Gecko G202 problem.

[br928]

Is anyone else experiencing problems with their Gecko 202's in their 4G upgrade?

I was running today and lost one of the X drivers. After cycling power it came back to life. This system has been running fine for about two years.

Today I was drilling so there was really no load on the drivers except for positioning. I ran today about 30 minutes before it faulted.

My concern is a long 3D file while under load. You have to have confidence in your equipment before starting a long cut job, especially in costly material.

Has anyone gone back to the 201 or tried the 203 in a 4G system?

[jhicks]

Stan, I have 202's in my ascension controller so it may be an entirely different scenario BUT I had major issues for well over 3 months before getting it resolved. Symptoms were simply irratic and intermittent loss of location in x, y, and/or z randomly. Very frustrating and difficult to resolve.
In the end, I swapped out eveything from cables to connectors, to PC's and even a control box. Tested motors, and everything one could imagine.
Finally I added a smooth stepper board and even it didnt fix it. Then I added a line filter, then a load reactor, and then checked and rechecked all grounding. In the end, I believe the root cause had to do with either a faulty ground system or ground loops, VFD interference, and or frequency interference but really never truly isolated it to a single cause. I can say with confidence it was not the drivers but interference, power/grounds, and perhaps a bug in the PC.
It was a nightmare I wouldnt wish on anyone.
All I can recommend is check your grounding first. That may not be it in your case as I heard from others with similar problems they had issues with florescent light ballasts, refrigerators powering up, power failures, "dirty power" and more odd situations than I could imagine.
Ask what changed and start there.
If I can help, feel free to call or write for any details as the adventure was too long and painful to document here.

[mikek]

Stan, I had one fail after about one year. Nothing intermittant about it. It was dead at power up one day. It kept the power supply from coming up. I ascertained which one it was by unplugging it. Since I had a Benchtop, it only uses one x driver so I swapped it out with the one not in use and was back up quickly. Frank replaced the dead one for me. It has worked fine now for a year and a half.

[cnc_works]

I experienced a failure in my offside X 202 as well. Happened during rapids. It would fail, then lose steps. As soon as I recycled, things would be normal again until the next time. Could be days or weeks between failures. Finally replaced the 202 and things have been fine for the last couple of years. I can't say I really trust them, though, and the Gecko guys seem to be in a state of denial about it.

Donn

[richards]

Electronic noise is always the first thing that I suspect when something that has been working reliably for sometime suddenly starts to act up; however, the Gecko G202 will shut itself off if it overheats or if the current draw is too great. Power to the G202 has to be cycled to reset the driver.

Running a stepper motor at high speed increases current consumption and heat. Making a heavy cut greatly increases current draw and increases temperature. Making a heavy cut and then following the cut with a fast jog can be enough to trip the G202.

The solution is to work within safer parameters. Make lighter cuts. Use a heat sink on the G202 stepper drivers. Enable automatic current reduction on the G202 stepper drivers.

I just spent several hours on three separate days running some current draw tests on a large Oriental Motor PK299-F4.5 stepper motor and Gecko G202 and G203v stepper drivers. One of the things that I quickly learned is that a small increase in speed at the upper end greatly increases temperature. I also learned that the motor's current draw rises substantially just before the motor stalls. That means that if you're pushing the limits of the motor, you're probably going to have occasional unexpected shutdowns. The torture that I caused to that PK299-F4.5 motor is probably much greater than anyone would ever inflict on a Shopbot supplied motor, but it showed me the importance of staying on the slower side of the line when setting up maximum feeds and depth for a cut.

[billp]

8684
Sorry, but I couldn't resist.....

[pfulghum]

boooooo

[Brady Watson]

LOL!

[mmason]

Stan I to have been having trouble with stepper dropping only on my indexer. I called shopbot and I believe it was Frank that told me I might want to add a USB hub with power.
I didn't think it would help but put it in anyway.
Not only did it work but my cuts are smoother because of it.I did the speed test in utilities and upped the speed from 59% to 77%.
Hope this helps.