Power to my motor

[astolte]

I recently purchased The Stagehand Mini and the other gear required to use the Creative Conners System. The first show went great very few hiccups in the programming stage and not one note throughout our 4 week run and 5 days of previews. I am setting up the system for a new show with a different motor and I am not having the same graces.
I have all of the gear hooked up and when I supply power and deactivate the e-stop, the motor starts to run. If I activate the estop it stops. Why would the motor run without manual operation or running cues? I have checked all of the cabling and it seems correct. Any thoughts?

[garethconner]

A couple of quick thoughts:

1. Forgive me if this is too obvious, but confirm that you aren't powering the motor directly from the Mini. I assume this isn't the case, since you had it set up and working previously, but it's one way that a motor would spin when the e-stop was disabled

1. The motor should not run at all if the Mini's ENABLE circuit is connected to your motor amplifier (aka drive). What make & model drive is the Mini controlling? What terminals are connected to the Mini's control pins 2 & 3?

2. Put a meter on the speed control lines coming out of the Mini (pins 1 & 4). The voltage range on these pins is +/-10vdc. With the motor disconnected, power up the Mini and check the voltage on the speed signal lines. The voltage should be around 0V. If it's not, there's a problem with the Mini.

3. Put a continuity tester on pins 2 & 3, the enable pins. There shouldn't be any continuity until you press either the FWD or REV jog buttons. If you get continuity when the Mini is supposed to be idle, there's a problem with the Mini.

4. Are you using the same motor amplifier (aka drive)? If not, it could be that the drive needs to be calibrated. Many drives have a MIN SPEED setting that is sometimes not set to 0.

Hope that helps with some troubleshooting ideas, let me know what you find.

Gareth Conner

[astolte]

I fgured it out. The motor Drive voltage setting was half way between 115vdc and 230vdc. The switches had not been placed in the correct position. Once I fixed this everything seems to be fine. (I am using a Minarik RG60-PCM external drive)

[garethconner]

Great, glad you got it sorted out. Thanks for sharing the solution, it's one more to put in the troubleshooting notebook