I am pretty sure that I have a blown motor. I did all the troubleshooting that I could, and the failure follows the motor. Also, while trying to diagnose the problem, I am pretty sure that I blew a motor controller, too. ouch. So now the G540 has a dead Y axis, and my CNC machine is down to 2-axis movement (I moved the working Z motor over to Y, so now I can float over the table, but can’t tell the router bit when to come up or down.
Sadness. 🙁
I wrote to the company I bought the motor and controller from; hopefully they will be able to replace the parts.
On the “good news” front, I was able to figure out that I have decently accurate movement in X and Y (Y has the new motor installed). I haven’t pulled out the micrometer or anything, but when I tell it to move 1″, it moves 1″.
BTW, I’m sure there is a “relative” vs “absolute” setting in Mach3. But when I type “G00 X1″ it goes +1” in X. when I tell it “G00 X-1″, it moves back 2″; that is, it moves the X axis to the -1″ position. So to do a 2” square with one corner at (0,0) and the other at (2,2), you would do:
G00 Z0.25
G00 X2
G00 Y2
G00 X0
G00 Y0
G00 Z0
And if I had 3 working motors, I could even do that and would probably produce a decent square right now.
I am so sad.