POP goes the ON switch

[DianMayfield]

Heavy sigh... I am sure there are ideas as to the cause. Lay it on me, no need to be gentle, where do I start to track it down.

And she was doing so well, too :sad: (her name is Cutty, from House - though the drinkin' kind comes to mind right now)

[bergerud]

Was it the switch itself which popped? Did it fall apart inside and short? If so, it should be an easy fix. The switch is a pretty standard part.

Pop it apart and see what happened.

[DianMayfield]

Hi Dan,

I'm sorry, was too flabbergasted to be coherent. When I flipped the switch, there was a loud electrical POP, like the loudest breaker popping.

[bergerud]

Sounds more like a capacitor on a circuit board popped. I guess you have to dive into the power supply and look for the exploded component. At least you should be able to visually find the problem.

[Digitalwoodshop]

So I too think something like the X Termination board took a dump and ejected the smoke from some of the parts....

I don't have any good pictures but if I remember right it is just a 2 wire switch....

You could un plug the wires from the switch with the machine un plugged and measure the switch with a ohm meter and see if it went bad.

Any chance it was a discharge from a dust collector where a ground fell off?....

AL

[DianMayfield]

First chance to work on her since the pop.

OK, the machine powers up. I ran the cut motor test, and the machine says it's running, but it is silent.


There is a new x-termination board, less than 20 hrs. Looks nice and pretty - no burns. Is there an Ohm measurement we should be looking for, open/closed?

New cut motor, less than 20 hrs.

There is a bypass to the motor, and it is reading 62 volts, same as all other times we measured and

There is continuity through the motor.

No burns on the power supply.

Not sure what else to check.

[DianMayfield]

There is a rant simmering, I will attempt to not let it overflow during this post.

Thank heavens we are not afraid to take this puppy apart and explore, or I would be needlessly sending a motor back, paying shipping both ways for a manufacturing defect. The second defective motor we have had. Quality control is a real issue here.

We opened the motor and the loose wire in the picture was no longer in the in the crimp on connector. We had to use needle nose tweezers to get the connector out of the seat - that was a tough pull.

You can see in the first picture that the crimp marks on the loose wire barely hit the insulation, and there is no mark up where it's twin is crimped.

Apparently it just vibrated loose over the past 20 hrs on the motor.

Well...I just went to check the progress on of the reassembly.. The motor is still almost silent, there is a faint whine but the motor is not turning.

Could that wire coming loose have caused something else to go bad? What do we test? There is voltage all the way to the motor. There is .3ohm from the x-term to the motor.

[DianMayfield]

I put a known good motor into the beast, and same results. Someone here must have done all of the continuity and voltage mapping so that we do not have to replace every card in the darn thing searching for a culprit. We will be once we get the dang thing running again.

There are no burnt capacitors or resistors on any of the visible boards. From what we can trace out, all the resistance and voltages make sense.

[bergerud]

What about the "POP". That has to mean something. Was the pop from inside the machine?

[DianMayfield]

Hi Dan,

Yes, it sounded like inside. Butch thinks he has the answer... we are going to talk through the path, and I will post results.

[DianMayfield]

Where to start... I know, Never Doubt AL :)

First... The back of the termination board was smoked... nothing on the front of the board indicated this. Had a spare! Yay!!

Dang it, that did not solve the problem. Could run all the tests, everything moved but the cut motor.

With 3 machines on their backs in various states of disassembly...

So my original C machine has the x-term from the A machine (the 2nd C x-term looks like it had gotten hot), we moved the controller from the 2nd C machine to my original C.

The baby ran! I feel we are left with more mysteries than we solved. Can the controller fail in just one aspect and have everything else work?

Just a side note... If you are thinking of buying a used machine, and the hours are low, ask LHR if the seller has purchased a controller. There is NO way this 2nd C only ran for 120 hrs. It is in worse condition than the A with twice as many hrs on it..

Also, I really would like to solve the problem of the fried x-termination board. This one only 19.5 hrs of run time. I get that it is a protective measure, but what the heck does it protect from? What do I have to fix?

I am on my way to Best Buy to get a couple of UPS's, perhaps I need more line conditioning?

[lynnfrwd]

A bad xterm can ruin a good cut motor.

[Digitalwoodshop]

And a bad X term can kill a computer.... the whole reason for the Opti Couplers is to let the computer light a LED light inside the 6 pin chips and the light turns on a photo transistor in turn turning on something else like the Q1 and the Cut Motor...

When the boards burn high voltage gets into the computer side and kills the gates inside the computer or more...

I agree a ups power conditioner.... Plus if the power goes out the machine still runs and you don't loose a project.

How is the Shop Humidity...? That could fry stuff like this is the shop is wet in the morning.... If you have condensation on the machine wait and run some heat and fans.

AL

[bergerud]

Where to start... I know, Never Doubt AL :smile:

...we moved the controller from the 2nd C machine to my original C.

The baby ran! I feel we are left with more mysteries than we solved. Can the controller fail in just one aspect and have everything else work?

Also, I really would like to solve the problem of the fried x-termination board. This one only 19.5 hrs of run time. I get that it is a protective measure, but what the heck does it protect from? What do I have to fix?


This situation does seem strange. A strange coincidence that something popped and at the same time the field wire came off. I do not see how they could be connected if the motor was not running at the time. Maybe the field wire came off when you took the motor apart but is not the real problem. You have to keep searching for the source of the pop. Look at the controller board.

[Digitalwoodshop]

This situation does seem strange. A strange coincidence that something popped and at the same time the field wire came off. I do not see how they could be connected if the motor was not running at the time. Maybe the field wire came off when you took the motor apart but is not the real problem. You have to keep searching for the source of the pop. Look at the controller board.

Like He said... :)

AL

[DianMayfield]

Any one know how many watts this thing is? Doesn't work on my 350w UPS. Cut motor draws 3amps, how about the rest of it?

[bergerud]

The cut motor draws more than 3 amps. More like 10 amps. The rest of it draws little in comparison.

[DianMayfield]

Ahh He got three up where the cover switch goes to the motor.. any idea on the overall?

[bergerud]

I think the machine says on the base at the lower right. (I am at work and cannot look.) Many with large DCs have calculated wattage's. Do a search.

[DianMayfield]

Got it from the label.. 8 amps :) Thanks so much!

[Digitalwoodshop]

If you took a Wall Wort transformer say the 12 volt DC Version and find a small 12 volt DC relay, you could wire it into the close cover switch so when you un plug the wall wort it opens the cover switch circuit. Plugged in all is normal....

Now plug it into a outlet and your UPS into into another. Now when your power blinks or the power goes out the UPS takes over just as the cut motor is stopping due to a open cover. You don't loose the project and the UPS has a small load of just the basic electronics of the computer without the high draw of the cut motor.

AL