CNCEST 3040T Z drive issues

[davitc]

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.

Lol, A bit of progress. I opened the controller box up and there are 4 drive boards, I have the 4 axis version (see photos of inside). I have a bit of common sense and did not touch anything as the unit was powered on at 240v at the time. Don't try this at home

The board for the Z drive had 3 leds one green the other red both aluminated. where as the other drive boards just had green leds illuminated.

Attached photos.

Anyway I POWERED OFF AND DISCONNECTED THE MAINS then swapped the connections between the A and the Z and now the Z axis is functional. On the board is TX14207 which I'm assuming I can source. Does not appear to be anything wrong with the board apart from the red LEDs. The top right Red Led on it's on has en near it does that stand for encoder? I did notice that when I moved the Z axis MACH 3 showed the Z axis moving even though it wasn't on the faulty drive board.

It is a USB controller. I have one old PC that has a parallel port but currently I am testing with Windows 10 laptop and all seems good. Not my long term plan and will be sourcing a Windows 7 mini PC of some description to run MACH 3.

Once I source the board do I need to do anything else, indeed if I can just use the A Axis drive board at least I can play a bit more. But still a bit wary why it failed in the first place. The Z drive is quite free in movement.