Good morning everyone,
I have freshly joined the forum but have been reading posts here for quite some time. Glad to be here as a member.
So, I recently started making some connections between my components. I don't think these are terribly relevant to what I'm actually asking, but here's what I have;
I had just put everything together and wanted to do a simple test or two with the Mach4 software I installed, so here's what I did;
Here's what happened. I started jogging the motor, watching my z-axis move as it should, but as the motor would start, I heard a "bad" sound and then everything sounded normal. I kept moving the motor back and forth, making physical adjustments, trying to narrow in on the sound. Finally, I suspected the motor itself and not the mechanics, so I removed the motor and jogged it back and forth a few times to confirm. Sure enough, the sound was coming from the motor. As I was jogging the unmounted motor, there was a click and a plume of smoke from the controller! I was one HY-DIV268N-5A driver down!
Alright, so these things happen. But what I don't understand is exactly why it happened. I think this particular motor is probably bad, but shouldn't the motor controller have limited the current draw to 1.2 amps, thus preventing itself from having cooked? If I had put a proper fuse in place (probably a 1 amp fuse), would that have stopped my driver from going up in smoke?
I guess, generally speaking, I'm curious about how all of these values should be set. The motor draws up to 3.5 amps, the driver can provide up to 5 amps. I thought this was a good thing - have more available than is necessary. My plan was to choose a fuse based upon the motor current - 3.5 amp motor, 3.5 amp fuse. But everything I read says that fuses are two slow to protect any of the electronics anyway, so why bother?
Ok, I'll stop there - thanks in advance to anyone who can tell me what went wrong and to how to properly choose these values. Also, my apologies if this sort of information is covered elsewhere - I did a number of searches, but couldn't find anything that really talked about these particular issues.
Respectfully,
Marshall
I have freshly joined the forum but have been reading posts here for quite some time. Glad to be here as a member.
So, I recently started making some connections between my components. I don't think these are terribly relevant to what I'm actually asking, but here's what I have;
- 1 x Pokeys57CNC controller board
- 5 x HY-DIV268N-5A motor drivers (one spare)
- 4 x KL23H2100-35-4B stepper motors
I had just put everything together and wanted to do a simple test or two with the Mach4 software I installed, so here's what I did;
- Connected one of the motors to one of the drivers.
- Connected that driver to the controller board.
- Installed a 5 amp fuse for the installed driver; this should probably eventually be a 3 amp fuse (or 3.5 amp if I can get it, since the motor has a 3.5 amp current), but I thought this would be alright, because...
- I set the current on the motor driver to 1.2 amps
Here's what happened. I started jogging the motor, watching my z-axis move as it should, but as the motor would start, I heard a "bad" sound and then everything sounded normal. I kept moving the motor back and forth, making physical adjustments, trying to narrow in on the sound. Finally, I suspected the motor itself and not the mechanics, so I removed the motor and jogged it back and forth a few times to confirm. Sure enough, the sound was coming from the motor. As I was jogging the unmounted motor, there was a click and a plume of smoke from the controller! I was one HY-DIV268N-5A driver down!
Alright, so these things happen. But what I don't understand is exactly why it happened. I think this particular motor is probably bad, but shouldn't the motor controller have limited the current draw to 1.2 amps, thus preventing itself from having cooked? If I had put a proper fuse in place (probably a 1 amp fuse), would that have stopped my driver from going up in smoke?
I guess, generally speaking, I'm curious about how all of these values should be set. The motor draws up to 3.5 amps, the driver can provide up to 5 amps. I thought this was a good thing - have more available than is necessary. My plan was to choose a fuse based upon the motor current - 3.5 amp motor, 3.5 amp fuse. But everything I read says that fuses are two slow to protect any of the electronics anyway, so why bother?
Ok, I'll stop there - thanks in advance to anyone who can tell me what went wrong and to how to properly choose these values. Also, my apologies if this sort of information is covered elsewhere - I did a number of searches, but couldn't find anything that really talked about these particular issues.
Respectfully,
Marshall