broken acorn encoder plug?

[nicolasjolliet]

Hi folks, I'm having a weird problem:

I was moving cables around my electronics case and my mill encoder cable got unplugged by accident (the db9 was not screwed on). I just plugged it back in, but then I got "quadrature errors" on the encoder reading. My cable must have been damaged so I checked everything all the way to
the encoder and everything looks good. All contacts work. No power lines running near or anything like that, cable is grounded and all.

So I plugged in the other encoder with it's cable from my lathe into the mill Acorn to see if that would work (the lathe encoder/cable works perfectly). And to my surprise I have the same problems (quadrature errors). This doesn't make sense, it would mean the female db9 on the acorn is damaged, but it all looks good and can't be damaged that easily. Could it be a software problem? I didn't change any settings. I don't know where to start troubleshooting. Any Idea?

[DrLocke]

I would take a step back and remove the encoder cable from any cable bundle and separate it from any high current electrical items. It could be that the cable movements simply put the encoder cable in a noise position.

[tblough]

Broken or bent pins on the cable side plug?

[GBCues]

Sorry, it's not clear, but did you power cycle your Acorn board? If you just plugged in the same or a different encoder cable with the board powered up, I would expect errors.
HTH

[nicolasjolliet]

I did power cycle and it didn’t help, but good to know that plugging « live » will generate errors.
I got my encoder to work reliably again by playing with the plug. So now I know the problem came from the plug. I guess it’ll fail again, I’ll then re order a plug/cable from centroid an re solder the encoder.

Thanks.

[martyscncgarage]

I did power cycle and it didn’t help, but good to know that plugging « live » will generate errors.
I got my encoder to work reliably again by playing with the plug. So now I know the problem came from the plug. I guess it’ll fail again, I’ll then re order a plug/cable from centroid an re solder the encoder.

Thanks.

By "playing" with the plug?
You need to get that taken apart and repaired, else possibly risk damaging something....