[rcheli]

Hi all,

I just got all the drives and motors for my Sieg X3 conversion and connected them up on the bench with micro step set to 4. The NEMA 23’s work fine. But the NEMA 34 seemed a lot slower compared to the 23’s. I bumped up the jog speed a little in LinuxCNC again 23’s worked as expected but as soon as I hit the jog button on the Z axis (NEM34) the dive faulted. I reviewed all of the wiring and settings and tried a higher micro step setting. Same result. Now the KL-8060drive seems to be dead. No lights at all and the motor is not locked. Check the power supply and all looks good there. 23’s still work fine. Based on reading here I check the motor for shorts to ground and did not find any. I don’t know what to do next. Are these drives that fragile? I sent an email to Automationtechinc for their advice but haven’t heard back yet. I don’t know if it was a bad drive or something I did. I would hate to get another drive and have the same thing happen.
These are the components used in the build:

Essentials BAT-I/J1800 V1.2 Mini ITX Motherboard - Celeron J1800 SoC w 4GB ram running
LinuXCNC 2.7.11 driving a Mesa 7I76-6I25 PLUG-N-GO KIT

Unregulated Linear 625W/48VDC/13A Toroidal PSU (KL-4813) with 5VDC

NEMA23 381oz/in 3.5A Dual Shaft Stepper Motor KL23H2100-35-4B
Item# KL23H2100-35-4B

NEMA34 Stepper Motor – 906 oz in 6.1A Single Shaft (KL34H295-43-8A)
Item# KL34H295-43-8A

KL-5056 20-50VDC 5.6A Digital Bipolar Stepper Motor Driver –
Item# KL-5056

KL8060 Digital Bipolar Stepper Motor Driver 24-80VDC 6A – 32 bit DSP Based
Item# KL-8060

Thanks for any insight you can shed.
John

[datac]

Based on your explanation, it would seem you just ended up with a drive that failed. I too am having some major troubles getting a machine dialed in, so, I had just scoured old messages for other discussions about the Automation Technologies drivers.

What I found is that anyone having drive failures appeared to have gotten their drives replaced with new ones, and then the discussion ends. Given that the company sells a whole lot of different components and assembled kits for various machines, they must be working for people because there are not very many complaints that I can find.

In my case, my KL-8060 seems to behave, but my KL-6050's act like the signals I am sending them are terrible when I know the signals are clean. I've been thru every possible ground loop and power supply test / rework and still can not find the issue. Until I do, my machine is going to have to sit... It's only been 3 years with this one, so another year probably won't matter lol.... I get the feeling I will have to order two drives from a competing firm to trouble shoot with as I do not have anything spare on the shelf. This is the first real stumper I had in 20 or so retrofits, but the first time I am using these drives.

I too have pending questions sent in via email to A/T and have not yet heard back from them. Hopefully you will be contacted and can just exchange your 8060. You'll perhaps know more when you swap it out with a new one.

[rcheli]

I did a little more testing today. I took another drive (M542T) I had laying around and connected it to the Z axis on the Mesa 7i76. I connected a NEMA 23 to the drive and it worked fine. I powered down and swapped the NEMA 23 with the NEMA 34 (KL34H295-43-8A) and as soon as I try to jog the motor it sends the drive into fault. I tried one more time with a higher step rate and got the same result. It looks to me like the motor is bad and that it what blew the drive.

John

[datac]

It would be interesting for you to check the resistance across your motors coils, compare them and also check each wire to the chassis of the motor and shaft. I would do this by checking it first by unplugging the motor wires at the drive and check them from there. If things look amiss, then check it right at the motor with the wire back to the driver disconnected to see if the wire is the problem.

I did a little more testing today. I took another drive (M542T) I had laying around and connected it to the Z axis on the Mesa 7i76. I connected a NEMA 23 to the drive and it worked fine. I powered down and swapped the NEMA 23 with the NEMA 34 (KL34H295-43-8A) and as soon as I try to jog the motor it sends the drive into fault. I tried one more time with a higher step rate and got the same result. It looks to me like the motor is bad and that it what blew the drive.

John

[rcheli]

Checking with a digital meter none of the wires appear to be shorted to the motor frame.
Meter was set to 2k ohm scale

Red - Blue .013
Green - yellow .014
Black - Brown .015
White - Orange 0.14

Thanks
John

[rcheli]

I tried this motor with a Gecko G203V and it faults that drive too. I'm going to see what the Gecko support folks have too say but I am really getting suspicious of this motor.

John

[rcheli]

I did some more checking and found the issue. The green/yellow coil was shorted to the black/brown coil. A new motor is one the way.

John