Does anyone use temperature gauges for your drivers?

[slashmaster]

I blew a 4030 driver a while back from overheating it I guess. I currently feel the drivers every 5 or 10 minutes to see how warm they are. Does anyone have an idea that already works well for hooking up a temperature gauge or thermometer to drivers?

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[ger21]

Heatsinks and fans are the normal way to deal with heat.

[Joey5226]

I keep mine in a thin cabinet with a PC fan drawing air across them. But they never really get warm in my setup.

[A_Camera]

I blew a 4030 driver a while back from overheating it I guess. I currently feel the drivers every 5 or 10 minutes to see how warm they are. Does anyone have an idea that already works well for hooking up a temperature gauge or thermometer to drivers?

I monitor the power supply, drivers, spindle and three steppers. Mostly because I want to, not because it's necessary. They never get hot. I am also monitoring the voltages and the currents.

[slashmaster]

Heatsinks and fans are the normal way to deal with heat.

Yeah, but if it's in a cabinet and the fan seizes up, the spindle, motors and pc are loud enough you won't know until you blow another one. Rather have inactive cooling if possible.

[slashmaster]

Hey A_Camera, when do the drivers get the warmest?

[A_Camera]

Hey A_Camera, when do the drivers get the warmest?

My drivers hardly ever get warm, and when they do they are really not much warmer than room temperature. I don't have any fans in the box which has the drivers. The power supply is in a separate box. It is based on a thoroidal transformer, so it is analogue. The box contains also a 12V7A and a 5V2A switching supplies. When the power supply rectifier gets to 35C a cooling fan starts to spin up to 40% of it's maximum rpm, increasing successfully as the temperature rises and should reach 100% at 55C but it never got hotter than around 40C, so it's never spinning at max speed. My steppers can get to about 50-55C and that feels hot for my hands but is normal for steppers. I have no cooling, other than the natural contacts with the fixture. Some people install fans on them, some add heat sinks, I think it is not necessary.

In fact, I have just recently finished my upgrades and not yet bothered installing the temperature sensors and gauges for the drivers and the steppers based on the previous electronic box experience, where I had the instruments in place and monitored the temperatures more closely, and because I have seen nothing alarming with the previous, much worse design, I figure that now it is even better. Never the less, I will install them as soon as I have some time, but it is not the highest on my list. The temperature monitoring is installed in the power supply box, which is why I know more details about that.

BTW, What is a "4030 driver"? Is that based on the crappy Toshiba TB6560 chip? If yes than it may have been died of "natural causes" i.e. that chip is crap and the implementation is even worse in most drivers so they usually die at some stage. My drivers are DQ542MA and they are reliable.

[Fastest1]

Did it die by itself or were you working on it? Did you remove any wiring while running? Have you opened the driver to see what blew? That might give a clue as to what went wrong.

[slashmaster]

My drivers hardly ever get warm, and when they do they are really not much warmer than room temperature. I don't have any fans in the box which has the drivers. The power supply is in a separate box. It is based on a thoroidal transformer, so it is analogue. The box contains also a 12V7A and a 5V2A switching supplies. When the power supply rectifier gets to 35C a cooling fan starts to spin up to 40% of it's maximum rpm, increasing successfully as the temperature rises and should reach 100% at 55C but it never got hotter than around 40C, so it's never spinning at max speed. My steppers can get to about 50-55C and that feels hot for my hands but is normal for steppers. I have no cooling, other than the natural contacts with the fixture. Some people install fans on them, some add heat sinks, I think it is not necessary.

In fact, I have just recently finished my upgrades and not yet bothered installing the temperature sensors and gauges for the drivers and the steppers based on the previous electronic box experience, where I had the instruments in place and monitored the temperatures more closely, and because I have seen nothing alarming with the previous, much worse design, I figure that now it is even better. Never the less, I will install them as soon as I have some time, but it is not the highest on my list. The temperature monitoring is installed in the power supply box, which is why I know more details about that.

BTW, What is a "4030 driver"? Is that based on the crappy Toshiba TB6560 chip? If yes than it may have been died of "natural causes" i.e. that chip is crap and the implementation is even worse in most drivers so they usually die at some stage. My drivers are DQ542MA and they are reliable.

Good! Glad someone doesn't have to listen to extra fan noise! So you've got a temp sensor meant for the drivers? Is it something like the ones you can get for computer heatsinks? To answer your question, a 4030 is from Kelling, they cost about $40 each. I don't know what chip they have. I also have some cheap $20 Chinese ones that might have the chip your talking about. They don't seem to have as much low end torque as the kelling but have much bigger and much more numerous heatfins.

[slashmaster]

Did it die by itself or were you working on it? Did you remove any wiring while running? Have you opened the driver to see what blew? That might give a clue as to what went wrong.

Didn't remove wiring while it was running that time. But before this incident I did blow another one, had temprorarely hooked it up with wire nuts and one came undone while it was running. I more or less deserved it that time. This time it was properly soldered with heat shrink to insulate it. The driver was very hot and I could smell something blew just after. Took both drivers apart and both had one of the main transistors blown. Tried to unsolder one of the transistors from one to replace it on the other but have not had success yet...