[Mac T. Knife]

Bad stepper right out of the box??? I had bought three steppers and swapped out some 125 oz/in steppers for these 258 oz/in MCG steppers,,, upon turning on the power, the X axis control on my Xylotex board promptly shorted out. During the time the board was out for repair, I've rechecked the wiring, checked for shorts, checked amp draw per phase,,, even hooked them up to a 12Vac transformer and didn't find anything peculiar. I got my board back yesterday, and hooked it all back up tonight,,,,, All three axis were running as they should, no heat, no pops, and most importantly,, no smoke. Loaded up a small gcode file, and Found I no longer had power to my X axis...... All of my wiring is soldered and heatshrinked, and the Molex connectors are crimped, and soldered.

Meanwhile...... :drowning: :drowning:

[pminmo]

Did you set your current limit on your xylotex board?

Phil

[H500]

Something you should never do is to connect/disconnect the motors when the power is applied. This can fry the chips.

[Mac T. Knife]

Limit control was set per instructions,,,, and the motors were not disconnected while under power,,, My friends occasionally poke fun at me for always reading the instruction manuals on anything I use.

[Mac T. Knife]

Update... when I got home from work and dug into my mystery, I now discovered that one of the coils is shorted out to the case,,,, on the mill I was getting .5 ohm,, Now 2.5 ohms,,, Needless to say that did not show up the first time when I let the smoke out. Mystery solved. Still, I have one blown axis on my controller, glad I went with a 4 axis drive, It would have been even better to gone Gecko!!! Can't wait for the Vampire to be avaailable.

[ger21]

It would have been even better to gone Gecko!!! Can't wait for the Vampire to be avaailable.

Why would a blown Gecko have been better? A G201 would have blown just like the Xylotex did. Hopefully the G204 won't be too much more money when they are released.

[Mac T. Knife]

Why would a blown Gecko have been better? A G201 would have blown just like the Xylotex did. Hopefully the G204 won't be too much more money when they are released.

Well,,,, Having a 4 axis board,, to fix one axis, I also have to send in 3 good drives at the same time,,, Geckos,,,,, just the one.

I read one of Marris'es earlier reports on the Vampire drive,,,, an intentioonal dead short on both outputs, and it just shuts down,,,, wakes back up after a second, and shuts back down repeatedly until you fix the fault.