Hello, I was wondering if anyone could recommend a good alternative to the Gecko 203V. I recently had my second Gecko 203V go out on me without any warning and want to try something new. I have a retrofitted Bridgeport series I cnc mill. The mill was working like a champ for well over a year when all of a sudden I hear a pop followed by a squealing noise as my mill tried to make 0.5" full dept pass in mild steel. I cracked open my control cabinet and found the my X axis was completely down no error lights or anything.
My first drive failure was occurred my Z axis, shortly after retrofitting my mill. I was intrigued how the unkillable 203V failed under normal operation. As with all things in life sometimes you just get lucky. I gave Gecko a call and they told me ship it back. After repairing the drive I had tech call me and explain the problem. The drive worked fine and all went well until 2 weeks back. This time things didn't go so well. I had no one called me, all received was a sad bag of disassembled parts with a vague explanation "Customer induced damage either from foreign object shorting or the drive or motor shorting".
I checked the motor windings on all my steppers and they were all within 0.1Ohms of each other. Also my control cabinet was completely clean aside from some spider webs. I am just looking for suggestions on something else to try. I use my mill a fair amount I wouldn't mind paying more for something higher quality. If someone would have called me explaining the situation I would have ordered a new drive that same day. I am little upset that they just tossed everything in bag and mailed it back without a heads up when I could have ordered my replacement drive last week.
Whats with the broken off FET?