Wrong Indexer Motor?

[patricktoomey]

I bought a used indexer a few months back and just got around to setting it up today. Naturally I waited until the week I actually needed to turn some parts for a job and now I think I'm screwed. I went to plug the cable into my PRT box and thought something looked strange, as in more wires and a wider connector :-( I'm assuming the indexer I bought was for an Alpha, it is a PK296A1A-SG7.2 motor with a gearbox of unkown ratio. Is there any hope for driving this motor with my PRT controller or am I going to have to buy a different motor? If so, is there anyone out there who would be interested in trading an alpha motor for a PRT motor?

[steve4460]

Hi Patrick

That motor that you have is a 7.2:1 gear ratio.
How many wires are on the motor ?. I think this is a PRT motor , you may need just a differend connector. I think the alpha motors have 8 wires on a 10 pin connectore .Check with shopbot , they will tell you how to fix it.

[patricktoomey]

Thanks Stephan,

The motor has 6 wires and a 6 pin connector. Two of the wires (white and yellow) are tied together in the connector at the motor side so it's using 5 of the pins in the connector. I'll call ShopBot to see what my options are.

[gerald_d]

Patrick, that sounds wrong. White & Yellow should not be connected to each other. The wiring diagrams are at the bottom of this page:

http://www.orientalmotor.com/support/Unipolar_connection.htm

I think that the PRT only used the black/green & red/blue wires with the white and yellow insulated off. The 6 lead bipolar series connection.

[patricktoomey]

Gerald to the rescue as usual :-)

You were right Gerald, it turns out this is an old PR motor and they used to have the white and yellow tied together. I just got off the phone with Scott at ShopBot and he said that I need to switch to the 4 pin connector, match up the Black, Green, Red and Blue wires and then insulate the Yellow and White wires since they are not used or tied together on the PRT.

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction

[patricktoomey]

Well boys and girls, here's tonight's tale of stupidity...

I went out to my shop, changed out the 6 pin connector the 4 pin, triple checked that the colors were right and plugged it in. I set the Aux channel dip switches to have 5 on for both which sets it to be the B axis. I turned on the box, hit K to go to manual mode and used Shift-Page Up to turn the indexer for the first time and... clunk. That was it. I turned off the controller, started checking everything and to my horror, I had forgotten to cut the white and yellow wires and insulate them. They were still tied together as they are for a PR machine. I figured that meant I had shorted out something in the controller and sure enough, dead channel.

Worse than that though, when I turn the power on, the LED's at each channel light up except for X2, and it doesn't move anymore either. So somehow my short traveled across there and blew both the A and X2 channels! Nice, two birds with one stone eh? So now I don't even have a spare channel to use for X2.

So that's my sob story about not double checking the whole diagram. Cutting corners and being in a hurry can cost a lot. Now the only question is how much is this going to cost to fix?!?! I just sent e-mail to support so I guess I'll know how bad it may be first thing in the morning. Im just praying there's a chance I could overnight the board to them for a Friday delivery and that they can fix it and send it back for Saturday delivery since I can't afford to be without the 'bot over the weekend. Either that or I'll have to buy a new board and then get this one fixed as a spare or sell it or something. I guess that's enough crying for tonight, I'll go cut some boards by hand (if I can remember how).

[paco]

5422

kidding. You'll fix that fast.

[gerald_d]

Patrick, I'll give you serious applause for standing up and sharing that with us. My condolences to your drives, may they rest in peace.

[scott_smith]

If you know of any electronic guys in the area this: http://www.talkshopbot.com/forum/show.cgi?tpc=26&post=20235#POST20235 May help.

Scott

[patricktoomey]

Thanks guys, it's been a cleansing experience to share my screw-ups


I talked with Frank at ShopBot this morning and I'm in pretty good shape considering. I got my RMA and shipped the controller board back. They should be able to fix it tomorrow for hopefully $150 and then ship it back to me for a Saturday delivery so I'll only have been down for 2 days. I can make that up by running 16 hours Sat and Sun so it could have been worse and a lot more expensive. Heck, the shipping will cost as much as the repair. I was going to buy another board as a spare but I'm about ready to make the leap to a Gecko/Mach controller so I'll just keep my repaired board as the spare.

If I can't even remeber to cut a stinkin' wire though, imagine what I'll be able to screw up building a whole new controller! Get ready for a whole collection of my sob stories
I'd better put a blog on my website to house that so I don't burn up all of ShopBot's disk space.

Scott, embarrassingly enough, I am an electronics guy which makes this whole thing that much worse. I appreciate that link! Even though I shipped my board back for repair, I went ahead and ordered a handful of those suppressors just to have on hand. Mouser Electronics has them for $0.68 each so it's worth having around if that's a common failure point. Here's the link if anyone is interested... http://www.mouser.com/index.cfm?handler=displayproduct&lstdispproductid= 816318&e_categoryid=209&e_pcodeid=78014
Since my short on one motor actually took out 2 channels, I'm thinking it may be a little worse than just supressors on my board but it will be interesting to see what the guys at ShopBot say.