retrofitting a lasercutter with smoothieboard

Controllers Smoothie
1

i recently acquired a very old laser cutter that had its original laser removed. This machine came with a serial port input system, which i am trying to upgrade it with a smoothieboard.
i have removed all of the old boards and have the smoothieboard wired in for testing,

Problem 1 i am having:
stepper movement seems to move at the correct speed sometimes, but once in a while it would crawl the +/- 100mm

how i am doing the testing:
using laserweb4 / pronterface controlling the movements +/-100mm on X/Y axis

Problem 2:
when i click home axis it does nothing.

i thought this was because i didnt have my endstops connected, but even with end stops connected. the axis doesnt move.

i have checked that end stops are working properly with the m119 command.

when end stops arent clicked i get X:0 Y: 0 Z:0 when clicked. i get X:1 Y: 1 Z:0

Problem 3:
Sometimes i get cant write to printer errors. serial exception: write timeout

Not sure what is going on here.

Thanks for your help

Imported from wikidot

2
  1. I’m not sure what you mean a video would help I think
  2. Can we see your config ? How are you trying to home ? ( which command ? ) Are you using the cnc build or the normal one ?
  3. How long is your USB cable, is it shielded ? Can you try ( just as a test ) using ethernet to see if it’s more stable ?