Help with Xenetech Rotary - Motor? Board?

[Scott Shepherd]

Well, of course it happens when I need it the most. I have a job due in the morning and went to use the machine and, Houston, we have a problem.

When you turn the controls on, and the machine comes to life, if you hit "Mechanical Home" on the APU, the X-Axis moves, but the Y-Axis (the table), just moans hard and doesn't move. I took it all apart and there's nothing wrong with the motion system. If you power it off, the table moves freely. I took the motor off, took it apart and put it back together. Didn't see anything. When it's no power on the motor, you can spin it with your fingers, put power and it locks tight (which I would expect it would do, that's what it's supposed to do), but then tell it to move and it just vibrates and the shaft never turns. It's a 200 step stepper motor, so I thought to myself "Self, you have other stepper motors around here for other things, why not try one of those?". So I go get a stepper motor (4 wire) and I hook it up in the place of the factory motor. Turn it all back on, tell it to go home and the X-Axis moves, the Y-Axis just hums and vibrates. So to me, since it's doing the same thing on both motors, it's not the motor.

In my mind, there are 4 wires for these steppers, and it appears as if it's only getting power to 2 of them so it's not getting the pulse from the other 2, which would make it turn. I have no idea if that's what's happening (or even how I'd know that), but that's my non-technical troubleshooting limit.

I've checked all the fuses I can locate, they all are fine. I've hit every reset button I can find, and I've even changed the outlet that the power is plugged into, to another one on the other side of the room, just in case something was drawing too much power for everything to work. Nothing seems to fix it.

Of course Xenetech is closed, so I'm trying to get this thing running so I can finish 3 items due tomorrow.

Any idea what that could be?

The motor for the X and Y are the same and my next step is to swap the motors and see if they still do the same thing, but that's a little more involved than I want to do before I got home.

[Scott Shepherd]

Okay, I swapped the motors on the X and Y and the problem didn't stay with the motor. The problem stayed with the axis. So the old motor that I thought was bad now turns when being used for the other axis, and the one that did work, now doesn't work. Well, it's working in the capacity that it's TRYING to turn, it's still vibrating, but not turning.

Any ideas?

[Dan Hintz]

If swapping motors keeps the problem with the same axis, it's the (hardware) driver... low power, faulty clock signal, etc. If jiggling/replacing cables doesn't do it, it might be time to replace the driver card for that axis.

[Scott Shepherd]

That's not promising Dan. The control box has 1 card that has all the axis on that 1 card, I think. It's the guts of the control box. It's $6000 to replace the box.

Or $2500 to replace it with an aftermarket box, but that requires $1200 worth of software to run it. So $3700 or $6000. Not what I was hoping to hear.

[Tony Lenkic]

Scott,

Did you try swapping axis drive boards in MPU. There is 3 of them and all are the same so moving them around the issue will show on another axis.

[Scott Shepherd]

Scott,

Did you try swapping axis drive boards in MPU. There is 3 of them and all are the same so moving them around the issue will show on another axis.

Hi Tony, I didn't try that. I don't recall it being 3 of them in the box. Seems to me like it was 1 big board where the cables came in and I thought it was marked that in a way that lead me to believe that 1 board did everything. I'll have to take a look at it more in depth tomorrow.

[Glen Monaghan]

If you are lucky, they use a chip for the power driver on the bad axis and that chip has died. On a different machine than yours that is set up that way, someone (and I'm not saying who :^( blew one of his drivers and was able to buy a replacement power chip, cut out and desolder the old one, and solder in the replacement to restore full functionality. I think my, I mean _his_ chip cost less than twenty bucks. And, if you can't do the job yourself, you could pay someone with the electronics skill to fix it for much less than $3700 or $6000!

[Tony Lenkic]

Yes there is one big board and 3 individual axis drive cards.

[Tony Lenkic]

Here is a picture..

[Scott Shepherd]

When I swapped the Z-Axis with the Y-Axis, it killed everything. Couldn't get any movement from anything. I swapped the X and Y axis cards and the problem moved to the other axis, so I guess it's this card. Looking at it, it looks very clean, no obvious signs of anything blowing. Any ideas on troubleshooting it?

286331

[Tony Lenkic]

Scott,

The 4 units that are clipped onto heat sink are usual the once that fail. They are either SCR or triacs, don't remember as I have not use them since I went with Viper controls.

[Dan Hintz]

Steve,

Today is my last day at work, so I have some free time coming up... if you'd like, I could take a trip down there this weekend, get a good look at it...

[Scott Shepherd]

Thanks Dan, I've ordered the parts Tony talked about. It'll be Saturday or Monday before they get here. It's coming US Mail, Priority Mail, so I have no idea when it'll get here, but that gave me the option of catching it on Saturday where UPS and FedEx, it was going to Monday anyway.

We'll see. Xenetech wants $480 for the board, Q1 has rebuilt ones for $180, and the parts were less than $20, so if it works, it works, if it doesn't we'll take it to the next step.

Don't worry about coming down here for this. Enjoy your weekend and time off.

[Glen Monaghan]

My experience was that it's easiest to cut the body of the parts you are replacing loose from their soldered legs, then unsolder and remove each individual leg. Use something like a dremel with a cutoff wheel, not diagonal cutters because those cutters impart a tremendous shock back into the board when completing the cut (ever get hit by one of the flying bits of cut wire or hear it smack into the wall 15 feet away when you use one of them?). Use the minimum amount of heat for the shortest time possible (to avoid lifting a copper pad or thermally damaging nearby parts), while still completely melting the solder holding a leg in place (don't want to accidentally pull up a copper pad while trying to pull out the leg). Then make sure there is no solder bridging the pads and that each hole is open so the new parts will fit in them. Insert new parts, solder carefully and hope for the best!

[Tony Lenkic]

Scott,

Did you get your XOT1313 going?

[Scott Shepherd]

Parts due in any minute now, got the soldering iron ready :) Should know something within the next few hours.

Thanks for checking in!

[Dan Hintz]

Parts due in any minute now, got the soldering iron ready :) Should know something within the next few hours.

Thanks for checking in!

I'm still free, if you need me...

[Scott Shepherd]

Thanks Dan. :::::sigh:::: post office tracking shows it is being returned to digi-key because there was an issue with the address. Looks like fat fingers missed the last digit on the zip code by 1 number and didn't catch it (me). So instead of figuring it out, they sent it back. So digi-key is sending a new order out today. Won't be here until Thursday :(

[AL Ursich]

My experience was that it's easiest to cut the body of the parts you are replacing loose from their soldered legs, then unsolder and remove each individual leg. Use something like a dremel with a cutoff wheel, not diagonal cutters because those cutters impart a tremendous shock back into the board when completing the cut (ever get hit by one of the flying bits of cut wire or hear it smack into the wall 15 feet away when you use one of them?). Use the minimum amount of heat for the shortest time possible (to avoid lifting a copper pad or thermally damaging nearby parts), while still completely melting the solder holding a leg in place (don't want to accidentally pull up a copper pad while trying to pull out the leg). Then make sure there is no solder bridging the pads and that each hole is open so the new parts will fit in them. Insert new parts, solder carefully and hope for the best!

Being a former Sony Service tech... This is a great rule to live by.... Makes me wish I still did this kind of work....

Before reading all the posts my first thought was a home limit switch stuck or broken... Good Job getting to this point...

So did the fix work?

AL

[Tony Lenkic]

Steve,

I should have made you an offer to send you spare board I have sitting here. It is brand new unwrapped. I also have a complete MPU box that I kept when I upgraded to Viper controls.
The biggest issue is shipping it over the border (customs charges) etc.

[Scott Shepherd]

Thanks Tony, no worries, we'll get it figured out.

The parts came in today, I stayed late tonight, only to notice once I desoldered all of them that one hole didn't seem to have a silver ring around it. I looked at all the pieces I pulled out of the holes and sure enough, one pin pulled out the copper sleeve in the board.

Not sure if that's a fixable thing or a "Oh, you've done it now" thing. I suppose I could get the copper sleeve off the piece of the pin if needed.

Soooooo........am I sunk, or is this something I can recover from?

[Dan Hintz]

Thanks Tony, no worries, we'll get it figured out.

The parts came in today, I stayed late tonight, only to notice once I desoldered all of them that one hole didn't seem to have a silver ring around it. I looked at all the pieces I pulled out of the holes and sure enough, one pin pulled out the copper sleeve in the board.

Not sure if that's a fixable thing or a "Oh, you've done it now" thing. I suppose I could get the copper sleeve off the piece of the pin if needed.

Soooooo........am I sunk, or is this something I can recover from?

Depends on if it's a multi-layer board, or just two. If it's multi-layer, getting a reliable connection with solder will be a crapshoot. If it's dual-layer, you just need to make sure the traces originally connected to the pads connect to the component once soldered into place.

[Scott Shepherd]

I just spoke to a friend of mine that knows about that stuff and explained it all to him. He made me describe it all and the item and we determined it's a voltage regulator chip, not one of the motor drivers, so he said the same thing as you, scrape the resist off the top layer to expose the ring underneath it that's slightly visible now and just solder that good. One of my customers is heavy into electronics, and I have a delivery to make to them tomorrow, so I think I'll take that along with me and get them to repair for me. Seems my destiny isn't soldering or electronics :)

[Scott Shepherd]

Too the board to my customer and they quickly traced the path and created a jumper for it and soldered it into place.

I put the board back in and it didn't change anything. Still the same issue. One motor turns, the other hums and vibrates.

Any other ideas other than pushing it off the loading dock and replacing it with a Vision? :)

[Scott Shepherd]

Just had someone walk in that knows a little about things and they looked at it and said "Oh, I know exactly what's happening, but I can't tell you how to troubleshoot it". They said it appears as if the motor is getting a signal to turn both directions at the same time. They said it was a capacitor that controls that, a bidirectional capacitor or something, and it was sending out the wrong signal. They said they see it all the time on their equipment.

Make any sense to anyone?

[Tony Lenkic]

Steve,

When you interchanged two drive boards did the problem shoved on the other axis motor?
If not, you should check wire connection for loose or broken wire.

[Scott Shepherd]

Yes, it follows the board, not the motor.

[Tony Lenkic]

My offer still stands. If you would like to send you another board PM my your shipping address.