[turmite]

no dc power either.

I am using the Campbell breakout board, Geckos and a driver pack from Anaheim Automation that was supposed to provide the dc power. Mariss from Gecko had been helping me through this but I am afraid there may have been some lack of understanding on my part and I am praying I didn't fry my Geckos as well as the driver pack from AA. I did a test wiring of the e stop switch before I placed everything in the box and the ps worked then. I wired everything in the box and and was goin to test the estop again.
When I hit the start button everything lit for just a second and then nothing. I have power to the breakout board, power to the ps, I have checked the 120vac circuits several times and they are correct. The only thing I can think of is how I tapped the caps on the AA driver pack. I came from the - side of the cap with my common and the + side with my power. Each Gecko had it's own source of power. The cap was putting out 56.5 vdc and 7 amps. We had not used the center taps of the motors so Marris told me to use the 470uf caps in the 1 and 2 connectors of the Geckos as well as resistors in the current limiting connectors. When using the motors without the center taps two were at 3.5 amps 2.2 vdc and the other two were at 2.3 amps 2.6vdc.

My question is where to look in the driver pack from AA to see if anything is burned. This pack has 4 driver boards at either 1/2 step or full step. The current is adjustable from 1 to 7 amps. Each board has its own high and low voltage caps. The whole system has two transformers. How do i check those?

turmite

[balsaman]

You getting DC power to the gecko's? Did you blow a fuse on the DC side?

Eric

[turmite]

Hi Eric. Yep I blew a fuse but it was in the plug on the ac line coming in. The plug lookis like one from a computer but at the very bottom there was a small tab that once opened revealed the fuse and a spare in the plug. The problem is now, what caused it to blow. I went back and rechecked the ac circuits and they are correct.

Question: When I soldered the leads on the cap wires I unpluged the transformer leads from the 4 individual boards. If Ihad one or more of those reversed would that cause the fuse on the ac side to blow? The box has two transformers in it, a high voltage and a low voltage.

Question: Each of the transformer leads are either yellow, yellow/white, red or red/white. Which of the leads are commons, the solid colors or the striped ones?

turmite

[balsaman]

A good question to ask the guy who sold it to you....Hard to answer without the PS to look at. Put your volt meter on DC volts. Make sure the leads are pluged in right. The black is common and the red lead is +. When reading if the voltage is positive you have the leads on the PS correctly, so the red is on the + of the PS.

You got a rectifier in there somewhere I hope.....

Eric

[turmite]

Eric the ps is part of a complete package with 4 step driver boards, a high and low voltage cap per board, two transformers{I am assuming one low voltage one high}, and each board has its own rectifier built in.

I will have my nephew here tomorrow who works with this every day so maybe tomorrow night I will have some good news. This machine upgrade is really hurting right now as it is my primary source of income and has now been down 4 weeks. I gotta get it going soon.

Mike

[pack rat]

Curious to know what happened? I have some drivers from Anehiem Automation but they are not hooked up yet. I am locking in information concerning the set up. I am sadden by your misfortune, especially when machine provides bread and butter. Chris

[turmite]

Hi Chris.

No need to be saddened by what happened and don't be concerned about the Anaheim parts. I have used them for yrs and have been totally satisfied until I needed to up grade to microstepping due to my upgrade to Mach2. I looked at going the complete Anaheim system before making my decision to use the Gecko's along with the Campbell breakout board. Price was the determing factor. All the people I have dealt with have been very generous with their time and advise and none have badmouthed the competition. That says a lot about the quality of the people involved in this part of the business.

What kind of Anaheim drivers do you have, half/full or the micro step?? I can assure you that they will help you in any way they can if you have probelms. Go slow and check everything twice, no three, wait check it one more time! Actually I did that and still blew a fuse but I didn't know the fuse was there. Funny thing is, the guy from Anaheim said "it should have worked".

turmite

[balsaman]

Is it working now?

Eric

[turmite]

Hi Eric. No not yet. I am emailing Mr. Campbell a block diagram but I think I am going to just build a new ps and be done with with.

I used the formulas in his literature and need a transformer with 37.85 vac secondary and 294.22va along with a capacitor of 11,728 uf, a bridge rectifier of about 25amps 60-70 volts.

I have two 34 frame Anaheim triple stacks that are being used as 4 wire and pulling 3.5 amp with 2.2 volt.

I also have two 34 frame double stack wired the same pulling 2.3 amps and 2.5 volts.

If you ran the numbers how bad off am I?

Mike

[balsaman]

I think you need 67% of the total of all your motors current.....I could be wrong. Check the gecko site.

Eric

[turmite]

Well Eric this time there was a pop and then smoke. The first time the fuse did what it was supposed to do and this time I was hooking one axis up at a time to try to find the problem. The second axis I hooked up would not turn the Gecko on. So I decided to change the leads from the first to see if it was the ps or the Gecko. Hit the switch and pop spzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz and the 470uf cap on the gecko power terminals gave out. I came home. This is beginning to not be so much fun any more.

Mike

[balsaman]

Call Geckodrive, they will fix you up...

Eric

[turmite]

Hey Eric I finally found what was wrong. Someone here on the Zone has it in his sig line, "The only stupid question is the one you didn't ask"!! Well........I actually did ask but just the wrong person. As I have said before I have forgotton almost everything I had learned about electronics from the USAF school of elec. so I assumed [my first mistake] that the fellow from whom I bought the capicators would know the correct answer. I wanted to know if you colud hook them up backwards. His answer, " no these are radial leads so it doesn't matter" that was my second mistake, and the third was I didn't check the voltage rating on the capicators!! Mariss said everything should still be fine and I will have the new caps on Monday. So maybe, just maybe. I would again like to give credit and thanks to the three companies involved in my foray in the building up of my system.

Anaheim Automation [Alfonso from support] power supply and the ability to help me even when I was using someone else's drives with their system

Gecko Drives [Mariss] never once complained about how thick my skull is

Campbell Designs [Bob Campbell] breakout board that made the wiring process much more simple plus great support when he didn't have to.

I would also like to thank Paul for CncZone and Eric [balsaman]
Paul for the site and Eric for the neverending help he gives to folks like myself.

Now come Monday if this thing don't work, I'll have to come back and edit this post

Thanks everyone

Mike Turner aka "turmite"

ps if any of you believe in prayer I have a 10 mo. old grandson in the hospital who has pneumonia and broncitis that is having such a hard time breating it hurts to watch. tia

[balsaman]

Ahh, that's no fun. Hope he gets better soon. Kids that age rebound quikly. He will be in our thoughts and prayers.

I hope monday brings good news with your drive system too.

Eric

[balsaman]

Yes, at lower speeds the router is much quieter. The little tools we tend to use lend themselves to high speeds tho.

Eric