Drive issues already!!!

[ty1295]

I placed an order for 3 drives last week. Payed extra for next day delivery.

Have yet to be able email them and get a response, no drives, no tracking #, nothing.

Website shows order was processed.

Sent email to rutexus that visits board, and all 3 emails listed on rutex homepage.

Anybody have a US phone # I can call, have similar issues?

Heard good things about them, can't say this is starting out good.

[ty1295]

Drives did show up today.

Also heard back from the US rep.

Feel better. Although next day air charge still took a week to get.

[ESjaavik]

Some freight companies give a warranty on next day deliveries. If you don't get it the day after shipping, the shipping is free. Check it out if freight cost is significant.

[ty1295]

Wasn't the freight companies fault in this case.

Although the little box did cost $56 in shipping.

Was suprised to see how small they are, so far I am happy with them. Not wired up yet though.

[rutexus]

Gentlemen,

I don't remember what the issues were in the late delivery of the overnight order, mentioned in the above post. Occasionally, my inventory runs short here in Missouri. The way USA orders are processed is, that when the order is placed on the Rutex web site, it is emailed to me overnight. I have almost a perfect record of shipping all orders for products I have in stock.

I provide limited phone support for USA customers. We prefer to answer technical questions through the Rutex.com web site email links. That way, the Australian engineer gets to look at the questions along with me. If I feel that the question is a little beyond my experience level, I ask the Australian engineer to take the call. This works pretty well.

I use a lot of Rutex drives in machinery that my sons and I build. You can take a quick look at some of the machines we produce on his new web site, www.machinesolutions.biz. We use the Rutex drives on the lathe control we put on the lathes pictured on his web site. We have many of these machines running all over the USA, and they are very reliable. Our experience with the Rutex products and support has been good, but I offered to provide quicker support and shipping in the USA, and last Fall, we began to ship for USA customers, and take phone calls for technical support.

No one should have trouble setting up Rutex drives. The Rutex web site has an excellent set up and tune downloadable paper which has information which will help anyone setting up step and direction servo loops.

The revision 2 drives used an spi interface for tuning. Occasionally a user's PC and drives failed to synchronize properly while the PC was coming up. A power off and on of the Rutex drives provided a reset and re-established communication between the pd and the drive being tuned. Thereafter the spi works fine. This was only an issue while tuning the drive in spi mode. There are no issues related to the normal operation of the drive in step and direction mode. The new version (F) of the drives do not have this tuning issue. They have a number of new features which we are excited about. I expect they will be in production within a couple of weeks.

The Rutex drives are, in my opinion, fault free, unless you have a following error of greater than 32,000 steps. The Revision 2 drives initiate an error signal if the following error exceeds more than 1024 steps, but the drive does not fault, or loose its position. The revision F drives allow the customer to choose the following error limit in incriments starting with 256, 512, 1024 etc. I am expecting that in the rev F. drives, the customer will be able to run the drive in step and direction mode and read the encoder count register through the spi communications as well. I have not tested the rev. F drives myself yet, but the preliminary information on them has me excited. More precise tuning ability is also expected.

I hope this helps.

Tom Eldredge,
Rutex Support, USA
(573) 341 1528

[ty1295]

At this point I have things working well. To set things straight also, it wasn't a drive issue, as much as operator, electrical noise.

My CNC is still much more sensitive to noise than I would like, but I know where I want to go with it and what to work on next to fix it.

[IJ.]

TY1295: Ditto on the noise issues! I was surprised during my build how sensitive it all is!

[rutexus]

Noise issues? Where did you encounter noise issues? Encoders? Step and Direction signals? Please be specific.

Tom Eldredge
Rutex Support, USA

[ty1295]

For example, if I plug in my plasma cutter in the garage movements start on their own in no pattern.

Axis can go to one extreme or another.

things work great, but I have to be VERY careful what else i do in the garage.

Using Tig welder is 90% ok, unless I get the arc stretched out and it goes into hi frequency mode for a second, then an axis will move on its own again.

Not sure what I will need to get plasma cnc'ed, being I can't even plug it in right now with the mill going (20ft away)

[Txfatboy]

I had the same type of problem. I installed a static filter on the paralel and it fixed

[ty1295]

Originally Posted by Txfatboy I had the same type of problem. I installed a static filter on the paralel and it fixed

On printer port of computer?

I have been assuming it was noise between encoder and drive, not the computer.

[IJ.]

Originally Posted by ty1295 For example, if I plug in my plasma cutter in the garage movements start on their own in no pattern. Axis can go to one extreme or another. things work great, but I have to be VERY careful what else i do in the garage. Using Tig welder is 90% ok, unless I get the arc stretched out and it goes into hi frequency mode for a second, then an axis will move on its own again. Not sure what I will need to get plasma cnc'ed, being I can't even plug it in right now with the mill going (20ft away)

I'll have to try it running the Tig !