carriage
plot_accel_steps
psteps
All
This parameter helps define the profile used when the carriage is
accelerating/decelerating to/from plot speed and when performing an asynchronous
retrace. The time given to the carriage to accelerate is 1 drum revolution and in that
revolution there is a limited number of psteps. This parameter designates how many of those
steps to use to accelerate the carriage - if fewer are used then the carriage is accelerating
faster (less time to reach full plot speed) and this can lead to a stalling carriage if the
torque required to achieve the desired acceleration exceeds the motor/driver capacity.
On some devices with the introduction of newer and more importantly higher drum/imaging speeds, there
have been instances of the carriage stalling - mainly on VLF devices. It is permissable to increase
this parameter to remove problems with carriage acceleration, the maximum practical value of psteps
can be read from the diagnostic monitor - the firmware prints out the max psteps value during setup for a plot.
Typically for a V-Speed VLF device we have been setting the psteps parameter to about 90 (from the default of 68)
to avoid stalling and leave some margin for degradation of the motor/driver.
If you are increasing the psteps value above the default, please be careful to not make it too large, if
set too large, the carriage may not accelerate on time resulting in plot artifacts OR you may see one
of two possible errors:
1) "Unexpected Error 0x22 (or 0x24)" < In Carriage modules 2.00 and lower >
2) "Carriage illegal dest. Current <n>, Dest <n> Stop Dist <n>" < In Carriage modules 2.01 and higher >
integer