can mach3 burnout transistors on a CNC control board?

[kevinb]

hi
i did have major problems but luckly sorted them today,
basicaly the story goes, got a used trend smart cnc, with vac bed


not had it long, done a few basic jobs on it that came installed on the pc, seemed ok worked as it should, so getting a bit more confidence I thought I would try some 3D carving, got a design of the net that used a diffrent code to what this one uses (.cnc), so thinking that the installed software (easycnc) was a little out dated, I installed mach3, set it up, zeroed the axis, started the program, all went well for about 2 minuets then nothing, thought at first the pc had crashed, but that seemed ok, so gave it about 10 mins to see if it would recover, well it never did,

now the real problems start, went to the onboard control panel to move the axis to recover the work, X & Z moved up and along no problem, Y axis was not good, the stepper drive motor screamed as if slipping, gave it a push and it moved normal for a while then stuck again and screamed, a push and back to normal, when moving a slight touch could stop it, at first thought the motor had gone bad, so to test swapped plugs with the X axis motor Y now worked as normal with full power and cant physically be stopped, X was totally dead,, put the plugs back to normal and was back to being weak and screaming,:cry:

well I took the covers off to have a look inside to check fuses and connections and saw a couple of transistors had blown 1 ( L6203 0-48VDC motor controller) and 1 (BDW93C 12A darlington transistor) so being fairly handy with the soldering iron, I thought why not have a go replacing them, anyway ordered bits and replaced them, but when put back together I still had the same faults, so thought there must be more damage to the board that cant be seen, so i left it, had another look at it today and went over with a test meter and found another resistor that wasnt working, so a quick trip to maplins and a bit of soldering and its back up and running,:dance:

now to the point of this post,

can mach3 burnout transistors on a CNC control board?
all was well until i used mach3 so thinking this was the cause? :confused:
installed mach 3, had a read through the instructions, set the axis travel calibration in the settings, and thats about it,
thinking back im sure i read some where about it damaging circuit boards if not set up correctly?
had a look back through instructions but cant find it now,
anyone know anything about this :question:
what else would i need to change in the settings :question:

dont fancy risking using it again if it going to blow the board again, i might not be as lucky next time,
the software that came with it (easy cnc) only runs .cnc and .dfx files, so do you think mach3 can be configured to work with this machine (think it's about a year 2000 build)
or should i give it up as a bad job :question:

is there such a thing as file converter software that can convert other file code types to .cnc :question:
or a more machine frendly program to run other file code types with no risk :question:

kevin