[HereinCS]

I'm running 42v through my system. I have a EZg540 set at 5K, yet my motor gets smoking hot, and one burned out. Am I putting too much voltage through them?

[eSilviu]

I'm running 42v through my system. I have a EZg540 set at 5K, yet my motor gets smoking hot, and one burned out. Am I putting too much voltage through them?

voltage will never create heat, current will!
So I think that you have set the current too high for that motors.
(It may be a resonance problem too, but I doubt)

[CNC Lurker]

I'm running 42v through my system. I have a EZg540 set at 5K, yet my motor gets smoking hot, and one burned out. Am I putting too much voltage through them?

What resistor is your stepper supposed to use? I'm using the CNCRourterparts kit, so the EZg540 is supposed to be set to 3.5.

[HereinCS]

I can't read the value on my EZg540....but I have it turned all the way counter clock wise and the measurement across pins 1 and 5 is 5kOhms.

[HereinCS]

My motor states 2A and measured 5ohms across each winding

[Spiv]

You need a 2k resistor across 1 and 5. That sets your current. The trimpots are only for adjusting low speed smoothness.

[HereinCS]

I have more than 2k, I have 5K of resistance. The pot is to adjust the EZg540, not the trim pot on the gecko.

[Spiv]

Ah, ok I see. Well at 5k it's limited by the drivers at 3.5A/phase (without idle reduction) which is why it's killing your motors. Across 1-5 you should be coming up with 2k when it's adjusted properly. There's a chance you might have a bad pot on the EZ, try turning it while hooked up to a meter to see if it changes.

[HereinCS]

I had it at 2k but the motor ran hot and fried. Then I noticed my other motor getting hot as well. So I turned up the pot to 5k and it still heated up.

The motor that fried did so during my calibration. It was making a ton of small steps, then died and triggered an estop function

[Spiv]

A warm motor is normal, but obviously we're talking about much more than that if it fried one of them. How long was it running before that happened?

-the adjustment (counterintuitive) goes the other way. Lower resistance means lower current output. Something is still wrong, but you should be able to set them at 1.5k or so without the motors getting warm for quite some time.

[HereinCS]

Thanks, maybe I had it back wards. I'll turn them all down to 1.5k.

But the motor was running for about 20 minutes. Taking very small steps.

[Fastest1]

It is not a random number to adjust to. Why are you now selecting 1.5?

[Fastest1]

What steppers do you have?

[HereinCS]

Because my motor burned out at 2k. They are vexta nema 23 motors. There's a label in the back that stated it's 2a.

[Fastest1]

I just went back and looked thru quite a few of your posts to see if you had listed the steppers specs. I see they are unknown? What else does this label say? Also you are working on a bootstrap/repstrap of some kind? Cool. I got to go to an open house of a Houston based robotics/chemistry/electronics/3D printing group just recently. There are people making excellent prints pretty quickly. I watched the code as it was scrolling. All the gcode was the same as far as I could tell. It did use E for either extrusion rate or heat. I have wanted to build an extruder head for my Sherline/A2ZCNC Monster Mill.

[Fastest1]

Is this your first cnc build? I dont mean to offend you, I have just seen a few of your posts surfacing lately, mostly in regards to electronics. I know that I contemplate the printer and its use but I am just learning the machining end, though I am sure they are similar. I will be going to the TX/RX Labs open house a few more times for consumption of knowledge. They were very helpful and enthusiastic about explaining all of the parts. I have been to only 2 of their open houses but you can bet there was some brain power in that room until I got there LOL. Quite a few NASA contractors in the mix.

[HereinCS]

I'm not sure what the stepper model is other than that it's 2amps.

I was going to use this machine as a 3D printer as well, but there would be too much compromise. The print area would be a bit too small, and the machine is a bit too heavy. Every time this thing stops and changes direction, the entire table shakes. It will knock over the model for sure.

Once I'm done with this then I'll do a dedicated machine for 3D printing. It'd be cheapest and easiest to buy a reprap kit. But I have this condition where I can never accept something off the shelf. I'm looking to build one with a build area of 13" cube. As far as the extruder goes, the makerbot steptruder 6 seems really nice. From what I heard, it's probably the most reliable extruder on the market. Extruders are the most problematic part of a 3d printer and i just don't want to mess with building one at this point. There is a $10 off coupon on it now if you want to buy one.

[HereinCS]

Is this your first cnc build? I dont mean to offend you, I have just seen a few of your posts surfacing lately, mostly in regards to electronics. I know that I contemplate the printer and its use but I am just learning the machining end, though I am sure they are similar. I will be going to the TX/RX Labs open house a few more times for consumption of knowledge. They were very helpful and enthusiastic about explaining all of the parts. I have been to only 2 of their open houses but you can bet there was some brain power in that room until I got there LOL. Quite a few NASA contractors in the mix.

No offense taken. The main goal of building all this is to learn the process. I have zero background in mechanical design or electronics. Learning step by step on this forum and several other forums. I'm in Colorado Springs and there is simply no local learning resources here. If you know of anything like txRx labs here please let me know.

[ger21]

voltage will never create heat, current will!

Not true. Read the section on Motor Heating here.
Support

[Al_The_Man]

Well technically you cannot have heat without current, voltage has to be taken in context, the graph on the link show voltage against watts which is a product of Voltage and current.
Simply put, you can have voltage without current, but not have a current without a voltage of some kind to apply the 'pressure'.
If you look at the old water analogy for voltage and current, flow and pressure it will show more clearly.
Al.