Help Please - Stepper motor high pitch noise

[fEkuaR]

Good afternoon,

I recently bought an MX4660, with plans to use this for a BF20VL (G0704) CNC conversion. I built a panel for the build and when I did my initial testing, everything was working fine, all three motors (nema 23 x 2 and nema 34 x 1) worked perfectly. After completing the panel, I started on the mill itself.

When I went to use the panel again around a week later, the motors let out a high pitched squealing/seizing noise the moment the driver is powered on, and won't accept any signal through mach3. This is regardless of whether it's connected to the smoothstepper or not, and is a problem on all of the axis.

Trouble shooting I have tried;

• Re-ran the wiring to the motor
• Re-ran the wiring to the power connector
• Isolated the driver from the panel with longer wiring to make sure it wasn't some sort of interference
• Tried 3 different motors, across the different axis, same problem regardless of axis, or motor.
• Tried a different power supply​

It's got me absolutely baffled, it was working perfectly before. 1 week after I complete the panel, I go to hook it up and now it doesn't work at all.

Any ideas? Is it likely that the unit has just failed for some unknown reason?

Any help would be extremely appreciated, i'm pulling my hair out with this one.

Regards,

Dan

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[awerby]

What did you change between the time it was working perfectly and the time it wasn't? Can you get back to that initial state and try again? Did you disconnect your motors or drives when the power was still on, or the capacitors weren't discharged?

[fEkuaR]

Thank you for the reply, Awerby. Much appreciated.

Honestly, the panel was completed, I tested it with the motors sitting on the bench, saw it all working fine with motion control in each direction. I then put it to the side and started the clearancing of the G0704 slide to cater for the ballscrew. When I turned it back on the next time, the issue started.

Thinking back, I can't recall if I simply turned the whole unit off, or disconnected the motor, in response to the noise. If I have disconnected the motor prematurely, or not allowed the capacitors to discharge, is there a solution that I can try?

[awerby]

If you did disconnect the motors when the power was still active, then you might have fried your drives. If you get another drive and that fixes the problem with one axis, then you could go ahead and replace the rest. If it doesn't, then you've got a spare, which can come in handy.

[fEkuaR]

Thank you very much Awerby, that is great information. I didn't realise it was possible to replace a drive. Do you happen to know where I would find a replacement drive for sale that would suit an MX4660?

[awerby]

On the Leadshine site it says: " If any the drive boards malfunctions, a user can easily replace it with a SDM660 stepper drive module at minimal cost." You should ask them about it.

[fEkuaR]

Unbelievably, I started it up again today, after a few days of sitting idle, and it works perfectly again. I don't know what to think of it.

Perhaps the capacitors, after bleeding out and residual charge, allowed the unit to perform a "hard reset" of sorts. If it plays up again, I think i'll have to send the whole unit back for testing.

Despite all of that, your help has been brilliant, Awerby. Thank you so much. Also it's great to know there are replacement modules if sometime down the track a single axis fails, I had been worried about that having a single contained 4 axis unit as opposed to separate drivers for each axis.

[awerby]

Sometimes these things just need some attention. Neglect them for a while and they'll stop working, but get back to them, stroke their wires and twiddle their knobs, and they'll perk right up...