[rbs]

Hi guys,

I've been building a DIY control box with the help of a member of the forums here.,

He has pretty much helped from the start by helping by obtaining parts and giving me advice on lots of stuff. Of late tho he has just dropped off the end of the earth making it hard for me to be in contact with him.

I was given a schematic by him for which to follow for building a control box. As I'm new to electronics and this whole field practically i drew up my own version to try and understand it better.

I was made aware that we were making a very well rounded control box with relays to control the routers etc.

My questions are-

Can anyone here see anything which is directly wrong with the schematics

I'm getting the power on.. Using my limited experience of a multimeter I managed to get a reading of 3 volts from the 240 volt female jack in.

As advised i did try a test reading from the Capacitors just before they get to the Gecko drivers to check I was getting the right voltage as I didn't want to risk blowing the Gecko drivers.

I should have been getting around 50/60 volts from the caps but nothing .

Can't seem to find any DIY pre controller setup thread to see if other have start up problems

BTW those yellow boxes on the colored diagram are connection boxes.
James
cheers

Original schematic ( my design is slightly different with less relays)



Simplified with colours



Uploaded with ImageShack.us

[doorknob]

I am a little bit reluctant to give advice because you do not have a lot of experience with electronics and you are working in the vicinity of 240 volt mains power, which can be dangerous if you're unsure of what you're doing.

So my initial advice would be for you to find another friend who has at least some basic electronics knowledge to work beside you and keep you safe.

If you can do that, then a good approach would be to tackle the troubleshooting as a series of semi-independent systems.

I don't understand your statement of "I managed to get a reading of 3 volts from the 240 volt female jack in". Where on the schematic are you measuring that? Is your multimeter set to an AC range or a DC range? Have you inserted fuses with the proper ratings into your fuse holders?

Start with all of your switches off. The first order of business would be to verify that when you turn on the main on/off switch, you have 240 volts AC on the input to the 24-volt power supply, and if that is OK, then verify that you have 24 volts DC output from the power supply. Some power supplies can operate on either 240 volts AC input or 120 volts AC input (for the USA and others), so if your power supply is like that, make sure that it is set up for 240 volts.

If that power supply is OK, then when you turn on the "drives" switch, does relay K5 pull in? (I would expect it to make a noise if it is a mechanical relay, and then you should be able to verify that 240 volts AC is applied across the primary of transformer T1 - pins 1 and 2).

If that's OK, then measure the AC voltage across the secondary of transformer T1 (pins 3 and 4). It's hard to tell from the diagram, but it looks like you have marked the transformer as "2X 40V AC". I'm not sure what the "2X" means, because your diagram shows only one secondary winding from the transformer. But I would look for something close to 40 volts AC across the transformer secondary.

If you have the right AC voltage coming out of your transformer, then double-check the wiring of your bridge rectifier, making sure that the transformer secondary wires are connected to the AC input terminals of the rectifier (probably marked with a sine-wave), and that the + and - output terminals of the rectifier are properly connected to the capacitor's + and - terminals. Your schematic and diagram are a bit confusing as far as the capacitor connection - the schematic shows a symbol for a single capacitor, but the markings show "X1" and "X2", and your diagram appears to show two circles. Do you have one capacitor or two? If you have two capacitors, then they should be hooked up in parallel, such that both + terminals go to the + output of the rectifier and both - terminals go to the - output of the rectifier. If that is OK, then you should be able to measure a DC voltage across the + and - terminals of the capacitor(s).

Report back when you have reached this point.

[rbs]

Hi
Thanks for you reply, just to let you know


I 'm still working on the power supply. Let me just say that the person who sold me the parts is responding again.

The capacitors had a dodgy crimp connection so i replaced that and got a reading of 60 VCD going to the drivers.

Testing the parts one by one and learning how to use a multimeter help a lot.

the next thing though was to learn MAC which i am in the process of AND building a new Pentium4 pc as the one i was using failed. I should post by this week to let you know how it went.

Many thanks for your time

james