Centroid Community CNC Support Forum

Hi guys, I have a new experience with my Acorn, as I was using it and it suddenly stopped. I was wondering what is going on so I looked at the board and it was burned.

Do o you have any experience with it? I need to apply a warranty as it is still in, but don't know if I do that by centroid or supplier in EU I've bought it from, where it is faster?

I doubt if you will get a warranty replacement if the damage was caused by your installation. It looks like the ethernet connector next to the burnt resistor. That's not the sort of damage an ethernet controller can do by itself, so I would guess there was a wiring problem in your installation. I might be wrong there but somebody would have to take a closer look.

If you replace the damaged board without fixing an underlying issue (if that's the cause), you are likely to see a repeat of the same damage.

Perhaps you could show how the Acorn is connected up to the rest of your system. What's at the other end of the network cable? Presumably a PC, in which case, how is it powered and grounded? How is the Acorn connected within your system, not least the grounding of the power supply rails? Very little to go on here.

no system was connected right by their schematics. and it was working over a year without any issue. It just suddenly stopped, and I would love to return the unit so they could take a look and tell me what was wrong if it was a faulty unite, resistor, or anything? or some overload? I don't think it could be caused by the system as it was properly working over year, I've also thought if it could be the power supply as you can see there is a burned resistor next to power in. but I measured the voltage of power supply and voltage is good.
then I've connected an ethernet cable to my router, to see if it could be my computer. so turned off wifi and run on ethernet, it worked fine ...
I HAVE NO EXPLANATION for that and I'm wondering if someone has the same problem as that, if I will have to purchase an acorn unit again, don't know if I will ( if the problem is inboard ... ) I would love to be replaced.

will see what my seller will say. about warranty

This page details the Centroid 1-year warranty and the return process.

https://www.centroidcnc.com/centroid_di ... ranty.html

Since you have been running for over one year, you will need to use their $199 swap-out program - also detailed on the warranty page.

Things happen. I burned up an Acorn because a whisker of wire curled up underneath the Acorn, shorting the Acorn to it's metal mounting plate. It was a freak accident. My test bench assembly was vertical. It wasn't laying down. I hadn't been stripping wires, or attaching wires, or crimping wires, but somehow that little piece of wire made enough of a bridge to short the Acorn and the metal mounting plate. The board was fried. Most likely, that little piece of wire had lodged there when I I had the test bench assembly lying flat and then the metal plate vibrated or heated up or somehow caused the wire whisker to move.

I used Centroidcnc's policy to return the board for $199. They sent a new board. I used longer standoffs between the new board and the metal plate. So far, that new board has been running flawlessly with three Teknic ClearPath servos.

It's frustrating when something unexpected happens; but the unexpected DOES happen. For decades I designed, built, programmed, installed and serviced process control computers in the photo industry. EVERY service call was cause by some unexpected "accident". Almost always the customer told me that they hadn't done anything - and they probably hadn't done anything different.

Call or email Centroidcnc. Their $199 replacement is a good deal. Before installing the new/repaired board, check your wiring against the schematics. Verify that every load is within the Acorn User Manual's specs. Good luck.

Wow, that is seriously toasted. It's damaged a lot more than just a resistor on the network connection. To create that level of damage would require a fair bit of power.

It looks to me as if most of the damage is on the Beagle Bone board. I seem to recall that others have manged to replace just the Beagle Bone board and get the licence reissued - do I remember correctly?. That would be a much cheaper option than replacing the whole assembly.

I too have toasted an Acorn board and a couple BBG's and had one from a customer (BBG) that I replaced due to a bent LAN port. Most were similar to Mike R's experience, brain fart operations. I purchased a number of BBG's from Digikey (~$40) and the rest comes from Centroid.

I would suggest that since it appears to have taken quite a spike, that you use the $199 replacement option to replace all components. Hopefully you can find out what caused the spike before you install new components

Guys Thank you for all your sugestions. We have 2 years warranty here in europe. hopefully it will be covered , if not i will have to go through 200 dollars replacement as two resistors are burnt - on on eatch board...

I know about accidents but im sure that is no case in my situation, all case is wooden, well cooled by two fans and all cables are covered.

The thing is that I'm scared to install another board if I don't know from where this spike came, I checked every voltage in every connector and all seems fine ...


Also if one resistor burned , it could be falty resistor , but two resistors in same time ?
Mistery

If I will get nev board, how I can transfer all my setting to new board? it is complicated thing to do ?

Martin Zarnay wrote: ↑Sun Sep 27, 2020 2:40 pm If I will get nev board, how I can transfer all my setting to new board? it is complicated thing to do ?

Nothing to transfer. Just copy the new license.dat file that Centroid will give you that matches the serial number of the new board to the C:\cncm folder and that's all that's needed on the SW/Computer side.

-swissi

shop ive purchased acorn , they dont have acorn on stock right now and warranty procedure is taking 30 days. problem is that I'm in Europe and I need to finish some projects on my cnc. I've thought changing resistors by my self , my friend can change resistor by some special soldering gun what he has.

but i don't know what resistors are they, could someone take pics of them for me ?