Australian Mechmate transforms to Acorn

[cnckeith]

Hi Dan

I literally only have the controllers and the e-stop connected at the moment, I haven't even licenced CNC 12 yet. I couldn't see how to turn the spindle off but will have another look. The 882's do have fault signals but they aren't tripping, the controller lights are happily blinking as normal. The alarm signals for the drives are via the e-stop circuit and that isn't triggering either.

I'll go back out after dinner and have an other go at it just to see what happens.

Really appreciate all you are asking

Cheers

you have input 5 set to drive ok.. that with no connection to it will cause the drive fault.. use "BENCH TEST" mode to get motors turning on the bench. Bench Test is there so you can have minimal connection to the Acorn and not be stopped by error messages. see marty's video series for guidance. . viewtopic.php?f=61&t=1449

[cnckeith]

sorry to hear about the power spike problem at your location.
we do offer a Acorn Swapout program for such cases.
http://www.centroidcnc.com/centroid_diy ... apout.html

[Racedirector]

I have had a very good conversation with Support, thanks guys for being there. I have now ordered a Swapout board V4, just waiting for Support now due to the time difference. Could not be happier with the outcome, an outstanding company to be involved with.

Cheers

[Dan M]

They are great indeed, they helped me out with a little surgery I had to perform on my board due to a whoops moment when I was finishing up my controller. I also had a issue with some shipping damage that they immediately took care of when I first received my Acorn.

Great service and a great product and a great company.

Glad you're getting closer to getting the machine up and running. That's weird that a power outage fried the board, I wonder what can be added to protect it from what I would assume was a voltage spike. I'm still trying to understand how it made its way through the power supply, maybe you have a bad earth ground? Did you ever determine exactly what happened?

Dan

[Racedirector]

I suspect it came in via the limit wiring, not too sure. Been busy trying to get the board going. I do have all the power supplies on 1 contactor but I suspect I have missed something somewhere thats letting voltage bypass something. Definitely will be checking everything before I install the new board.

[Dan M]

When I cooked part of my board it was voltage coming into the step and direction don't even ask how I did that lol. Do you have any fuses or breakers down stream from the Acorn? I have a breakers in between all my different power supplies and the disconnect. Remember that a contactor isn't a fuse or a circuit breaker and handles a lot of current. I actually had a breaker trip once from a bad solder joint on a limit switch, so it definitely is worth having just make sure you rate them properly for the power supplies. Disregard if you already have some circuit protection and already know all of this.

Dan

[Racedirector]

After scouring my control box I found 1 of my contactors has failed, probably due to the spike that hit us, and somehow passed 240V into the 24V circuit feed to the things like the limit proxy sensors. What I think happened is there was enough voltage in the split second before the RCD tripped that it cooked the Acorn board by putting 240V down the 24v line to the inputs. Oh, and my proxies are dead too, lucky I have about 20 spares The other contactor shut off all power supplies in the box so I think thats how they survived.

I am going to replace the the second contactor with a 24V coil version instead of a 240V coil version to circumvent anything like this happening in the future. I am also going to add a few more circuit breakers into the whole supply system as more protection.

Cheers

[Racedirector]

So the replacement Acorn board arrived last week and I had the first opportunity to install it today. After working out my licence needed updating and applying the correct ratio I have my machine working almost like it should. Slow jog is 150 ipm, fast jog is 250 ipm and rapids are set at 950 ipm.

Now I need to work out my proxy sensors for limits and home, add my VFD into the mix, add in my touch offs, both under the Z and my fixed touch off and a few more setup bits but am very happy to have things working as far as they have now. I even ran a couple of the example files to test things out, a bit slow for my machine but ran right through without issues.

Liking Acorn very much, might even upgrade to the Digitizing version if I find things wanting in that area.

Cheers
Bruce

[martyscncgarage]

Glad to see you are almost back to square 1

[Racedirector]

Sometimes you just have to listen to yourself......

I was surprised a couple of my proxies were "working" (as in sensing the steel) but I couldn't get Acorn to work when homing. Everything looked fine, settings were fine etc etc. On a whim I decided to wire in a new proxy on the Y axis just to see what would happen and lo-and-behold the Y homing started to work.

Stupid me forgot my power surge took out everything and by the looks of it the actual sensing part of a couple of the proxies still functioned but the little "switch" inside was stuffed hence my not seeing a change in Alt-i mode. Too late now (time wise) to change them all out so that is a job for tomorrow.

Just goes to show you shouldn't work on things with power running through them when you are a) tired and b) hungry

More in this saga will continue tomorrow.

Cheers