We just had the Z axis servo motor brake burn out with less than 150 hours on our machine...and come to find out that my pal Omar Jana in the Dominican Republic has gone through three of them. Is this indicative of a common design flaw problem with Techno? Not sure I want to keep a 55 K bucks machine that burns through motors like this...

I've had one motor fail and roast itself to a very stinky well done in 3 years but have been fine in the last year so far. I had around 100 hours on the machine but what I didn't consider is that I had been leaving it powered up and the controller app running continuously and that keeps the brake from being used and it has to drive current to the motors to keep them in position. I had the equivalent of thousands of hours on the Z motor fighting gravity so I don't feel quite as bad about having to replace it. Now I stop the app, hear the brake click on, and keep everything powered up without it having to drive the motors.

When it failed I had been doing something I had never done before: I had paused the machine because I had a issue with the strategy I was using in the program and I wanted to reprogram that upstairs. It was a few hours later that it roasted. Techno thinks I'm crazy about the pausing theory. I have felt the motor after I let it sit a few minutes on pause and only once out of a handful of times has the motor been uncomfortably warm. Now I really watch the pauses and abort out or feel the motor to make sure its OK. May not have anything to do with yours and Omar's failures. YMMV

Not sure that that is what happened to our motor. It was diagnosed as having a fried brake, but what you describe fits Omar's scenario. His didn't start blowing motors until he switched from a router to an ATC spindle which obviously puts more weight on the Z assembly and motor.

I'm not a happy camper with so few hours on the machine...and of course it happened the month the machine fell out of warranty. Never mind that the machine itself arrived three months late...

I'm sorry that it's giving you trouble. It does sound like a different issue and I'm probably overusing the brake by stopping and starting it all the time so the brake has worked fine for me.

I hope you get up and running again quickly. It only takes a few minutes to replace the motor and tech support was very responsive in getting the part to me. I'm hoping not to be feeding it any more parts anytime soon :)

Thanks, Rand. I would think that the brake should be quite happy with that task...after all, there's all the time that the machine isn't even on when the brake needs to be engaged to keep the spindle from face planting itself on the table!