Drive fault alarm

[miketodesca]

Hi,
We have an older build, Candcnc system. Running Sheetcam/ MACH 3. Hypertherm 65. Have never really had any luck getting this machine to preform correctly but for the very limited amount of use we are able to cut the parts way oversize and machine them to spec. for the life of this machine, it would cut out and stop moving. get a drive fault LED that flashes twice. Of course we are in the middle of a job that we need to deliver and now the machine only moves a few inches before alarming out. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

[weldguy]

Is this a build that you did yourself and installed C&CNC electonics? Not real familiar with their products but from what I have seen its pretty solid stuff, must be a simple solution. Maybe your gantry isn't rolling smooth and free and your drawing too much current to move it around. If you disengage the motors does it move easily pushing the gantry around by hand?

[tcaudle]

Now for the rest of the story:
This user has been helped on our support forum and on our direct Request For Support. After going through the tests we suggested and unplugging the motor that was faulting and it no longer throwing a fault, they discovered a frayed wire (motor cable... All our system have overload and short detection on each axis. Probably either shorting between the wires as the cable flexes or to the frame. They further stated that they had been getting intermittent drive faults on that same axis for a long time.On really old systems we don't do phone support . Our current support techs have no experience with MACH and 10 to 15 year old systems. Some of them were still in middle school 10 years ago! There is support from Engineering via the Support Forum and direct email.

I have to praise this user /company for their patience and for using a table commercially that "never worked right": and keeping with it for years and years.

As I have stated, our PRIMARY support list is our dedicated Support Site and its monitored every day . RFS (Requests for support)t comes directly to Engineering and are usually answered the same day.

Support is a tough job and it gets harder when a system is old and often acquired used with unknown history and sometimes with missing parts and no computer. Unlike some vendors we try to help all users but some things are so old we don't have spares or parts. We don't sell MACH software since 2016 but we have Master Installers on our support section for those that want to try and bring an old system back. If you don't have a backup it can be a daunting task to set it up . If its a parallel port system you are limited to WIN 7 32 bit. If its an EtherCut system its limited to WIN7 64 bit. Regardless of what you read it will not run in WIN10 .

[weldguy]

Glad you were able to get this member fixed up, great service as always from you folks