Is there a way to release the acro's X and Y motors for manual repositioning the transport for whatever reason once the BlackBox powers up? Maybe a command issued via BB Control to free them up temporarily?
There is a grbl setting to disable the motors, but moving the gantry by hand can obviously turn the motors into generators, sending voltage spikes back into the drivers in your BlackBox and potentially damaging them/it. Best practice is to jog into place using CONTROL's built-in jogging controls.
I am aware of the back EMF risk of manually moving a stepper. You must go very slow when moving manually. But I do it on my 3D printer all the time to recalibrate the left and right Z threaded rods. In that case the firmware releases the motors as soon as you disconnect the USB comms. In the case of the 1010, it's possible for the Y and Y2 positions to get bumped out of perfect sync with each other bc of the wide width of the 1010. It would be helpful IMO to not have to power down to check their mechanical sync. BTW - ran into a head scratcher while building the 1010 until i discovered the source. Could not manually move the motors easily while assembling X and Y. Turns out if you allow the raw motor control wire ends to short out, the back EMF generated by the stepper on itself is enough to resist movement.
This, of course, is true. But I do it with $12 drivers, not a $150 BlackBox. The setting is this one: gnea/grbl - to run a grbl machine you should be fairly comfortable with that entire page though, so keep reading! Yeah, Lenz's law. Same phenomenon as dropping a ball bearing and a magnet down a copper tube- the magnet will fall slower. People do sometimes use it to check wiring without a multimeter, since if you short the correct two wires together, you've found your phases. If the motor still doesn't turn after that, you just reverse the wiring direction of one of the phases. Handy trick, though I've never used it.
Could still cause damage... Its not about how much voltage you generate, its the fact thats now coming into the driver instead of going out as it was designed to! Slow manual moves can still damage drivers! No warranty for that (; don't do it! Lets fix the myth about fast vs slow: Slow moves already damages the driver (because current flows in the wrong direction!) When you do push fast, it damages way more than the drivers then! push it hard enough to damage the output mosfets on the driver, and now the voltage gets rectified by the back-emf diodes and dumped back onto the VM (24v) power rail! If that voltage exceeds the rating of other components on the same power rail, they ALL now burn out . 24v to 5v Stepdown converter IC can then also fail open and and start dumping your generated voltage into the low voltage 5v/3.3v rails too! It just gets worse the harder you push! But its not safe to go slow! Your 3D printer survives it only because of the basic protection diodes in the driver, and bulk caps on the 24v rail absorbing some of the overvoltage - its just a matter of time till they die (; So no, don't do it!
