[Ranscon]

Hi everyone,
I have a home built router with 381oz steppers, a 48v 7.3a PS, and a gecko 540. Everything is about a year and a half old and has been running fine till a few weeks ago. Now my gecko keeps randomly "faulting" and I can't figure out why. It will do this every few seconds sometimes and other times I may run it for an hour or more with no problems. I have checked my wire connections at the motors and all looks good.

I have spoken to customer support at Gecko and they think it's a power supply problem. I have tested the voltage of my PS and it is putting out 48.3v. They also told me to jog the motors 2 at a time to see if it faults. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. It is completely random. I sometimes get a red fault light while jogging 1 axis(sometimes x, sometimes y, and sometimes z so I can't narrow it down), any 2 axis', or all 3. a few seconds later, I can do the same test with no faults, even while jogging all 3 at the same time. Once yesterday and twice today it actually faulted while sitting completely still with no motors operating. It has only done this these 3 times. Usually it does it while the motors are moving. Today it faulted more than a dozen times while carving a 2 inch tall letter "A" while running at 100ipm which is where I normally run it(usually 100-120 but occasionally I run this machine at 280-375ipm or more). I then turned it down to 60ipm in Mach 3 and it finished the"A" and then carved a dozen more letters with no faults. Any ideas of what else I should look for. Thanks for any help you can offer on this, Jeff

[Crevice Reamer]

Try running awhile with the charge pump switch off on G 540 and disabled in Mach3 and see if it still faults. Just make sure you have mach3 booted up and running well each time you start up, before you turn on power to G 540.

Are you using limit switches?

CR

[Ranscon]

I do have the charge pump disabled in mach 3 and the switch turned off on g540. No limit switches.

[Crevice Reamer]

Do you have home switches installed?

Do you have another computer to swap and try? Another Parallel cable?

Have you removed all non-essential programs from windows? EG: virus protection, screen saver etc. These will sometimes cause weird things to happen. The machine computer is not networked or connected to internet, right?

CR.

[Ranscon]

I don't have an extra PC or cable to try. PC has just the basics needed for my machine, No internet etc.. Also no Home switches.

[Crevice Reamer]

This may be a noise problem. Separate the wires wherever possible.

Check G 540 terminal block and PSU terminal block for possible loose spider wire that may make intermittant contact with other terminal.

CR.

[Ranscon]

Any ideas on what it could be if it faults when the machine is not even moving? I'm still getting the red light when there are no motors running. Sometimes I can unplug the motors from the drive and wait a few minutes before plugging them back in and it works fine again for a while. I haven't found any loose connections in my wiring. Thanks again, Jeff