[Mariss Freimanis]

JB,

No, it doesn't bore me to tears; rather it engenders sympathy. I'm not unfamiliar with times when it seemed things are going to hell in a handbasket and the harder I tried the worse it got. I generally laugh at myself then. It doesn't change anything at all except my outlook and attitude. Worry when you can't laugh anymore.

Don't worry about the drives. I don't think you are smart enough to blow them up. If I'm wrong, you'll get new ones and that's a promise. You are doing a good thing helping others.

Mariss

[jhowelb]

Anyone who has read this thread will remember that I've had three drives melt down with open circuit problems. This doesn't quite say it all because by the time I had only one drive left I realized that there was a problem with only one motor and I only needed two axes to run the lathe. That last drive burned one axis at a time till three were gone. Grand total of 5 times I thought I had this fixed.

Fast forward to geckos and new bi-polar motors. Spent several days carefully putting the new drives in the case with xformer and setting motors up and turned on the juice. Nothing!
Went over every thing several times and each time I tried, nothing.

Then suddenly a flash of realization! With the difference of colors between the cable and colors of the motor wires, I had made a mistake. There was an open circuit! I said a flash of realization, not fire and smoke. The 203v's are just fine, thank you very much! The extra money paid for ready assembly and vampire features paid off very nicely.

Unless you are one of those folks who never losses track of any tiny detail, I recommend these drives without reservation.

John Bradford

[sbalder]

It took a few days since my earlier post to dig into my setup, but I can definitely say that I have a G203 that does not work. Since I never got it to work I cannot say that I 'killed' it. As suspected the internal fuse was blown even though I did not meet the criteria of reversing polarity or exceeding 100V on the input. With the fuse replaced, all I can get the motor to do is hum and jump with a horrible crunching sound. Since this is on a lathe conversion there are only 2 axises, and the G203 on the other axis is working nicely. So, to be absolutely certain that it was not a problem with my wiring or motor, I swapped the drives back and forth. Once swapped (by pulling the header blocks off) the previously working axis made the same crunching sound and the non-working axis was fine.

So now what? Send it back. I hate to delay a project that was almost done. I have had 4 G212's that have been perfect, but these are my first G203's.

[jhowelb]

I don't want to butt in like a know it all.........BUT.............
try looking over the wiring to the non=working motor. It's almost exactly what happened to me. Could be a broken or weak wire, maybe inside a plug or as a last ditch, in the motor. Use a volt ohm meter to check the complete circuit.

Then there is the adjustment "pot" at the top of the drive, helped me emmensely!

[jhowelb]

Here is a quote from another thread on this subject. After this there was another episode of crunching and it seemed to be related to the position of the case, that led me to a break in a wire inside a 9 pin din connector.

"Set up for X axis in Mach 3 was simple. 200 steps per rev times 10 micro steps times 5 (.2" lead on the ball screw) equals 10,000 pulses per inch. So close I can't find a discrepancy by using my digital calipers as a dro.

The Z axis, however was an exercise in insanity!

To begin with the lead screw is somewhere between 16 and 17 tpi (?) so only "close" could be calculated.

The match between the Z axis Gecko and motor was so far off the motor wouldn't run smoothly regardless of the Mach settings. It sounded like a thousand gremlins inside the motor working with little sledge hammers!

Thank God that Mariss decided to put an adjustment "pot" because that provided the key to unlocking this mystery! By rotating this screw while the motor was "running" I could smooth it out a bit.

This made me think that there was a timing issue of some kind so back to Mach's motor tuning page and I noticed that both the step pulse and dir were set at 0 us, what ever THAT means. but by changing those settings to 3 the motor smoothed out a bit more. If a little does a little good then more will do more good also? Yep, in this case it did. After setting both to the maximum value of 5 the motor spins happily and quietly like the button on the outhouse door!!

No body said this stuff would be easy! But good equipment will certainly help meet the challenge!"

[Mariss Freimanis]

I would dearly like to have a look at that drive.

Mariss

[jhowelb]

The one of mine that exhibited similar symptoms I had to adjust the pot all the way one direction, but it works great now!

[sbalder]

Thanks for the input and suggestions. I tried making adjustments throughout the pot range. By swapping the units by pulling off the black connector headers I was assured that any errors in my wiring or defect in my motor would be undisturbed. I am sad to say that it is the drive that is not functioning, and was never functioning. Again, I have had only excellent experiences with the other Gecko drives I have used, including the other G203V on this lathe conversion.

I will ship the drive in question back to Gecko.

[kevinkoons]

Hi Mariss,

Would the 203V have been a better choice for my Bridgeport retrofit than the 212's I purchased?

Thanks.

Kevin

[sbalder]

I would dearly like to have a look at that drive.

Mariss

The drive was shipped Priority Mail this afternoon. My spare G212 went into the lathe and the new machine is working great! Please let me know what you find or send me a new replacement. Thank you!

[Mariss Freimanis]

sbalder;

The G203V arrived this afternoon. I opened it up and learned you machine or drill aluminum.:-)

I'm leaning towards machine instead of drill because the chips measured 0.05" by 0.02" and were triangular in shape. Little half-cone skins is what they looked like. These are the kind of chips you get when you do a finish cut. I counted 15 of these little guys before I gave up; there were many more.

The offending little chip that did in the drive was lodged between the input and output of the CPLD 3.3V regulator. You could see little electric arc blast marks on it under a microscope. I'll take pictures now that I have a boom stereo microscope with a camera mount.

CPLDs run at 3.3V and blow up when more than 4V are applied. The sad thing the regulator input voltage is 12V and this 12V got shunted to the poor CPLD. The rest is history.

The drive will be repaired for free if it's repairable. If not, it will get replaced with the latest G203V-REV5 that has a third, yellow LED that indicates your motor speed is high enough to deliver full power for free.

Please keep your drives in a control box that has an air filter. Chips this small can float 3 to 6 feet. If they are ingested into a drive they can wreak havoc. The G203V is unkillable but that does not include pouring metal chips inside. That's like Krytonite to Superman.

Mariss

[sbalder]

Mariss,

Thank you for the product support and detailed analysis! I do machine aluminum, my shop sometimes gets dirty, and I am certainly capable of making mistakes. However, in this particular case I am having a hard time trying to figure out when the chips might have entered the drive.

I received the drives in late March and other than looking them over they stayed in the original packaging until I bolted them to fiberglass panel and installed them in the back of a cabinet on a SouthBend lathe. The drive displayed the crunching condition upon first startup and then went dark. At that point I pulled it out of the cabinet, opened it up, relaced the fuse, and reinstalled.

My point in all this is to show that there is the possibility that the drive arrived with this contamination. My day job is running the warranty department for a car maker's global sales operation. I have to look for emerging trends- some are the customer's fault, some of the dealer's fault, but most of them come back to defects in materials or workmanship. Often we don't have the information we need or we can't trust what is being told to us so we rely on logic and statistics. If you never have another issue like this again, then it HAS to be contamination in my shop. If you see 2 or more with identical types of metal chips from different customers than it has to be something on your side.

In any event I truly appreciate your support and will continue to use and recommend Gecko products.

[Mariss Freimanis]

sbalder,

This is not rare. We often get contaminated drives back for repair. Contamination is the third leading cause of failure, coming after miswiring and external short-circuits.

We have seen drives full of wet sawdust, drill bit swarf, milling swarf, plasma or welding stuff (little blue magnetic 0.01mm dia spheres), cutting fluid and even coffee (brown viscous fluid). Steel-wool debris is particularly nasty.

Please see the attached thumbnail of your G203V. The aluminum chip that did the drive in is labeled as "KILLER CHIP". Its left end touches the IR2104S "IN" pin 2 while the right end touches the +12VDC supply bypass capacitor. Pin 2 is driven by the CPLD thru a series 200 Ohm resistor (the '201' marked part to the left of 'KILLER CHIP'). This path applied 12V to the 3.3V CPLD output pin and destroyed the device while micro-welding the aluminum chip at the points of contact.

We have no metal-working equipment at all here. Not even a drill. The drives are washed after electronic assembly to remove solder flux, baked dry and then tested. The covers are put on after test and the finished units are boxed-up 250 to a box and put into stock. I can't identfy any avenue of contamination at this end.

Sorry for the long reply. It is meant to show how we diagnose damaged drives.

Mariss

[jhowelb]

Let me offer a thought on the subject with an experience to illustrate my point.

I recently bought a laptop computer. It worked great so that isn't the point, I did notice however that there was a name already listed as "owner". As I worked with this machine I discovered files and pictures. Pictures I recognized as being a teacher who works with my wife.

Now how did his files and pictures get on my brand new laptop? I asked him and his story was that the machine just wasn't what he wanted and so took it back to the dealer,

Now I'm relatively sure that Toshiba had nothing to do with this. But the dealer............................???

Now I bought my Geckos from a third party and I'm happy with them. I'm especially happy with the attitude and policies toward public relations, product support, repair/replacement and reliability.

When I buy more drivers, they will be Geckos

jb

[sbalder]

I saw the chip in the picture and involuntarily said "Son of a bi*ch!" out loud. As stated before, the drives went from package to installation and testing in a separate part of my shop with no machining being done. I did, however, use a large carbide burr to cut the openings in the steel back panel of the lathe for the conduits. These chips are identical to the ones spit out by the carbide burr- almost like little splinters! Mystery solved- please hit my credit card for the damages!

In the automotive industry most circuit boards are finished with some kind of sealer- everything from clear epoxy to silicone gel. Given the conditions many of your drives operate under (installed by well-meaning garage engineer types like me!) have you ever considered sealing the finished boards? I wonder what the pros and cons are?

By the way, I wrote a proposal at my day job a couple weeks ago to acquire some formal test equipment for preliminary evaluation of warranty components. One of the things on the list was a stereo microscope with digital camera. This whole exercise has reinforced the power a piece of equipment like this would have in certain situations.

Thanks again for taking the time to support and for making a great product!

[thkoutsidthebox]

the latest G203V-REV5 that has a third, yellow LED that indicates your motor speed is high enough to deliver full power for free.
Mariss

Full power FOR FREE! If this means I dont have to pay my electric bill after connecting up this little baby, then send me two dozen immediately. One for my fridge....two for the TV's......radio.....toaster.....uhmm cnc machine..... hehehe

Please see the attached thumbnail of your G203V.
Mariss

That is a very cool camera, how big is the actual area in the pic life size?

[Mariss Freimanis]

1) I just read what I wrote. Lose the words 'for free'; that is an editing leftover fragment, kind of like chips in my brain.:-)

2) The original is 3,072 by 2,048 pixels and was taken with a Canon Digital SLR camera (EOS 300D). No microscope was used; I have a camera adaptor on order. A tripod and just the camera's standard lens, f-11, aperature priority and RAW format.

3) Sbalder: No credit card need; repairs are free and your drive is already repaired. A conformal coating would have prevented this problem but it would render the drives economically unrepairable. Removing conformal coating is a time consuming and unpleasant process.

Mariss

[Lemo]

sSteel-wool debris is particularly nasty.

UhhOhhh..... And I thought I'm safe from that in my woodshop....
I finish a lot using steel wool... the really really fine one....
I guess I better get a better filter. Just to be on the safe side.
Thanks for the hint!
Rainer

[harryn]

Hi - I hope this is not a distraction from your thread intention. I am in the planning stage of a diy router project. For various reasons, it would be very handy to mount the electronics / driver boards (not power supply) on the moving gantry in a box.

I am wondering about the potential vibration effects on the electronics, and wondering if this is a "not ideal" or "really bad" idea.

Thanks

HarryN

[Mariss Freimanis]

It is a "not bad" idea. Vibration is of no concern. Make sure you have a local power supply capacitor at the drive to cancel the long power supply wire resistance and inductance. A few thousand microfarads should do. Also, send step and direction via twisted pair wires; step and ground (or +5VDC) on one pair, direction and ground (or +5VDC) on another pair. Have the drive adequately heatsunk and in an enclosure to keep contaminants out of the drive.

Mariss