Centroid Community CNC Support Forum

ShawnM wrote: ↑Tue Jul 06, 2021 2:58 pm Am I the only one overlooking the fact the the Gecko STEPPER drives are hooked to the SERVO headers on the board and not the DB25? Per the Centroid wiring schematic for the Gecko 201 they are wired to the DB25.

Good point, not to mentioned the wiring about the drives is not clean and can be problematic.

Attached is the schematic for the G201. Should be wired to the DB25.
However, that might not be necessarily the cause of MPU/PC resends.
I would definitely clean up the wiring at the drives and use a DB25 breakout board to supply the step and direction signals to the drives.

tuffduck wrote: ↑Tue Jul 06, 2021 1:15 pm Hi,
There is a common earth ground to the steel cabinet. The back plate is grounded to that as well. The Acorn is mounted to a piece of laminate and is on computer motherboard standoffs, grounded to the common ground. Both cabinets are grounded to common.
The armour flex carries the VFD output cable. Does the this covering need to be grounded?
The aluminum plate is anodized.
There is no FR filter on the VFD power input from the breaker.

I have replaced:
The computer
Ethernet Cable
Beagle Bone

It's good practice to have all of your grounds run to a common point when possible.

I would ground the armor flex on one end of the control cabinet nearest to earth ground or bypass the control cabinet entirely with the VFD-Spindle cable since it is only a chase.

Aluminum anodizing may affect aluminum's continuity on the surface, you may want to remove the anodizing where you are trying to get ground from the diamond plate back panel

tuffduck wrote: ↑Tue Jul 06, 2021 1:15 pm There is a common earth ground to the steel cabinet. The back plate is grounded to that as well. The Acorn is mounted to a piece of laminate and is on computer motherboard standoffs, grounded to the common ground. Both cabinets are grounded to common.
The armour flex carries the VFD output cable. Does the this covering need to be grounded?
The aluminum plate is anodized.
There is no FR filter on the VFD power input from the breaker.

As mentioned already all grounding should be at a common point. Best practice is to do this with bus bars so everything is grounded in one place. It's not good practice to simply through bolt a ground wire to the cabinet, backplate or anywhere else for that matter. I see a lot of ground wires in your pic. There appears to be two power lines coming into the cabinet, one on the left into a circuit breaker and grounded to the backplate and one on the right for the Acorn power supply. Not sure why there are two power feeds either. Hard to tell how the VFD wiring is grounded and if it's shielded wire or not which is required. Line filters are a must on VFD's and the incoming power from the wall. I can see where noise would be an issue in this cabinet just looking at the pic. I would buy a bus bar and run ALL GROUNDS to it so they are in one place. I would also have a single line feed coming in through a line filter to power everything. I also use bus bars for high voltages.

Having the stepper drives wired to the Acorn servo headers can cause step loss that you might not be able to see but its there and can sneak up on you at any time. May also be part of your issue.

One power line is 220v and the other is 110v. 220v for the power supply and 110v Acorn power supply. If anyone knows how to simply this please share.

I asked about the DB25 breakout board before on this thread:
viewtopic.php?f=60&t=5793&hilit=Ghost&start=30.

I will see if I can locate a board in Canada.

The Acron power supply can take 220 volts input. Clean up the ground issue and move the drives to a DB25 and I'll bet the issues go away.

Try Amazon in Canada? DB25 male break out board

https://www.amazon.ca/Uxcell-a15082500u ... 4891cc7630

Will this one be okay?

tuffduck wrote: ↑Tue Jul 06, 2021 7:23 pm https://www.amazon.ca/Uxcell-a15082500u ... 4891cc7630

Will this one be okay?

Yes, or this one:
fielect 1PC DB25 Connector to Wiring Terminal DB25 Breakout Board Solder-Free Female Male Adapter 2 Row 25Pin
by Heyiarbeit CA
Learn more: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B083K6B7H7/ref ... 2Y1GEPP168

Thanks Marty.