[GLCarlson]

it actually turned out to be a bad driver. i did switch drivers at the beginning but i only switched the ribbon duh ;( i should have switched that bottom green connector too. i wired in a new driver and things are smooth again.

I get in trouble all the time by having a favorite culprit; it is very, very hard to actually do a clean divide the problem in half and check each half in a truly objective way. Had a colleague who was being driven mad by a bad (intermittent) Sherline rotary table. He changed out motor and drive both before realizing he had 3 parts (motor, drive, cable) to check. It was the cable, naturally. And post hoc, who wouldn't say -well, intermittent, obviously the cable connector?

The only thing that seems to help me is to make a list of the components on paper. And then check them off. That forces me to actually look at, rather than just glide over, pieces. My rule is that a component is anything that can be physically isolated from everything else- which means that things like power cords that plug in are components. Connectors and cables are two components if they disconnect (eg, screw terminals), one component is contacts are soldered/swaged. It ain't perfect, but it helps.

[NIC 77]

I was curious about this so I watched a few videos about the Tormach 1100, specifically what it uses on the electronics side. It looks like Leadshine MA860H drivers, and nema 34's? They painted the stepper motors? And the Z axis has a brake? No counterbalance on the Z?

The big thing I was wondering is if the electronics box was isolated from the mill. I have a small mill from busy bee tools where the vibration of the machine did some damage to the electronics box. Not the same category of machine but I wonder if vibration could have played a part in the driver being damaged?

It looks like the "servo upgrade" uses Clearpath SD motors, so it does not require additional servo drivers to run them, just the step and dir signals from the main board. The Z brake is a separate stage on this upgrade, I wonder if Tormach makes them or if it's an off the shelf part?

IMO, if you ever needed to replace an X or Y stepper, it probably wouldn't be too hard to find a part number for it, then you could order a replacement direct from the factory that makes it. I'm guessing it's a Leadshine or Long's Motor....something like that. It just wouldn't have the same fitting on it, but they went away from that with the Clearpath upgrade anyway and just use some dielectric grease on the connectors now.

A stepper replacement from Tormach costs $329.75 USD, and I assume shipping is on top of that.

https://tormach.com/xy-axis-motor-pc...s-3-32001.html

But a comparable, or even identical from the same manufacturer (except for the fitting), stepper might cost you $125 including shipping from EBay or Aliexpress.