Homann Designs - wonderful service

[RCaffin]

I was 'upgrading' the wiring on my two-spindle Adept CNC machine, and slightly reconfiguring the interface design.
I put it all together and switched it on.
There was a bang, an electric smell, and a desperate sinking feeling.
I had switched the +5 V and the +24 V supplies to one PCB, and some of the chips had craters in their tops.
Sigh, and Oh Dear.
So I replaced the chips and checked out the PCB. All was well.
But the CNC did not work - in fact, nothing worked except that the ESS did still load from the PC and did think it was moving the axes. But, of course, the axes were not moving.
Much function and circuit checking followed.

To cut a long and sad story short, the +24 V had gone through the drivers on the two off MB-02 BoBs, and into the drivers on the ESS. Since the PC was loading the FPGA at power up and was reporting movement, it seemed likely (according to Andy at Warp9) that the FPGA was still intact. But the output pins were not waving.

What to do now? (Obviously, this was going to cost something!)

I went to the Homann Designs web site to buy another two MB-02s, but they were out of stock. I gather his pick&place machine which populates his PCBs was temporarily down. Bother, How to replace - what options were there?

Well, there are other BoBs from other companies, but most of them seemed to require that you also buy a new pulse engine (replacing the ESS) plus, in some cases, you replace Mach3 with their own program. There are not that many pure replacement options out there. This was NOT a route I wanted to explore.

I needed a new ESS anyhow, so I contacted Peter Homann in Victoria about all this, and poured out my woes. In particular, when would he have new MB-02 units available? He explained about his P&P machine, confirmed that he had ESS in stock, and then offered to repair my damaged MB-02 BoBs. Really? Yes. Then he added that the repairs would be free. FREE!

You don't get that sort of support from Chinese vendors!

So early last week I sent my two dead MB-02s off to him and ordered a new ESS. The repaired boards and the new ESS arrived today: a little over 1 week later. The MB-02s had been cleaned in an ultrasonic bath by the looks of things, and you could not see where the output driver chips had been replaced. OK, I have yet to put the machine together, but it worked straight off the first time, and Peter said he was able to check the operation of the MB-02s in-house.

I did get equally good service from Peter years ago, when one of the Geckos I had bought from him died. It turned out that the insulation between the heat sink and the FETs had broken down, and there was sparking around the edges. I sent him a photo of the sparking and he dispatched a new Gecko the next day.

This is a level of service I rarely see, either in Australia or around the world. (Actually, Gecko in USA are similar.)

Cheers
Roger

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[joeavaerage]

Hi Roger,
I've had good results from Peter Homman as well.

I am commissioning a new build mill equipped with Delta servos, so all 24V IO and differential signalling for Step/Dir.

I decided to build my own breakout board.

I split it into two boards, the first board has 10 differential outputs, enough for five Step/Dir servos, five alarm inputs, one from each servo, two ESS outputs that pass
to the servo inputs, namely ENABLE and RESET commoned to all five servos. This requires 12 output and five inputs, ie ESS parallel port 1.

The second board utilises ESS parallel ports 2 and 3, both configured with pins 2-9 of each port as inputs.

Thus this second board has 26 inputs all sourcing 5mA@24V, thus all inputs are active low. Two (of eight) ouputs are for the spindle, one for a relay
and the other for PWM. The remaining six outputs are enacted by MOSFET driver IC's which can either source or sink 24V at better than 50mA each.

The write up is on the Warp9 forum. It was my intention to make the design available for anyone to replicate.

https://ibb.co/CbkWCzQ
https://ibb.co/dM5W583

With these two boards I have utilised all three ESS ports for a total of 51 IOs.

Craig

[RCaffin]

Hi Craig

Because I used the Homann MB-02s I was able to break the I/O into small PCBs - which I milled out on the CNC.
How do you make the CNC electronics before you have the electronics? Yeah, well, there was a bit of kludging.

I used a lot of optical isolation - probably more than was needed really. For the 24 V relay drivers I used AQV-102s: TTL in and a good FET out. Since my machine has two spindles, there was also some logic circuitry to prevent the system from energising both at once and to make sure the system could not try to M3 and M4 simultaneously. Truth be told, the hardware actually duplicated the macros inside Mach3, but whatever.

So far I have used most of Port 1 and Port 2. Trying to use Port 3 could be tricky: a lack of room inside the box!

I commoned up all the motor-driving Gecko alarm lines with more logic, which does tell me which one has faulted.

It's interesting how two different approaches happen - although I bet there are another half dozen out there as well.

Dinner time for me
Cheers
Roger

[phomann]

Thanks for the kind words. It's nice to hear that my efforts are appreciated.
I replaced the drivers on both boards, and yes I cleaned them in an ultrasonic bath, to remove the flux and built up dust, grime etc.
Below are a couple of photos of the process.

1. The boards are heated to about 100c
2. Lo-melt solder is applied to the solder joints
3. The pads are cleaned with flux to remove all the lo-melt solder
4. The replacement chips are soldered in place
5. The boars are cleaned in an ultra-sonic bath
6. Lacquer is reapplied to the bottom of the board.

I had a it of a smile when you said "you don't get that service from a Chinese company". I get a number of people who complain that my prices are too high and that they can get it cheaper from eBay or china. I'd guess that 40% of my time on the phone is trying to sort out problems for people who have purchased products from overseas and cannot get them to work. I do my best to sort them out, Some even come back to purchase of me as they want the service.

Cheers,

Peter

[RCaffin]

I'd guess that 40% of my time on the phone is trying to sort out problems for people who have purchased products from overseas and cannot get them to work. I do my best to sort them out,
Then you are a more patient man than me.

So what would I do?
I would keep a list of 3rd party boards etc which give problems. I am sure it would grow in time.
When someone rings about a board X (on the list), I would nod wisely and very sympathetically offer condolances but decline to be involved, on the grounds of not knowing anything about X other than it gives trouble. (All of which might well be entirely true.)
For sure, I might then suggest a replacement which I knew would work (from my own shop of course).

Anyhow, the repaired MB-02 boards are being inserted back in the control box. This means all the wires are being slowly re-attached - with a number of quality upgrades along the way, as befitting such fine units.

I am replacing a number of rather stiff multi-core cables with unsheathed wire bundles. They are more flexible. Some screening is being maintained of course. The heavy PVC covers were placing a bit of a load on some of the joints where the thin wires went into the screw connectors, especially when the old cables were too long for the space. The labeling of the wires and the updating of all the doco keeps pace. Much checking as I go.

Thank you Peter.
Cheers
Roger

[InMesh]

Well well I too am a happy camper ,In 2014 bought my electrics from Peter just recently purchased the ESS .I can say that you get more than what you pay for with the service and knowledge that is provided ,I can't believe it's been that long so that sums up why I went back for the ESS .Everything has been ticking away just fine for all this time minor hiccups along the way but I learnt why I caused them that BOB has never been a problem it just works really well , and boy have I read some horror stories out there with others .

again thank's Peter we do appreciate your work, Cheers John.