Practicality Of Arduino Controlled Precision Power Feed?

That doesn't sound good. :(

I guess it is possible but unlikely that the power supply could take out the drive. I would think it might be the other way around. I suggest that the drive may have failed, but even that is unusual.

It sounds like the new power supply is current limiting to protect itself. Reversing the DC connections is a really bad idea, that could blow the drive if it is not reverse polarity protected.

To start with, I might wire the motor in series rather than parallel configuration. You will lose some torque, but the load on the drive will be reduced.

With the power off, disconnect the motor from the drive, then power up the drive and see if the power supply still current limits. If it does, the drive may have failed.
 
JimDawson said:
That doesn't sound good. :(

I guess it is possible but unlikely that the power supply could take out the drive. I would think it might be the other way around. I suggest that the drive may have failed, but even that is unusual.

It sounds like the new power supply is current limiting to protect itself. Reversing the DC connections is a really bad idea, that could blow the drive if it is not reverse polarity protected.

To start with, I might wire the motor in series rather than parallel configuration. You will lose some torque, but the load on the drive will be reduced.

With the power off, disconnect the motor from the drive, then power up the drive and see if the power supply still current limits. If it does, the drive may have failed.
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Is there a way to tell if the power supply is marked correctly? Ill try wiring in series first. Though the power supply is rated for 7.3 Amps, how could the driver cause it to limit the current when drawing that much is almost double what the driver is rated for? I also can't get the driver apart to see if anything in it is blown. The power LEDs are no longer lighting either which makes me think its toast.
 
shooter123456 said:
Is there a way to tell if the power supply is marked correctly?
Click to expand...

You can check it with a digital voltmeter, Red lead on +, Black lead on -, the voltage should read as a positive voltage. If it is reversed, there would be a - in front of the reading. Very unlikely that the power supply is mismarked.

shooter123456 said:
how could the driver cause it to limit the current when drawing that much is almost double what the driver is rated for?
Click to expand...

If the drive has an internal short, it would draw way too much current and a good power supply will protect itself by current limiting.

shooter123456 said:
The power LEDs are no longer lighting either which makes me think its toast.
Click to expand...

I think that is a pretty good assumption.
 
JimDawson said:
You can check it with a digital voltmeter, Red lead on +, Black lead on -, the voltage should read as a positive voltage. If it is reversed, there would be a - in front of the reading. Very unlikely that the power supply is mismarked.



If the drive has an internal short, it would draw way too much current and a good power supply will protect itself by current limiting.



I think that is a pretty good assumption.
Click to expand...
Thank you. Ill check all of that today. If the driver is toast, ill go ahead and order a new one. It sounds like it may be defective, but I dont know that I understand it well enough to make that call.
 
I have a brand new, in the box Arduino 2560 that I bought this past January. The only reason was to see how it worked and it was only $43.00 shipped.
I simply hooked LED's to it to test the outputs and software.

I did not like it. If you send me a shipping address I will give it to you for free including shipping if you live in the NE of the USA.

25602_zpsxqflaxi5.jpg

25603_zpsemxok3wd.jpg
 
You might try and pull the cover off the drive and see if there are any blown rectifier diodes on the board, usually on the bottom of the board. They are very obvious when blown. The Chinese ones are cheap and tend to blow with voltage/current spikes. The blown diodes will cause the power supply to behave as yours is. If that is the case you will need to find out what is causing it or you had a bad drive to begin with.

I hope you get it running. I did something similar for a power down feed for a mill I used to have. Worked great for boring large holes. I didn't do the programming though, a friend did that. Not my cup of tea so to speak.
 
Completed it sucessfully, enjoyed it for a while, then used it to make this:
91dZ18H.jpg


It worked well beforehand though, highly recommended.
 
My understanding is that the Arduino is limited to driving the stepper about 300 RPM. Don't know if you can do better than that with the Mega, it's faster than the Uno that that information was good for. You may have to modify the current code that's available for stepper driving to get the speed you want. My understanding is that the overhead of running the Arduino translator on the chip is what causes the low speed. That's not noticeable until you start doing some very time sensitive things, like bit banging a 48 kHz signal while your also trying to read inputs, count and store steps and calculate what frequency you would like to be putting out.
 
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