My spindle stopped running. Can’t get it to go on from touchpad or luban.
I had this happen a few months back and I swapped out the cable and it started working again. Tried that this time and it ran for a couple jobs but now it won’t run again.
I ordered a couple new cables, but not so sure it’s that anymore.
Pulled it apart to see if there was anything obvious but nothing I can see.
Got a project I’m trying to finish up and don’t have time to wait for a new toolhead. Is there a way to ‘hot wire’ the spindle motor to see if it runs? If I can just get it running manually with an outside power source I can finish up my project.
They should ban black circuit boards—how are you supposed to identify fried components when you can’t see the burn marks? (I assume there’s no sign R1 and C15 were ever expected to be populated.)
The FG pin is the frequency generator internal to the motor that tells the machine how fast the spindle is actually going and is irrelevant to what you need.
You’ll need power and ground as you know and the pwm can probably just be tied to 24 volt positive. Dir may or may not need to be tied - if it spins backwards do the other one
The signal wires are probably needing to be tied to +24 or ground.
There’s also a lot of 5v and 3.3v paths on that board - it’s possible the motor is using a lower voltage signaling but I can’t trace all the paths from that picture. Maybe start with a lower 5v signal first.
I can’t find my previous post on this forum where I dug into the motor part number, not visible on your picture.
I gave up and put everything back together and then gave it another try and it worked. Go figure. I hate intermittents more than anything.
I tried 24 to the main motor leads and then tried combos of 5v to pairs of the other leads. I saw the 5v too and assumed that that’s what was needed. I didn’t think of trying 24v to it. I didn’t try any combos. I had one moment where I thought the motor jiggled but couldn’t get it to reproduce it. Didn’t want to burn anything up, even though I was just dealing with the motor at this point.
I think I’m going to just hope I can finish this project and wait til the replacement cables come. They’re from US store so should be a few days. If they don’t work/help I’ll play with combos and then 24v to everything.
Regardless the torque applied to the axis is going to be dominated by forces that aren’t the weight of the head. It’ll be the cutting forces acting against the weight. An argument could be made a heavier head would increase performance
Have you tried to resolder the cable headers?
l think that they look quite suspicious especially the 24V header.
Vibrations can kill solderings over time
That’s my ugly soldering.
I should’ve just sucked all the old solder off but I was tired and it was late.
The joints aren’t pretty but they’re good.
Continuity tests fine with ohmmeter and all the test points show the correct voltages.
Got the new toolhead cable from SM. Swapped it out. Powered up and it ran fine for one 15 minute job. Then it wouldn’t start again.
Pulled the head and did a proper solder job. Nothing.
Took out the motor and tried every possible combo of 5v and 24v and nothing.
So maybe an intermittent in the motor? Maybe some kind of thermal protection?
I gave up and went ahead and mounted the new spindle and bracket I got off of amazon. I cut up the head and used the backplate of the old toolhead to mount the new bracket to. I thought I’d have to use spacers to make room for the screw heads but they have just enough clearance. Used some washers just to make sure. Plugged in the circuit board from the toolhead to make the controller think the cnc is mounted.
Seems to be working pretty well. Not pushing it at this point - same speeds as original toolhead. Just need to get this job done.
Not sure if I’ll order a new toolhead at this point. See how it works and run some tests pushing it harder. Probably will need to do the support rails for the bed.
Hopefully not imposing here but have a couple of questions. Can you provide an install diagram of that, or just a couple of pictures from different angles? What happens with the cable that goes to the CNC module? Do you loose settings somewhere, spindle speed, etc.?
I know might be to much to ask but I’m planning to do the same to my SM 2.0 and 500W spindle is far batter than 50. How is the speed controlled?
Any help is much appreciated, I’ll buy the beers :).
I’ve been meaning to do a follow up on this but keep forgetting to. I was able to finish the project I needed to but after that ran into big problems.
The stock linear rails just aren’t strong enough. I don’t think it was so much the weight as the power of the spindle that caused problems. Possibly a combination. When things go wrong they go very wrong and where the stock spindle just stops spinning, the new spindle keeps on running. Through clamps, through the spoil board, through the bed frame. It actually started a fire. I was lucky it wasn’t worse, but I left it alone for 15-30 minutes and I came out and found a very blackened and smoldering hole in the maple I was milling. The enclosure was completely filled with smoke (even with fan running). I don’t know if there was open flame at any point but it wasn’t good. Also ended up with the x-axis bracket becoming very loose. I thought it might be a problem with my g-code or trying to go too deep with the bit making contact on two sides, so I tried a simpler pass. Tried a bunch of different options for paths and step-downs and speed and plunge vs. helix. Just couldn’t get it to work properly. At some point bad things would happen.
Fortunately I had some extra linear modules I picked up on ebay, but by the time I gave up, I now have 3 I need to adjust the play in (hopefully not permanently damaged).
I finally gave up and ordered a new cnc module and have had no problems since.
To answer your questions though. Speed is manually controlled using speed controller that came with 500w spindle. I pulled the board from the old spindle and wrapped it with electrical tape to fool SM into thinking cnc module attached. Just left it off to the side. Can’t do more pictures cuz I disassembled it and reappropriated the spindle for use with a mini-router table now. But it was pretty straight forward. Just drilled holes that matched brackets that came with spindle.
I’m not sure if any type of strengthening of the x-axis will help. I’m not sure if it’s just a weight issue and the z axis just can’t handle the weight without losing steps. And once you lose steps you’re in trouble since the SM has no way of knowing where it is.
Very good report, thank you for taking your time to write it. More or less for possible damage and trial and errors is what’s keeping me from upgrading the spindle.
3 months ago i bought a bigger laser 10W, xTool D1, phenomenal, after looking at cutting deeper with no more than two passes as the SM has a weak laser for what I wanted to do.
After reading your post , came to the conclusion of buying a 16x16 cnc with a 300W spindle then thought about getting at a 3D printer so I can have all the three modules into 3 separate machine which I love the idea and sell my SM A350 to ease the expenses on new machine, not sure how much to sell it yet, has two power modules, 2 extra 3D printing flexible mats and 2 extra CNC table top.
Anyways, again, thank you so much for your response.
lolll