Spindle not working

Community Support Other Software
1

I don’t think this is a software issue but didn’t see a better sub-category……

I have a 4x4 Altmill Mk2 with a water cooled 2.2Kw Haunyang spindle and Vortex rotary I have been using successfully for several months. Had some issues with initial setup but all were resolved early on. Today, however, another issue has risen.

Running gSender 1.5.2.

Early on I had ran a small rotary project just to ensure everything “rotary” was working. I then put the rotary away and ran multiple non-rotary projects. Today I decided to use the rotary again.

Initially setup of establishing Y0 went well but when I attempted to set Z0 the machine made a rapid move to the left rear corner versus zeroing the Z axis. Could have been some user error involved here. Regardless,

Decided to update to gSender 1.5.4. I forgot to save the firmware configuration files before upgrading (which may have prevented the following issues).

Went through the rotary setup again and successfully set the “Y” AND “Z” zero. Now thinking I have solved the issues. NOPE!

Attempted to run a “surfacing” of my stock to make it round (12" long piece of 1.5" square wood). Set up the surfacing tool with a 120"/Min feed rate and ran it. Worked! Except the feed rate was more like 1"/Min instead of 120 but it was working. PLEASE NOTE THE SPINDLE WAS RUNNING HERE!

Decided the gSender surfacing tool was not working correctly so told Vectric the stock was 2" round and created both a roughing and finish tool paths. Loaded them to gSender and hit START. The spindle would not start - no errors either. I am not sure if I had any Z or X movement because I hit stop before it had a chance.

Now it was time to switch to the console and see if I could get the spindle to run with some M3 commands. gSender tells me the spindle s running but the VFD still reads 0000. What the heck? Would have expected to see an Error 14 with the spindle not running!

Thought maybe the my spindle had failed. Switched out the Haunyang for the original Sienci 1.5Kw and reloaded the firmware that I had saved back when I originally set the Altmill up (that ran the rotary). This set the default spindle back the H100. Should work now right? NOPE! Error 14 now with every M3 command.

Reverted back to gSender 1.4.12 and reloaded firmware that I used successfully with 1.4.12. Same results!

I should note that I have recycled power (VFD followed by SLB) each and every time.

Could the SLB have gone bad? What should my next step be?

This is going to Sienci support, FB group and the Sienci user group/forum.

Thanks for any ideas you may have

Len

2

Have you power cycled the SLB and/or rebooted the computer?

I’ve found myself climbing the mountain of confusion, trying to diagnose odd behaviors that went away with a global power cycle… “The attention span of an electronic device is limited to the length of its power cord…”

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Edit: I got the spindle working with console commands - was operator error (sending M3 commands without a speed command). Still does not answer the original issues of (1) rotary surfacing feed rate extremely slow and (2) why the spindle did not spin at all when starting a rotary carve and no errors were present. Non-rotary carves appear to work fine.

New issue this morning - vortex rotary will not rotate by runnning a rotary program, clicking the A- and A+ buttons or sending A commands from console (followed by a F command) and the stepper motor appears to be lacking signals (freely turns by hand). I moved the stepper power and control cables to the X axis connector on the SLB and the rotary locks as I would expect AND turns when clicking the X+ and X- buttons.

I then plugged the X axis cables into the rotary sockets on the SLB. The problem followed to the X axis stepper (i.e., not locked up and no motion). There IS 48 volts coming to the steppers from the SLB and all wires seem to be firmly in place in the connectors. Pressing the A+ and A- buttons results in the X axis moving as I would expect.

Switching to 1.5.5 and then back to 1.5.2 doesn’t change anything.

Questions: (1) Should the rotary stepper be locked when SLB powered on and connected to gSender (and alarms cleared)? (2) Shouldn’t I be able to turn the rotary by issueing A commands via console and/or clicking the A-/A+ buttons? (3) Does it appear the SLB rotary section has failed? (4) Could there be a configuraion setting I am missing?

Rotary IS enabled in the configuration. Probably something I am doing wrong but I am now adrift and need some more help.

Thanks everyone!

4

Everything is working again! I had overlooked some of the configuration setting found here:

Thanks to Jason for pointing me to this!

Len

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