Tell me about it! This is just my luck though, I'm used to it. Everything I touch turns to the brown sticky stuff, you're bang on the money there.

I agree and is exactly what I plan on doing bright and early. Tonight I'm just covering bases and finding locally sourced parts so that once the issue is found I already know what I need and who's got it so I can head straight out and get it without messing around finding who's got what. The stepper drivers and BOB don't seem to have any local retailers though so will need to order those online or go for a long drive. There is a little time pressure here, I need to get a one off part ready for a job by the end of next week, hopefully the local machine shop can squeeze it in!

I didn't have time to have a proper look at the symptoms as I had to rush off. In fact it happened right on the home straight, literally the last 30 seconds of a 16 minute toolpath! Talk about a good hard kick in the bollocks. The text message I was writing was "leaving now" which sort of tells you how fast it all happened, I think unless I had my hand on the estop I wouldn't have prevented it anyway. But yeah, I checked all the quick and obvious things, different fuse then different power cable, different USB cable, power off, power on, a gentle tap with the sledgehammer etc. There was no USB connection to the PC, nothing would move, the cooling fan on the box wouldn't power on, the cooling fan on the PSU wouldnt power on, the VFD display wouldn't come on. So I'm pretty certain both the PSU and VFD are dead. Last time when the original PSU died it was exactly the same although the VFD still worked then.

I'm just hoping the BOB and stepper drivers are all good, as figuring out what to put where and how to wire it all up and get it all working smoothly is sure to turn my relaxing weekend into a migraine inducing nightmare.

For what it's worth the plan for the future of this machine is to slowly but surely turn it to a steel framed fixed gantry. By the end I think everything bar the rails would have been changed, I want to go with closed loop steppers or servos purely for the fact so I can have the peace of mind that I CAN look away and be safe in the knowledge the machine isn't skipping steps and getting up to anything naughty whilst I'm not looking. Hence me asking about the 68v PSU.

Edit: I am assuming that 48v is also the max input current but I'm not 100% sure. It would be nice not to have to waste money on a 48v unit when I plan on changing it, and these drivers could well be dead as a dodo anyway.


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