Denford Software & Machines

Customer asks ....

Porter Cable motor would not come on, customer removed porter cable motor and plugged into wall outlet, same thing, so customer replaced motor brushes and the Porter Cable motor now works again.

Porter Cable motor reinstalled in machine and now customer having problems with homing all axis properly. All of the axis (X Y Z ) go to the extreme and ignore the limit switches. Customer has to press the E-STOP in order to shut down machine.

Customer replaced Z axis limit switch 1st and now the Z axis goes straight up and continues to make a grinding noise. Z is all the way up but the machine thinks it is not and so it continues to make grinding noise and tries to climb up.

Customer noticed that in back of the machine the SGR gray box on the bottom left (1st bus box you come to) has a green light, but it never lights up.

Could the Porter Cable motor have caused a short before the customer was able to replace the motor brushes?

Please advise on what to do. Thank you.

Is the 7 Segement display Illuminated, if so what is the colour and letter / Number ?

It could be the DATUM HOME INPUTS could have blown if all 3 axes are failing to home. See picture below. They should be 0v on the HOME inputs when the datum switch is not pressed (Wired NC with 0V going through) and up to +5V when the datum switch is activated

Customer will check and let us know. Thanks

The best way to fix this is to ignore what has gone on before.

The motor power is there are the axes move as is the 24VDC logic supply.

All that seems not to work is the axes home inputs.

It would be worth looking at the Compact Fault finding instructions as these are common to all the machines

viewtopic.php?t=1641

I would first measure on DC Volts the voltage on each of the Home inputs. Manually activate the switch and the input should drop from +5V to 0V.

If this does not happen chack the switch wiring.

If it does drop to zero then the external wiring is OK and the fault is in the processor card.

thank you

Attached is the Compact schematic.

Sheet 3 shows the control card wiring and sheet 4 the home switch wiring.

Yes,
Its just down loaded for me

Customer had not tightened / adjusted the Z axis limit switch properly. E-Stop wires all loose as well. Tightened/ adjusted limit switch and tightened up e-stop wire and now machine appears to work in all axis. Customer running a car program now and will call back if further issues.

Customer interested in knowing why the light does not come on for the SGR "box".

Does this affect performance of machine? Machine appears to work okay now. But should they replace the SGR "box" and if so what is the part number and cost (e-mail me)?

The SGR is the Spindle Go Relay.

The light should only come on when the spindle is running.

If the spindle runs then the relay is functioning.

I suspect the LED is actually working but they have not checked with the spindle running.