Smoke and heat from shopbot control box + comm error

[Airwurthy@aol.com]

Hi,

Just hooked up machine after buying from friend.Smoke and heat coming from shopbot box. What are power supply hook up colors?(manula says yellow +28, black gnd)Why am I smoking drive boards if no stepper motor is hooked up?Anyone else run into this? Large IC on drive board is the source of the smoke I think. Machine worked fine at friends house, took apart and reassembled at my house and heat, smoke thing happens, Please help

[bill.young]

Skipp,

Don't know about the smoke and heat part (maybe a connection got loosened during moving and shorted out?), but it sounds like you have the big black external power supply. If so then your connection is correct; yellow to +28 and black to gnd.

Good luck,
Bill

[Ted Hall, ShopBot]

Hi Skipp,

As per the note sent earlier to you today, let us know a number we can get you at Monday or Tuesday and we'll get it straightened out.

When you got the tool, the previous owner had probably removed the warning that was attached to the control box describing the two things that are no-no's. I'm pasting in here what I put in the note to you ...

There are a couple of things you need to watch out for with steppers and their drivers. 1) You don't want to move the tool manually with the motor plugged into the control box. The motors can generate quite a nice little power surge, and this can zap the driver. 2) You don't want to unplug a motor while the power is on. The driver will initially try to rapidly adjust and increase it's output until it is smoke. (The same effect will occur if there is a loose connection to a motor).

The drivers are pretty sophisticated, but they rapidly switch a lot of current around and are thus very vulnerable to these two types of things ...