Stepper motor

[John Jaquet]

Where is the best place to get a stepper motor for my shop bot? Thanks, JJ

Hopefully the picture is attached

31396

[Brady Watson]

ShopBot is the best place - or one of us has a used one.

BUT...I'd put money on a loose connection or faulty motor driver before the motor. They rarely go bad.

With the control box off - swap that motor with another one and see if it works as expected on another channel (X for Y & Y for X etc) and if the other motor acts the same as this one when swapped.

You'll want to let the motors swing freely when doing this.

-B

[pro70z28]

I thought I had a bad stepper a few months ago. Motor would chatter and run erratic. Turned out to be a driver on the control board.

[John Jaquet]

Thanks for the info. It does work. The problem is it’s noisy. I was thinking about turning apart and seeing if I could fix it but figured a new one would be best. Has anybody ever rebuilt one? Thanks, JJ

[tomhartnett]

Does it make the same noise when plugged into a different motor channel or when plugged directly into the board (bypassing the extension cable itself)? sometimes noise can be related to the motor or gearbox but it would more often be the driver, driver channel or motor cable.
(always plug/unplug with power off :) )


-Tom

[John Jaquet]

I’ll give that a try, thanks.

[John Jaquet]

I thought I had a bad stepper a few months ago. Motor would chatter and run erratic. Turned out to be a driver on the control board.

How did you fix it?

[tomhartnett]

How did you fix it?

That depends on which component it is. When it comes to the motor assembly there are at least 4 components - motor, motor cable (including connectors), driver, control board channel - that need to be considered and can be ruled out by swap tests like what Brady mentioned with the connection on the board.

So if you start the swap test at the connection on the board, here is the basic flow of testing -
X1 has the suspected issue - issue could be any of the components
X2 has no issue - will function as our swap axis
Power off, unplug X1 and X2 at the board, swap and power back on.
Depending on result you have now eliminated two of the four possible components.
If X1 still has issue - issue is motor or cable. swap cable with X2 to find out
If X2 now has issue - issue is driver or control board


If the issue is the driver or control board your options on how to test/fix are going to vary based on your control system. If you have physical drivers it is easy enough in most cases to swap them, if they are chips on the control board then you may be able to use an unused channel on the board, but otherwise the older generation boards with chips on the board - like 3.xx and earlier versions - no longer have drivers made for them and can't be repaired by SB, you'd have to upgrade the controller.

Us guys at support@shopbottools.com handle swap tests often so feel free to email in with the issue/info.

-Tom

[John Jaquet]

Bad news is after swapping cables my motor is fine. Did all swap test including cables, all ok. Looks like I need a controller. Mine is version 3.51. Do you agree? Thanks, JJ

[bleeth]

Driver. Not control board. Easy swap out.
Call SB Monday morning with all the model info handy and they'll send you one out.

[tomhartnett]

Unfortunately a driver replacement won't be possible for a V3.51 board. these boards have the soldered on driver chips that were discontinued many years ago. SB bought up as many as we could back then, about a year ago now our supply ran out.
You would require a V4G or RBK upgrade/controller replacement. support@shopbottools.com has you covered on this one

-Tom

[John Jaquet]

Unfortunately a driver replacement won't be possible for a V3.51 board. these boards have the soldered on driver chips that were discontinued many years ago. SB bought up as many as we could back then, about a year ago now our supply ran out.
You would require a V4G or RBK upgrade/controller replacement. support@shopbottools.com has you covered on this one

-Tom

That’s what I was afraid of! Thanks everybody for your input. Anybody have a board for sale?

[jerry_stanek]

does that board have 5 drivers on it

[tlempicke]

I was thinking about turning apart and seeing if


You do not want to ever take apart one of those motors. The manufacturer puts them together and THEN magnetizes them with special equipment. If you remove the rotor it loses much of the magnetism and the motor will never have the torque that it is supposed to.

[tomhartnett]

does that board have 5 drivers on it

If you do have a fifth channel/unused channel and the channel is the issue then we can try this channel rather than replacing the board. It just needs to be set up as the appropriate axis, to set it up for say the X axis you would need to set the dip switches for that channel (labelled DIR/STEP - 1 through 5) to 1 and 1. For X2 you'd use 2 and 2, etc...

-Tom