My Altmill MK2’s Y‑right closed‑loop motor just hard‑failed. It’s tripping the E‑stop instantly, and when I tested it on another circuit, it popped that one too. Meter shows 0.00 Ω on both coils, so it’s a dead short inside the motor.
Before I order a replacement, has anyone else had a Y‑axis motor short out like this on the Altmill? Any similar failures or causes you’ve seen?
Thanks for any quick insight.
Have a brand new 2’ x 4’ Altmill running V carve 12.0. The same thing just happened to me. Less than 6 hrs on the machine. Slammed stop no matter what I did. Went through the trouble shooting algorithm. Nothing helped. Scieni has been wonderful diagnosing the problem. Sent me a new Y2 motor. Arrives tomorrow.
Glad to hear they’re working with you. How long did it take for them to resolve your issue?
It’s been a full week for me now with no progress. I haven’t been able to get anyone on the phone, so I dug deeper into the failure myself. There’s a strong possibility that when the closed‑loop stepper motor failed mid‑carve, it caused the Y‑axis to go out of sync. That explains why the machine shifted and cut a hole where it shouldn’t have.
When I hit the E‑stop, the machine shot completely in the opposite direction of home, which now makes sense — the Y‑axis wasn’t synchronized anymore.
Based on my diagnostics, the capacitor inside the motor has failed and is causing a hard short. I can’t wait any longer, so I’m going to attempt to replace the capacitor myself and see if that gets the motor operational again so I can resume my work assignment.