[SWATH]

Any chance of posting a picture of the offending solder joint. I haven't even looked at my panel board.

[allenj20]

I should have taken a picture but I did not know at the time that it would fix anything. I am sort of hesitant to even touch it now that it is working. If I have it back apart I will take a picture.

[chipmiser]

I should have taken a picture but I did not know at the time that it would fix anything. I am sort of hesitant to even touch it now that it is working. If I have it back apart I will take a picture.

Hi all,

I wanted to give an update and some hope on the spindle problem. I played the voltage, power, ground game for about 5 months, then finally got a replacement controller board mailed to me and guess what,,,the drop I was seeing below 1000 rpm went away!
On the down side, my RPM feedback on the controll panel is inop, and I have seen some dips at high rpm, but I am in a lot better situation now than with the rpm drops I was having at low rpm.
An AC motor with VFD drive would sure be nice, other than that we will have to ask for board swaps until finding one that works.

[SWATH]

Good luck with that, Mikini does not acknowledge that their board has any problems. I experienced similar things. No matter what I did on my end it did not help, but a new board solved the rpm dips but now it will not get passed 3300rpm and the rpm does not track correctly. I had a program that had an s500, and the panel read that it was spinning at s687.

[allenj20]

SWATH just curious did Mikini replace your main board or spindle board to make the dipping go away? Might try just inspecting your main board solder joints with a magnifying glass that's all I did. I will say the soldering on these boards was not very good there was solder between chip leads as well as on them. Not enough to touch leads but just a messy job. Looks to me like the manufacturer Mikini chose for the electronics job is not the best. Wonder how much they saved over a more reliable manufacturer.

Good luck with that, Mikini does not acknowledge that their board has any problems. I experienced similar things. No matter what I did on my end it did not help, but a new board solved the rpm dips but now it will not get passed 3300rpm and the rpm does not track correctly. I had a program that had an s500, and the panel read that it was spinning at s687.

[SWATH]

SWATH just curious did Mikini replace your main board or spindle board to make the dipping go away? Might try just inspecting your main board solder joints with a magnifying glass that's all I did. I will say the soldering on these boards was not very good there was solder between chip leads as well as on them. Not enough to touch leads but just a messy job. Looks to me like the manufacturer Mikini chose for the electronics job is not the best. Wonder how much they saved over a more reliable manufacturer.

It was the spindle board that they replaced. Prior to sending it out I closely inspected the whole board but found nothing (not that I knew what I was looking for anyway). When you say the main board are you talking about about the LCD panel or something else?

[allenj20]

The main board on the LCD panel the one everything plugs in to. That was the one I inspected for bad solder joints.

[chipmiser]

The main board on the LCD panel the one everything plugs in to. That was the one I inspected for bad solder joints.

On the first attempt to fix my rpm drop problem I sent my motor and controller back for "testing". When I removed the controller from it's heat sink I found Aluminum chips all over the low voltage side of the power transistor that controls the motor. I was very excited and thought for sure I had found the problem, but after cleaning had the same issue. I haven't been able to find any bad solder joints, yet.
After getting my tested and certified board wrapped in plastic and Styrofoam balls (static and more static) I recommended to Phil to use anti-static bags for shipping, said they are thinking about it.

[allenj20]

When Mikini sent me the version 2 electronics they had thrown it all in a single box with not nearly enough packing material to protect anything. The computer got crushed, and one of the capacitors on the spindle board was pretty munged too. They just threw a bunch of parts in a box and shipped it including a quite heavy BLDC motor to rattle around. I was dumbfounded.

They also told me to send in ALL of my version 1 electronics for the swap and so that is what I did including my smooth stepper. They never returned the smooth stepper. I asked about it and they said no smooth steppers here on the bench sorry.

I could go on and on.

Jackasses

[dbrija]

On the first attempt to fix my rpm drop problem I sent my motor and controller back for "testing". When I removed the controller from it's heat sink I found Aluminum chips all over the low voltage side of the power transistor that controls the motor. I was very excited and thought for sure I had found the problem, but after cleaning had the same issue. I haven't been able to find any bad solder joints, yet.
After getting my tested and certified board wrapped in plastic and Styrofoam balls (static and more static) I recommended to Phil to use anti-static bags for shipping, said they are thinking about it.

I'm an electrical engineer by trade, and that "we'll think about static bags" is just appalling. ESD is a huge problem, from manufacturing individual components to assembling complete boards. For someone to ship a board in no ESD protection is unacceptable. It shows that nobody cares....