Bought and built a mini-mill in December 2024. Have been using it to CNC aluminum a bunch since then. Today, accidentally jogged the Z motor hard into a part: pressed 10mm rather than .1mm; normal "I'm not happy" sounds came from mini-mill. The X32 and/or 24v supply stopped working thereafter. Symptoms: none of the motors engage no red warning lights are illuminated on the X32 the 24v supply (a Meanwell from OpenBuilds) flashes when turned on the on/off indicator near the power switch generally does not illuminate sometimes flashes about every second when 24v supply is turned on the LED lights around the router generally do not turn on they sometimes flash on power up and down if the X32 is unplugged from the 24v supply the LED lights do turn on the X32 is illuminated (through the USB power?) and communicates with CONTROL the X32 is not illuminated when USB is disconnected CONTROL and the X32 can establish communications after a disconnect Things tried: power cycling pressing reset (the "motors engaged" indicator goes off while button pressed) unplugging Z motor (no change) resetting grbl on CONTROL letting things sit for 30 minutes and retrying everything None of these things have had any apparent effect Not tried: disconnecting all non-power wires from X32 opening 24v power supply and cleaning inside opening X32 and cleaning inside Anybody have any thoughts? Thanks. Stan
Happens so often that its almost impossible to be the cause of the issues. Motor just stalls. Meanwell PSU flashes that pattern when encountering a dead short on the DC side Any chance an Aluminum chip found its way into BlackBox causing a short on the PCB? Vibrations from the stall may have shaked the chips around causing the timing to line up
Thanks for your reply! An aluminum chip in the electronics is my suspicion too -- and the shaking is a good possibility. Since I submitted above, it started working again...then stopped...then started. I have taken the electronics off the unit, have cleaned them, and am moving them outside an enclosure. Will let you know how things go. Stan P.S. -- learned early on to wrap all connectors in electrical tape!
Sounds all the more like a chip. Here to hoping there was no damage, just a temporary short, glad its working again! Regular visual inspection is good too, terminals can rattle loose, if the wire pulls out of terminal, but hidden under tape, might also have some disadvantage. Trying to find the loose wire etc Also, if taped as a bundle, the loose cable can even easier reach the nearby terminals too
It is back up and milling! I did not find chips inside the X32, but cleaned it anyways. I now suspect that one of the connectors or limit switches was intermittently shorting. There were a couple with quite a bit of aluminum. Rewrapped the limit switches a bit tighter. As I said, I moved the electronics outside the enclosure where there shouldn't be any chips. They were on the back stack of the mill, up and facing away. Previously, I could unplug the mill and carry it to a new location -- now there's a bunch of wires to disconnect -- oh well. Note that I extended the back stack to a 500mm to do that (and raise the mill-head a bit). That's an OpenBuilds enclosure, with plywood on the outside. Also, you can see I also extended the X axis. I only needed a small bit more room, but the 500mm was the next step. Also added limit switches on both ends of each axis. Hopefully won't have too many more issues with aluminum chips (or, when surfacing a curved plane, aluminum dust!). --- Two minor comments. If limit switches are not taped the mill randomly stops when the aluminum builds up, and, that doesn't take too long. I find that when securing wires in a connector, a pull-test on each wire helps locate loose wires.
