Driver/Motor Fault?

[joewino]

OK - here's a new one that just showed up. While trying to surface my sacrifice board I get this message:

"Driver/Motor Fault Detected.
Please reset drivers (location no longer accurate)"

What do I do now?

[richards]

Chances are that you were driving the spindle motor too deep or too fast. One of the display modes shows the amps that the spindle is drawing. (I take off 0.015 or so per pass at 10-inches per second with my 1-1/2 inch surfacing cutter at about 3 to 4 amps motor load.)

The safest thing is to re-zero the x/y axis with your proximity switches (or eyeball if you haven't hooked up your switches yet). Then re-zero the z-axis and start again.

(You may have to power down and then restart to clear the fault.)

[harryball]

Mike is correct, I've found if burden the machine and cause it to "drag" as if it reached a hard limit I get this error. When this happens I reset then rezero everything. Only done it twice so far, once by accident and once from being over ambitious.

Robert

[joewino]

Thanks. I was trying to touch the surface with bit and couldn't keep it from going to far. It's surfacing the sacrifice board now.

Is it just me, or are the instructions in the manual a little vague?

For instance, in the manual it says, "Set Z Plunge Offset 0 by checking box with spacebar"

I've looked everywhere and there is no such animal to check with the spacebar. Either that or I'm just blind. PRTalpha96.

[harryball]

I remember having to read a few times and then just figure it out. I zero the Z axis then move to X,Y = -1,-1 and set the Z to -.1 (or whatever I need) then run the surfacing routine. I modified my .sbp file to increase the cut rate and I'm using a 3/4" bit to surface. Does a good job and takes a little less than 20 minutes. I suppose I'll get a larger bit one day, but I'm in no hurry.

Robert

[richards]

Ray,

I should have mentioned that I used the Shopbot surfacing file as a guide and then wrote something specific to my way of doing things. (Sorry, but I'm a programmer first and a Shopbotter second. Tinkering with programs is something that I just have to do.)