Error When Plotting Multiple Copies of the Same Drawing

[cfrancis]

I’ve been plotting a holiday card and I’m getting a strange error. The machine will draw (write) exactly what I want and complete the plot. The finished product is perfect, but I get this message:

Error: Unexpected response from EBB.
Command: SM,25,632,22
Response: Major malfunction Axis1 StepCounter too high : 33135

The pen returns to the home spot and stops in the Pen Up position. With the exception of that error message, the machine appears to have performed with complete success. When I change out the paper and attempt to plot the same message, the pen attempts to move to the correct starting point, but it somehow “catches” about halfway across the page and glitches. It then puts the pen down and begins to plot in that spot (right in the middle of the page about three inches high and four inches to the right of the correct spot).

I’ll unplug, manually put the pen back into the home position, plot the card again and it works perfectly. It’s like there’s an error on every other plot. I’m wasting paper/ holiday cards and I can’t figure out how to stop it from glitching/ catching and plotting in the wrong spot. Any suggestions?

Please note there are no physical obstructions where the machine is bumping into something. Once I unplug and plug back in, it works perfectly with the next plot.

[Windell Oskay]

You haven’t said which version of the AxiDraw software you’re using. I’d suggest upgrading to the latest beta version (currently 1.6.2), which handles a few rare errors of this nature — it’s that same “catching” behavior that is generating the error code. You can find it here: https://github.com/evil-mad/axidraw/releases

You’ll need to manually install the software: Download and unzip the archive ( v162_AxiDraw.zip ) and copy the files inside that archive (about 11 files) to your Inkscape extensions directory, overwriting like-named files there.

On Windows, your extensions directory is usually located at:
C:Program FilesInkscapeshareextensions
or
C:Program Files (x86)Inkscapeshareextensions

On a Mac, your Inkscape extensions folder is located at:
/Applications/Inkscape.app/Contents/Resources/share/inkscape/extensions/

To open this folder, select “Go to Folder…” from the “Go” menu in the Finder, and paste the location of that folder.

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