My Series3 upgrade

[mooreaa]

Hey guys, I just installed my series 3 upgrade over the weekend and wanted to share my notes with you. All in all its a great upgrade. Very quiet motion and extremely smooth now. I started off my upgrade with the control board. Installed the new steppers, then gutted all the old motors and their wiring from my system. If you are doing this install, don't miss NYCCNCs video overview as it helped me out a lot. I'm able to pull the machine away from the wall using a pallet jack and poped off the rear splash guard. This helps to get into the rear of the column when routing the cables through.



Control Board: Side by side the unit on the left is the new control board, the right is the older one. Both boards are marked PN 30152 Ver 2.0 Rev 5. Looks like the only real change is in this MCU labled Series 3. When installing the stand-offs cause the board to warp a lot when pluggin in the ribbon cables. I supported the rear of the PCB with my hand when plugging the cables with enough pressure



Drivers: New drivers are a hair smaller than the orignal. Installing them can be a bit tricky because the top screw barely holds the unit in. If you want to place washers on the screws you may need to get longer ones. I though it was odd that the label for the part was on the rear metal surface of the driver as opposed to the front face. This not only masks the part's s/n, it also adds a tiny air gap between the mount and the rear panel. Thermally this isn't the but though I'm sure its an insignificant issue. I've only been running this for a day so I am not sure how much heat these new units generate.



Motors: The new motors are big! Originally I was worried that they would extend to far back in the rear of the machine, but, without the wiring box on the rear, these motors arn't that much longer. The new units have 3 wires as opposed to the 4 wires used in the previous motors. I prefer the old cables with their rubber shielding especially with tehm running through the column with all its unfinished surfaces. I opted to run a cable sleeve over the wires and manged to do so fairly easily by grouping the end of the cables first and taping it off with e-tape so that it went through the cable wrap smoothly. I finished off the cable wrap with some heat shrink on each end. I had no trouble getting this through the pre-existing cable conduit as it was still much smaller in diameter than the previous cables. You can see the 3 new wire bundles coming into the control box. Bundling the wires really helped to keep the 3 sets separated and prevented any mis-wiring. It also made it much easier to route the wires through the machine. It does add quite a bit of time to the setup process but I feel it was worth the effort.




Additonal Notes:
I used a ball-nose hex wrench to help loosen the motor couplings up. It helps a lot in the tighter spaces.



The wiring harness's screw protudes beyond the rear casing of the motors. This is especially vulnurable on the rear of the machine if you are moving it back against a wall.



Bus-board confusion issues on Series 2 CNC is covered in NYCCNC's video.

Had an issue with one of the motors having a protrusion on the corner of the face. Filed this down so that the motor face is flush and seems to be just fine.




If you haven't already, check out NYCCNC's video on the install. They have some good tips.


- Block up your spindle head
- Don't drop the motor coupling down the z-axis
- Remove the splash guard from your stand.
- After packing in all the wires into the cable ways, check to make sure the terminal blocks are on the drivers snug. Not much friction on them and mine poped out of the drivers part way.

I think that just about covers it. Let me know if you have any questions!

Aaron

[rowbare]

Nice write up. I am in the middle of my upgrade. Hopefully will get it done tonight.

bob

[SteveKoerner]

I just fininshed my upgrade today.

I did not remove the backsplash or the Z column cover. I did disconnect both ends of each of the three flex conduits. That allows you to feed the wires through the short conduits as a first operation and makes it quite easy then to pull the wires the rest of the way into the cabinet. I think that's a much easier method.