[millingnewbie]

I'm replacing the standard blue controlbox for my CNC 6040 with a Gecko 540. "3.0A" is written on my steppers (and the Ebay page says 3A) but I only have 2.7k or 3.3k resistors. Which should I use? I want to avoid connecting resistors in parallel since the wiring for just one resistor was hard enough to do.

And speaking of wiring: do I need to worry about shorting or broken connections in my wiring? Would something get damaged if that happend? And what if I mix up the 4 wires going to the stepper? (I don't know which wire is which on the stepper so I will have to do it through trial and error)

[morestuff]

In this case it is probably worth getting a 3.0K resistor. Using a
2.7K will result in about 10% less torque, and that will work if
you don't care about the full torque.

RadioShack stores in the USA normally stock these resistors,
so you may be close to a store that has them.

The G540 is nominally protected against shorts in the motor
wiring, but intermittents due to broken wires is something
that I recommend avoiding. Cross wiring between coils should
also be avoided. If you have an Ohm meter you can easily
identify the coils. Polarity and swapping the A coil for the
B coil will cause the motor to turn the opposite direction but
will not cause any harm.

Regards,
Steve Stallings
PMDX.COM - Products for CNC and motion control applications

[millingnewbie]

Thank you for your anwser, I will use 2.7k until I get a 3k resistor. Unfortunately I am having wiring problems: http://www.cnczone.com/forums/chines...ml#post1316154

[millingnewbie]

After I finished the wiring I noticed something strange. If I turned off the power to my controlbox (using the powerswitch between the powersupply and the mains) and turned it back on after 4-5 seconds then the fault LED lit up. But if I wait 10 seconds before turning it on again everything seems to work okay. Should I be worried about this?

Are there any other effects besides losing 10% torque by using a 2.7K resistor? Will it lower power consumption or improve the servicelife of any part?

And is it okay to use the powerswitch as an E stop? I could not get the proper E stop to sit securely so I skipped it. I usually have a hand on my keyboard and have always used it for stopping anyway, but is it okay to use the powerswitch in an emergency?