Strike CNC (My first CNC router)

[Shinobiwan]

OK result! The software is now working.

Took hours of faffing around and the solution wasn't clear at all!

Just in case anyone else runs into the error "Selected collating sequence not supported by the operating system." When trying to read or write data to the drives. Here's how I fixed it. You need to enable multi language within XP. Be sure your regional settings are English(UK) and then select the check boxes for Thai and also East Asian language support. And that's pretty much it. No idea why I had to do this but it refused to work without those options.

I've managed to eliminate the noise using manual setup but the autoset function brings it back. Seems that too high a Kp value increases the noise. The autoset function wants to set it around 2000 but to get the steppers silent you really need to be around 700. This value seems suboptimal as the rise time is fairly lax. Seems I have shite motors? Weird because the 3Nm behaves the same as 4Nm too, you'd think there'd be some difference unless they're both from the same manufacturer.

Anyway the drives are working well now so I'm happy there.

What's less good is the fact that Strike CNC have messed up on replacement parts and there's some binding issues in the Y and Z ballscrews. There's loose bolts, rail slides that haven't had their tension adjusted, missing screws from motor mounts, cock-eyed mounting of the supported rails on the Z front plate, damaged bearing in the floating end Z ballscrew support. AND that's in the replacement gantry that was supposed to fix all the other problems I had in the first one.

Now I've got strip the Z axis down, check and loctite every bolt. Thank god I've got the help of Dean because if I hadn't I'd have given up and cut my loses. The guy has spent hours on the phone and a couple of trips here and for virtually nothing. A true asset to the community.