Plasmacam z axis short

[Greavsie66]

Is there anyone who can help?
I have the following message coming up when I try to initialise the table Short circuit in power to one or more of these motors z.
I took all the wires apart and blew them out and still got the same message. It was working fine earlier on today. One thing I did notice was the large black thing on top of the z axis was getting warm I think it is the z axis motor but not too sure. I work in a school in Devon Uk and as usual our budget has been slashed again this year so can’t afford to go to plasmacam to upgrade to design edge to enable me to get support.

[rdj357]

If you unplug the Z motor and initialize (make sure the Z axis is picked up high enough to not drag the torch since it will not lift automatically) do you get the same error or does it go away?

[robertspark]

swap the motors around and see it the message moves from axis to axis.....

take some photos of what you are calling the black thing as yes there is a servo motor but there should also be an encoder too

[robertspark]

probably worth stating I do not have a plasmacam, have never seen one in the flesh so consider my advice general advice (I'm near Liverpool bit far to help sorry or I would have tried)

[Greavsie66]

I rang plasmacam tech support last night and they backed up my theory that it’s something to do with the control box as I was still getting the message with the wiring loom unplugged from the controller. Fingers crossed we might be able to get it fixed as one of the governors at school owns a electronic engineering company and has her expert testing the controller for faults. Plasmacam wanted to charge us in the region of £2000 to fix it as they don’t support the software version 3.11 anymore so wanted me to upgrade for $2000 and then pay another $500 to fix the controller and then add shipping and customs duty.

[robertspark]

same story gets repeated on here over and over....

if the controller is toast in the end consider changing to something else as the motors and drive mechanism will be largely fine.

linuxcnc or uccnc are very viable economic options worth bearing in mind if not now at least for later .... dick Turpin by another name... stand and deliver!

[Greavsie66]

I am hoping we have fixed the problem! We checked all the wires going to the motors and they came out fine with good continuity and no evidence of a short. The message still came up with the control box disconnected from the main loom. With that it mind we figured out that the problem must lay with the control box. Luckily for us at school we have close contacts with a local electronic engineering firm who helped us out. Their technician testing all components in the box and found one of the transistors had blown the big black ones up against the heat shrink. He changed it for a new on and the error message has now disappeared. The big test will be on Monday when we plug it back into the table. We have everything crossed.i will let you know if it works.