SIEG iKC4 Lathe - ATC issues and refit

[Muzzer]

If you remove the stepper motor from the ATC, does it spin unloaded? I'm asking because Sieg seemed to be suggesting you should play with the driver settings. Didn't work but can you get ANY life out of the motor when it is free to spin? Failing that, would it be worth spending a few quid on a generic Chinesium stepper driver to see if the Yako thing really is the problem? Changing out the CNC controller itself is a big move, so you'd want to be 100% certain the driver and motor are OK first.

[PeterE]

If you remove the stepper motor from the ATC, does it spin unloaded? I'm asking because Sieg seemed to be suggesting you should play with the driver settings. Didn't work but can you get ANY life out of the motor when it is free to spin? Failing that, would it be worth spending a few quid on a generic Chinesium stepper driver to see if the Yako thing really is the problem? Changing out the CNC controller itself is a big move, so you'd want to be 100% certain the driver and motor are OK first.

Hi Muzzer,

You make a good point and I started thinking back through after my last post this afternoon whether I really had ruled out other issues before going with SIEGs suggestion of replacing the motion controller and considered trying another stepper motor driver.

I will do some more investigating as you say (and I had done some more tests this afternoon too. e.g. I ran several hundred lines of code with tool changes removed to see if the motion controller threw any problems and all was fine.)

First I will remove the stepper motor and try spinning it unloaded and work back from there. Updates to follow.