Quote Originally Posted by davitc View Post
@JAZZCNC Thanks for your quick reply. I'm tempted to just bite the bullet and open the control unit up have a look and try to repair myself. There seems to be no way of contacting the supplier, I could return to Amazon but from what I have been reading I'm considering sticking with it and improving the system.

Seen lots of articles about interference etc. from VFD and poorly cabled internal control units with shielded cables internally. Given it is a VFD motor what would be my options to replace the controller. I don't even mind managing the spindle speed manually but even that seems impossible without MACH 3.
The problem with these Chinese machines is they are like a box of chocolates.? Never know what going to get.!
I've had plenty of encounters with them and my experience is the only way to improve them is to start again. So if you are prepared to waste money then carry on and open it up.

The only part the VFD plays in choice of controller is if you want to control speed thru software then it will need to have some way to Output Speed control voltage or current.
However the term "Controller" usually refers to an external motion controller that handles all the I/O etc(input/outputs). Mach3 by default uses the parallel port for all I/O and doesn't provide the option for speed control. So speed control is usually done by an external source, often by the breakout board which is used to make I/O connections to the Parallel port easier and safer.
So if you are connecting to the PC via parallel port then highly likely you are just connecting to a breakout board. If your using USB or Ethernet then there will be an external Motion controller being used and this deals with all the I/O and voltage for speed control on VFD.

Regards the VFD and controlling speed then you don't need Mach3 at all. To turn it back to manual operation it will be a few simple parameter changes. Now the problem could come from getting info on the VFD and it's list of parameters.

All this said there are many other setups they could use and without seeing what you have it's hard to be specific to what you need.