Hey all, Having some major issues that I can not seem to straight out. Picked up a used C-beam XL. Worked fine when I picked it up. Brought it home and started making an enclosure and rewire it. Now I am having some issues with the electronics. Quick run down- 120-240v ac power supply (running on 120v) to 0-48v dc 120-240v ac spindle power supply (running on 120v) to 0-100v dc HY-DIV268N-5a stepper driver (x4) NEMA 23 High torque (x4) Warp9td Usb Smooth Stepper to BreakOutBoard Mach3 Software Issues- First thing I wanted to test was spindle. Power supply is getting 120v but I can not get more then 4v out of it. The spindle spins very very slow. - I moved on to the steppers. Powered up and I can hear all the motors set. Used Mach3 and tried jogging the axis. I didnt notice how close the Z carrier was to the X end and I crashed the carrier, not hard but it burnt up the power supply(?) - Replaced the Power supply with new and was careful while jogging. It jogged fine for a few seconds then it all stopped. Power Supply seemed to have turned off. Unplugged from the wall, let it sit for a second and plugged it back in. Power supply now only showing 5v and the leds on the motor controllers are really dim. Took the power supply apart and everything looked fine inside, hooked it back up but only to one controller. Immediately started hearing crackling and seeing smoke form the controller. Took it off and shes cooked. Something is clearly wring but what? - Motor Power Supply has a ground terminal for the 120v and is internally grounded to the case. Spindle Power does not have a grounding terminal so I used a jumper from motor power supply to a mounting screw for the case on the spindle supply. So there is continuity between panel, cases and 120v ground wire. I sketched up a wire diagram in paint to help visualize the lay out. Hopefully it helps. Any help is appreciated. This is my first time playing with this all andI I really cant afford to burn up any more electronics.
Hi M&D, Any pictures? what type brand PSU? what type speed control, 0-100vdc spindle? Do the PSU's have selection switches to run on 120vac? Those Drivers max is 48VDC I would not run them at the max, can you turn down the voltage with the pot, or use a 24 or 36vdc PSU? Did you verify that yellow/blue and red/green are the motor coil pairs? Thanks Gary
The spindle and psu is just a cheap ebay one i believe. Spindle power This is the PSU for the motors https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0777MH681/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 I can turn the 48v down. It's set at 48.7v right. I thought that 48v was ideal. Is 24 or 36v recommended? I checked the phase of the motors by holding the wires together. Blue/yellow together make the motor hard. Same with red/green Is there an issue with the dc and ac ground being all together? I see ppl discuss to have all commons be together but they do not specify if its ac and dc or keep them separate. I'm in automotive so I'm comfortable with DC wiring. But the AC I'm not so sure footed. Here are a few more pics. (Sorry for the mess, It was alot cleaner but I have been moving them trying to diagnose the issue. ) Cnc wiring
First thing I see on the diagram is you have your DC and AC sharing a common ground bus. Seems like this inherently means you're putting -120V back up a bunch of 50V rated components 60 times a second?! Use the designated 0V DC outputs on the PSUs instead of the common ground lugs. Keep each DC circuit self-contained too. Motor negative goes to motor PSU negative, stepper driver negatives go to stepper PSU negative. See if that solves the problem, then we can move on from there. [I'm very late to bed, so I could be visualising this all wrong, admittedly, but separating system loops is just a good idea in general- you only want shared grounds between systems with shared signals, eg. the logic (step/dir) between your breakout board and stepper drivers]
Nothing wrong with using the earth grounds all together, as long as the outlet you are using is wired correctly! That can be checked easy enough with a multi-meter. Check your AC (earth) ground to neutral should be nothing, ( zero VAC) and ground to hot should be about 120VAC and Neutral to Hot should also be 120VAC. Check the Neg and Pos DC to the AC ground, should be almost nothing, couple volts ac or dc is typical. Earth ground is not AC or DC Negative. Do NOT tie DC neg to earth Ground! Don't confuse DC Neg with Ground.. not the same! The only difference between AC neutral and ground is that you should not sink current to ground as part of an intended circuit (the current should only be dissipating noise or helping to prevent fires and popping the breaker). If a Cheap driver says 12-48V that means at 48.1VDC it will probably fail! reduce that voltage. For the bus, like Rob said, it would seem like a good idea, but the drive manufactures recommend against this... I'm not sure why, but it might be good practice to keep your neg and pos DC wires (pairs) close to each other so you get some noise cancellation. You can run two wires off each screw terminal on the PSU. As for the spindle control not working, it's probably the adjustment knob (pot) not wired or working right, is it a 4k7 ...(WTH)118? Hopefully I didn't confuse you more this turned out long and rambling! Hope you have better luck with these drives than other people.. Link Cheers Gary
Upon further consideration this morning, my "inherently" should really read "under certain conditions", because yeah, ground should be ground. I was getting my relative voltages and reference points mixed up in my exhaustion. Still isolate your AC, DC-spindle, and DC-motion circuits though. It is worth checking your neutral-ground voltage just in case you've got something feeding back up the line, or a bad connection somewhere. Any GFCIs in the house should have complained about a bad ground, but you never know. If you send your negative DC line back into the case ground, seems to me that you've still got an open circuit on the DC side of the transformer in the PSU, and no DC circuit past the final stage of power electronics. I remember my bench supply just sat there like a lemon when I first hooked it up and assumed the central GND post was circuit negative and the -DC post was actually negative voltage (like for an opamp). Turns out, not so much. I'm still not 100% sure what the problem may have been, unless your current draw was too high, but these circuits should, in theory, have protection against that. For the purposes of simply jogging around, try reducing the current regulation on your drivers to say, 0.5A or 0.8A or something nice and low. Should still be plenty to make things move without a load at 24-48V. The main PSUs should also have protection against direct shorts, so if something is wired wrong or shorted under load, it actually may perform the behaviour you're describing- the dim LEDs and only a couple of volts out. I wanna say I've seen that before on a cheap PSU one time. What actually is the spindle? Does it definitely need voltage control and not frequency control? I don't know as I'd assume that the previous owner knew what they were doing unless you have definitive evidence to the contrary. A lot of times people sell stuff because they didn't know what they were doing, couldn't get it working right, and didn't want to keep going with it.
Sorry for the delayed response. I was out of town and away from a computer for the weekend. Thanks for the replies so far. Lots to go thru to help diagnose. Gary, I will go thru and check the ac supply. Its an oldish house (1955) and I already know some of the circuits are not grounded. I may just run a new clean line cause the electrical panel is close to the other side of the wall. And at that point, it might be better to run 240v? I will like to step up to a stronger spindle once I get my feet wet. The ac ground/earth/neutral is what gets me. I'm comfortable with DC so I think those terms are just messing with my mind. But It is starting to become more clear and make sense. I checked after Rob said not to have the circuits share a common point and I do not have continuity between -DC and AC earth. You mentioned "Cheap driver". Being that 3 of the 4 have released the smoke and I cant put it back. What drivers would you recommend replacing these with? That Spindle in the video looks identical to the one I have. I know it is not the best and I do plan on replacing with a larger one later on. I was just hoping I could use this one as training wheels, until I get comfortable with this all. Seems like my next steps will be: Check supply AC wiring Replace alum panel with non conductive material to help keep AC/DC circuits isolated. Remove buses and wire drivers directly to PSU (keep fuses inline? What size?) Lower PSU DC voltage (24-36v?) and maybe test one at a time haha. Thanks again for the help so far. Please keep it coming, I'm trying to learn as much as possible with this.
Sounds like a good plan for next steps.. As for a driver replacement, there are many 542 type drives, the ones from Openbuilds are excellent and Openbuilds supports their products. If you are really tight on budget you could get something like these. You should be able to adjust the voltage to under 48 for now, or get a 24 or 36V psu. Inline Fuse is good, 5A is plenty per drive. Cheers Gary
I've had good results with StepperOnline stuff. The best drivers I've used recently (albeit with a lower current capacity of 4A, but I'm running NEMA 17s and no spindle, so plenty for me) are actually these dirt cheap ones: https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B077MDVTF9/ That might just be because I haven't yet fired up my closed-loop NEMA 34 drivers, but they run cool, tolerant of occasional accidental hot-plugging, very smooth and quiet drives. The five-star reviews aren't kidding. What the actual brand is (I'm assuming "Beauty Star" is not it) or if they're findable elsewhere or in future, I have no idea. They may just be generic TB6600 drivers, but none of the others get the same reviews? Edit: And yeah, if you're gonna bother pulling cable, add a 240V line for future spindle VFDs (or servo drives!)
Not overly tight of a budget. I would rather spend a little more and buy a good quality. Seems like there's only one in the parts store DQ542MA Stepper Motor Driver These are the ones you're talking about? 4amps per phase should be plenty for my Nema23 high torque. Correct?
Yes that is reversed good find. might not have been what let the magic smoke out, but doesn't help either. Yes those drives will fully power the high torque motors, I have had no problems with mine. Gary
The best solution would be to pick up a cheap outlet tester to verify the outlet. They are available anywhere home improvement supplies are sold.
Sounds good. Ill correct the wring and order those drivers right now. Probably will not get to work on any of it until after the holidays.
