Re: [CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO] Blown Gecko 320..Strange noises from control???

R Rogers wrote:

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>Wow, that's quite wierd! Do you have any new electrical equipment
>there? Air conditioner, refrigerator, anything?
>Sometimes when electrical equipment starts, especially larger motors, it
>causes a dip in the line voltage.
>When the line voltage comes back up, the filter caps are somewhat
>depleted, and need to charge back up.
>The lights, especially fluorescents, might flicker at the same time.
>(It could actually be equipment at a
>neighbor's house, if they are on the same transformer.)
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>/// Hi Jon, Thanks for responding. I do not have any new equiptment. The line is commercial 3 phase. I'm not sure if anyone has any new equiptment near me but, I dont thinks so. The overhead lights in my shop are not very responsive, they are heavy wattage and a voltage flicker would not be very apparent. Could a sudden dip in line voltage blow a driver?
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It certainly should NOT! But, if the dip ends with a surge, then it is
possible.

>////my Z drive driving the knee I've noticed since my retrofit it has been this way. At idle the motor dithers or slight buzzing vibration, It will stop and start again and gets just marginally warm. The knee being heavy it stop wherever it wants to rather than float to rest like X an Y. Is it possible that the drive is not settled in perfectly and is continually trying to adjust causing a problem? I'm not sure if thats what it is but it acts like its trying to find Neutral position. X and Y do not do this.
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Geckos are like this. The higher the encoder resolution is, the
smaller the dithering is. This is pretty typical
servo behavior, and should not cause any harm. If you have misdesigned
the system due to the great weight
of the knee, then the motor would be expected to run hot, and the Z up
would have a sluggish response, while
the Z down would be quick. If your motor only gets a little warm, I
don't think that is a problem.

>/Sounds like hitting a piece of sheet metal with the bottom of your fist. I know it's weird. I think the voltage dip from the line or possibly my primary wiring as you've suggested may be the culprit. In the morning I'm going to go over it with a fine tooth comb for a possible short, I've been really busy lately and havent had alot of time to clean and chips are all over everything. Jon, If they dont already make one, what would be great to have is a small device someone could plug into a receptacle and monitor voltage over a long period of time. It could monitor a certain bracket of voltage and report when the line dropped out of or exceeded this bracket and generate a reviewable record. If I had that I could just leave it in a receptacle and come back later and see what that voltage profile has been and see if the noise occurences correspond to the device's report. Lcd screen scroll through the events..haha, I dont ask for much.
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Dranetz and a number of other companies make a wide variety of power
quality monitoring systems.
Power quality is a major consulting and engineering specialty, and the
pros demand BIG money,
several thousand $ a day, to come out and look at your problems. The
electronic equipment
rental outfits all have this gear available for rent. The old ones spew
a strip chart out of a chart
recorder. The newer ones will print reports of daily, weekly, etc.
incidents classified by type,
and make strip charts of the fine structure of the incident, cycle by
cycle. Some can even be
put on local nets or dumped to a PC. I'm not recommending you get such
equipment at this
stage, just letting you know that it definitely exists, and has been
pretty common since the
early days of solid state computers, way predating the PC.

Anyway, on the noise, does it sound like the sound the drive box makes
when you turn it on?
I'm thinking if you can hear it when the machine is cutting, it must be
pretty loud.

Jon