[sirknight]

Hello I could use any input or ideas and that would be great.

Hello this is the second machine that I have built but still compared to a lot of you out there a newbie.

Using mach3 with a G540

48 V power supply

3 NEMA 23 Stepper Motor: KL23H284-35-4B
355 oz In. Hybrid Motor
1.8° /200 Steps Per Rev.
3.5 Amps Current Per Phase
4-wire Bi-polar, NEMA 23 Frame

My machining size is X axis 48in Y axis 25in and Z 6.5in
X and Y axis are 1/2" acme drive screw 10TPI 5 Start
Z is 1/2" acme 10TPI 2 Start

The entire machine is made out of 1/2" aluminum plate

During tests the machine seemed to run fine (sounds good) all the way up to 400 IPM which was the max Mach 3 would let me go. Ran some small 500 lines of code projects and it seemed to work . Then did my first project on wood about 3 min into the carve, it started to loose steps and motor stopped moving all together. Never any strange sounds coming from the motors. Could not jog motor at all, but Mach 3 said that it was moving although no movement . Unplugged the g540 power and plugged it back in works fine. Slowed acceleration rate down. My first machine was a hobby CNC pro board. It had a couple problems with accelerating too fast when I first started with it. Slowing it down helped, but did not fix it. Did this multiple times continued to slow the acceleration rate down, but it kept happening. I then realized after a couple times that the G540 frame was hot to the touch so thought maybe it was overheating.
I have now installed a nice CPU heat sink and fan onto the back of the G540 for a test which has stopped the problem and the G540 is nice and cool during operation.

I have run a project that ran for 13min which I ran 3 time without a loss of steps or motor freezing up. Oh and the motors were never hot to the touch during all of these tests.

I do a lot of projects that can take up to 4hrs of continuous running time none stop so I am concerned about doing a long test. Is this normal for a gecko to perform like this or did I just come up with a way to cover-up something else that is wrong?

Any help would be appreciated. Let me know if you need any more information or statistics.

Thank you

[ger21]

Is the G540 hot? Do you have a fan or heatsink on it?

[sirknight]

Is the G540 hot? Do you have a fan or heatsink on it?

yes the controller was hot and I have now installed a heat sink and fan and that seems to be helping out a lot.

[storm2313]

The G540 is an excellent drive, but must be fully understood when utilizing it. This drive like any is accepting a large amount of voltage which will produce heat, and the heat must be dissapated. The heatsink you mounted is the proper procedure. I would record the new temperatures of the Gecko with the heatsink attached to make sure the unit is holding the cooler temperature during longer machining jobs.

Here's an excerpt from Gecko drives heatsink experiment. Any control box containing a G540 must have an adequate input and exhaust fan or an exhaust fan and an internal fan to circulate the air. The red graph shows if the G540 is left in still air or in a sealed environment under full load it will overheat, which may result in damage to the G540. Actually heasinking the drive increases surface area which will dissapate the heat MUCH more effective than a cooling fan by itself in the same way a CPU does with one attached. I would consider it mandatory in an enclosed environment, or non climate controlled shop.

This drive can get close to 200 degrees farenheit when put into an enclosure. This could very well have been your issue with losing steps, along with your IPM rate. You have adjusted one variable by heatsinking the drive, so the lowering the IPM may have also played a very big role in making the system perform as it should.