[beauman58]

Hi All,
I have a fairly reliable schematic of the power supply for anyone who has had the machine ground the spindle motor out and damage their power supply. You can email at
[email protected][/email] for a copy. .. As far as mine is concerned it's junk and needs replacement unless you have an engineering degree and want to re-engineer
it from the power supply out. I see a Gecko controller in immediate future for the repair of this unit. They are poorly designed and I may use mine for target practice with my 44
mag.
Actually I contacted the dealer and he may replace it with another one that doesn't work so I am ordering a Gecko. When the new one from my Chinese supplier comes in I
will have one for sale cheap........................

[avtechnician]

I am looking at purchasing either a 3040T or a TS3040C. I would have no issues replacing resistor networks, although I have noticed you can buy different boards for them, do the new boards fix most of the issues or are most of the boards available just as poor of quality?

[beauman58]

Poor quality. Buy it bare bones and add your own better quality parts. The mechanics aren't that bad. One thing to test even bare bones is that all of screws are free and easy to turn especially compare X, which is left and right looking at the front of the table with Y which is back to front on the table. If there is a difference to the feel of them return it as both should feel about the same in the turning. Z should feel about the same without a spindle motor in the mount. Also look at the table carefully as some have issues in them as well. I could not find a single Chinese board that isn't design deficient based on the TB6560 and TB6600 chip sets they use in them. They consistently have issues with the power supply and the controllers. My opinion, spend a little more for a better quality machine and you will be happier in the long run. A Gecko controller is next for mine. As soon as I get the Gecko controller this one is literally going for a swim in the pond out back to sleep with the fishes. I am going to chalk it up to experience and start again. Although around the edges I have still managed to learn 3D a bit and a bunch about Mach3 which I use to control it with. The Chinese probably laugh out loud every time they sell one.
If I wasn't a master electronics technician my experience in it would have been awful. As it is it has just been an unpleasant experience. Your not supposed to have to work on things out of the box as you will in any Chinese purchase you may make in my humble opinion. At this point in it I would not even buy it bare personally. Let the buyer beware as the saying goes. Hope this helps in your CNC endeavors...... It is actually fun once you get the hang of it and if you need any assistance or have further questions related to CNCing feel free to ask as I am becoming an expert the hard way. One problem at a time. LMAO..........over and over.

[dannystaple]

My experience with my 3020 and one of these controllers is it did take work. It sprung a number of issues but I know enough about electronics (background in robotics) to repair it. The spindle control pot went wrong in a way that caused the spindle to go full speed on its first outing (it was a dodgy pot that jumped when touched) - this took out a fuse, and I had to replace the vreg. I later (through my own error), drove the Z-axis into some balsa - locking up the spindle, blowing the fuse again, and had to replace the FET. I've not yet had trouble with the stepper board - although I've populated all the spare areas with PCB headers - the 26 pin parallel port mirror, and PWM connectors that I'll later override the spindle with. I custom wired it to a microcontroller (Arduino + GRBL) with USB to side-step needing a PC with a parallel port so I can use it with my laptop - which seems to be working fairly well.

I am not a fan of the really huge toroidial based power supply - and think this could be better engineered (but its probably cheap this way).

I think my take on it is if you don't want to notch up experience repairing and maintaining the machine, and just want to use it, these ones may not be for you.