Thank you James for all the knowledge you skare and the fantastic projects...can't wait for more.

I'm glad you made this - I've gotten the "how do you tune the Y motors?" question a number of times regarding my clearpath-equipped gantry router, and from now on I can just point people to this video, which makes it very clear. Nice work, as usual.

Amazing video as always, i'm so exited when you release new videos!!!! It's good to see someone with a passion for machines :D Greetings from France

I may have been too primed for comedic bits by This Old Tony, because all of the mentions of autotuning saw me half-expecting "singing" at some point. 🫣

Great video James! Really appreciate you making these videos. Its folks like you that put in the time and effort to share their knowledge that makes this format so great. Cheers!!

Always a pleasure to keep leaning through your in-depth content. Thank You.

As usual very informative. 👏 Great channel.

Love your videos !

What a beast of a machine! I like it a lot. Your approach on tuning it, is very helpful. Thanks again.

Another great job James. You make all this enjoyable to watch. learn and understand. Thank you.

Nice build and The clearpath are awesome.

Love the video I don't really understand much about cnc machines but look great I recently found your channel And can't stop watching looking forward to the next video

Superb video. God bless you.

Nice work. Very well done explaining how to tune and compensate for a paired axis.

Great video, I agree with saving the files after tuning. I have had one lose its config before and it was a very quick fix.

Great video thank you. These motors seem quite the thing!

I am looking forward to seeing the machine in operation.

Ja,especially that's so cool how you make that all look so easy . What I'm getting mostly is how you got o save every thing after you learn/teach each aspect .. thanx man .

I went with closed loop steppers based on the testing you've shared on youtube and am very happy with them. Looking forward to some Clearpaths down the road, thanks for sharing!

Much respect from a professional automation electrical engineer.

You can't beat awesomer!

This CNC router really makes my Open Builds OX router look like a toy. I'm thinking upgrading to the proximity limit switches like you have might be an interesting project. Thank for posting.

Great tutorial! I used Olympic plates, but it still worked ok :)

Fr/ Bonjour, C'est génial vos explications . Ca fait longtemps que je regarde ses servomoteurs mais le paramétrage me faisait peur en plus des problèmes de traduction. Vous l'avez fait remarquablement bien fait. En plus ma prochaine CN sera identique à la votre avec deux moteurs sur l'axe Y... Merci pour le temps que vous avez consacré et en plus j'apprécie la façon donc vous vous exprimez qui rends la traduction clair et précise pour une personne qui ne maitrise pas bien l'anglais. Merci Bravo et je peux que vous encouragé à continuer comme vous le faite. JC Gb/ Hello, your explanations are great. I've been looking at these servos for a long time but I was afraid of the settings and the translation problems. You have done it remarkably well. I'm looking forward to my next NC with two motors on the Y axis... Thank you for the time you spent and I also appreciate the way you express yourself which makes the translation clear and precise for a person who does not master English well. Thank you, Bravo and I can only encourage you to continue as you do.

Once you get the machine on a more solid base, I’d turn the acceleration up. You’ll notice it won’t reach full speed when doing complex parts, like gears and letters. Great machine and interesting solution to the dual Y axis problem!

Awesomer! 😄

I thought the using the x axis to tune the y axis was a very smart move. I don’t think, he’ll I know, I wouldn’t have thought of that. Thanks a lot for great video.

Interesting, thankyou.

very cool. I think monitoring the current usage on the motors (perhaps when under cutting load) and then giving yourself some margin on top would let you set the current / torque limits on the motor to prevent them from just ripping up the machine if there is some error or problem. thanks for sharing this.

Very nice video. I found adjusting tuning to stiff was well worth it. The BLDC trapezoidal sound is a bit louder. I feel like I'm getting better value from the motors with it turned up to stiff because the performance is improved (and it sounds beefier as you mentioned after tuning). -Ken

Excellent content. You are getting to be pretty buff my friend!

While drooling over this machine on their site. I dreamed of having the nema 34 motors on it. Typical car guy, biggest motor you can get. Then you go and put clearpath servos on it. Its the equivalent of putting a funny car engine in an old pinto.

Gracias , tremendo hack para poder realizar autotune en el eje Y .

That Z axis seems so powerful, you could use it as a shaper!

James I really enjoy the videos and your approach to things. What do you do for a living?

Good video. I've been working on my own DIY cnc lathe with DMM servos. I've had issue after issue tuning servos. For example while cutting the loads are different so my tuning was done just like you did with the machines inertia only. no cutting loads. This has caused lots of confusion for me. For example while cutting the servos see more load and allow more slip (accumulation error) this leads to missed dimensions and having to take very whisper lite finishing cuts in order to not force the motors to slip. If you increase the gain on position then the motors hiss or hum and in some cases oscillate till they error out. I'm looking forward to see how the machine dose while cutting and to see if you have these issues or not. Keep it up.

Fantastic build. Autotune did not work on my mach4 setup.

Amazing stuff. Are you going to do a video to discuss the tradeoffs involved in moving the high speed spindle off the grizzly? Are you even keeping the grizzly given the other machines, or are you leaving it just for steel?

💪!

I have aways dialed a bit back the aggressively of the motor so that normal machining resonance does not induce the motor to be hunting for position all the time.

@clough42 Have you cut any chips on this machine? Would love to hear your thoughts about Acorn vs Mach4

I know that this is going to come up in the future, but the higher frequency sounds are coming through loud and piercingly clear on the youtube audio. I bet lots of people are going to comment about it.

Very happy there were no evil 35 lb plates used here.

Damn James when did you get so swole?! 😂

Man can't wait to see it cut some aluminum.

I have to say after a few months of your videos: you're clearly the father I never had..

Those leed screws needs any lubrication it sounds rough is it normal?

Have you ever considered linear motors and/or encoders?

Your project are always so cool, Sir. Thanx for sharing your accomplishments (and errors, which relly helps ) with the whole world! Best regards from far Ukraine.

What clearpath servo motor model number did you use?

How are your y axis wired with those cleared path..hardware wire slaved.. please explain.

I would like to ask which model Clearpath motors that you decided to use on this Avid Pro cnc build?

So I'm currently doing pretty much the same upgrade to my Onefinity CNC router with Clearpath Servos and the CNC4PC C86ACCP. Do you have limit switches on both Y axis for auto-squaring?

How did u spec which servo to buy?

James - can you please tell/show us in a future video how this new tool is better than the old Grizzly ?

So, If you were to build a second identical machine would the tuning still be necessary, or would a slight part indifference demand it too be tuned for optimal performance?

1:01 - The lighting makes the CNC router look like it's a rendered picture, placed into the video after it was filmed. :P

Why did you choose to go with Avid instead of the Tormach 24r? Based off my estimation a complete build would be nearly the same. I’m trying to decide between the two for my next cnc purchase. Thanks for the great video

very nice , how much that machine ? and what size can it cut i mean lit of thickness and how large the parts can it cut ?

Cnc curls

that much weight moving that fast on a CNC IN YOUR GARAGE????? Awesome.

what did you buy this to make? You already have two bench mills and one of those is a cnc machine with probably more rigidity. Is the idea to get a better finish on parts from the router over the vertical mills??

Shorter sleeves when lifting the weight onto the mount.. to see more of the gun show.… would have been funny (to me).

That was supposed to be more awesomer! :-)

whatcha gonna do with the good ol' g0704 if you're stealin the spindle off of it?

I am a new user of an Acorn CNC. I am building a machine for gas lasers. If you have any ideas, yes. If not, I understand.

Wouldn’t the stiffness of the machine and resonance be completely different between the two axis?

You think a CNC lathe will ever be on the books?

Why didn't you finish the diamond grinder project?

When do we get to see what all these new shiny tools are for? I'm certain all these new machines are not just for decoration.

What's the end goal with this Fab Shop you're setting up? The way things are going I'm almost expecting "I just leased a 1100sq ft shop space" video in a few months. Haha

Hey James, love the video as usual. I have a question for you and it's a little off topic but I wanted to ask you in particular having seen your journey in growing your shop and your weight loss journey. I have a Hwacheon HL-460, a bigger Taiwanese Bridgeport Mill, a surface grinder that needs fixing and a small waterjet in my garage that's sat in there for months and done nothing with. I have projects lined up. I have materials, I have tools, I used to love spending time in the shop, I would get off work every day, eat dinner and spend 5~6 hours in the shop before going to bed. I just can't seem to do it again though. How do you do it mate? What's your go to for getting out of a rut? I feel just stuck and have no idea what to do. It all happened when I had to wait 2 weeks to get a part to repair the waterjet and I stopped going into the shop. That repair part is still just sitting there and I can't for some reason stomach myself walking in there and fixing it for some reason. I know you are not my therapist or anything but I was wondering if you had any tips for a fellow hobby machinist.

15:05 Why wouldn't you connect the brake to the motor controller. The Controller would know that any time the motor needs to move, the brake needs to be released -- it should be transparent. If this is not possible, we should revisit the definition of "Controller."

awsamer

Since X, Y, and Z are common between a mill, plasma cutter, and laser engraver, would it make sense to have two other mounts on the z axis then drop in the water tank with slats, or a spoil board for engraving when needed. I was just thinking about saving shop floor space by combining the three tools.

Auto-tune, also known as "T-Pain mode"

It looks like you accounted for the weight of the spindle in your calculations, but the spindle wasn’t attached when you did the tuning. I think your weight estimate is off by 28 pounds so you should have added 14 more pounds for the tuning.

What kind of company sells a machine that needs this much work to get it running?

looks so sweet. could totally break your arm.

I hope you have checked the weight of those weights. If it says in the weight "25lb" it doesn't mean it is really 25 pounds. ;-) It might be precise enough for a weightlifter that trains on that machine every day, but not for using as a calibrating weight.

The probability of inserting a USB plug wrong way round first time is way higher than 50% for some reason...

You know, I think I'd rather have a fixed gantry with the table that moves. Simpler, maybe more rigid.

Apologies for being the "grammar police", but "make it even awesomer" isn't proper. The correct usage is "make it even more awesomer"