Mini Gerbil debugging – homing operation
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| Symptom Detail | Likely causes and their solutions (in recommended sequence) |
| Moves in incorrect direction for homing | Lightburn (or other software) home position incorrectly set. https://awesome.tech/limit-switches-and-homing/ User has non-standard home position. For inexperienced user, very strongly recommend using standard home position, see https://awesome.tech/limit-switches-and-homing/ $3 dir setting Mini Gerbil settings corrupted – see Mini Gerbil settings |
| Ignoring limit switches and laser head is grinding into side or corner | Limit switches or their connections may be faulty. Observe LED 9 – Yellow – Y axis limit and LED 10 – Yellow – X axis limit. Each LED should turn off when the limit switch is engaged.) If using J5 (non-ribbon connector), check plug is not reversed. See installation information. Limit switches mis-wired. Review installation information. |
| Makes grinding sound while moving to home. Movement on one or more axes unsuccessful when moving to the home direction | Check for mechanical issues such as incorrect belt tension or obstructions Ensure Mini Gerbil is using the defalt $ settings listed in https://awesome.tech/what-are-settings/ Stepsticks require adjustment. See https://awesome.tech/adjusting-stepsticks/ |
| Homing position offset from desired position | Recent use of the software has set an offset that needs to be reset. Type $RST=# in the console. See https://awesome.tech/what-are-settings/ |
| Homing operation is generally correct, but position is of homing is variable along the axis (depending on where the laser head was before starting homing) and not actually in the corner. You’ve got limit switches connected via the J5 connector. | The limit switch plug in the J5 socket is the wrong way around, remove, rotate 180’ and re-insert. Note J5 is polarity defined via connector slots. Only fits in one way. |
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