Triac PC, should I fix or convert?
Posted: Mon 16 Jul , 2018 21:39 pm
Hello
I'm an DT/Engineering teacher from Sheffield. The school I teach at acquired a Triac a few years back, but we were never able to make the most of the machine due to leaks in the pneumatic system. With space a premium and money too tight to repair the machine it was in need of a new home, which I was more than willing to provide!
The team at Denford were great helping me get the machine up and running again, but then the problems started. I have the machine set up in the garage, and it ran well on a basic area clearance job but after a manual tool change (the whole pneumatic system has been decommissioned) the machine started to judder, the lights dipped in the garage and the smell of burning electronics filled the air. I was advised that the 2.5mm supply to the garage may not have been able to supply enough electricity causing a rise in current, damaging the spindle drive thyristors (a closer inspection revealed a tell tale scorch mark on the heatsink). A new Sprint board was going to be £230 and a replacement thyristor £30, being a teacher I'm more time rich than money rich so I opted to replace the thyristor myself. 5 months after placing an order with Mouser my part arrived and I replaced it, applied new thermal paste to the heatsink, and upgraded the supply to a 6mm single line from fusebox to machine. It worked for about 30 seconds! Now every time I power on the control box the VOR, GOT, GCR relays click on and off and the spindle powers itself up automatically.
My question is this; should I continue trying to repair the existing control system, or would you advise buying new hardware and going for a Mach 3 conversion? Any thoughts or advice would be much appreciated.
Thanks
Dan
I'm an DT/Engineering teacher from Sheffield. The school I teach at acquired a Triac a few years back, but we were never able to make the most of the machine due to leaks in the pneumatic system. With space a premium and money too tight to repair the machine it was in need of a new home, which I was more than willing to provide!
The team at Denford were great helping me get the machine up and running again, but then the problems started. I have the machine set up in the garage, and it ran well on a basic area clearance job but after a manual tool change (the whole pneumatic system has been decommissioned) the machine started to judder, the lights dipped in the garage and the smell of burning electronics filled the air. I was advised that the 2.5mm supply to the garage may not have been able to supply enough electricity causing a rise in current, damaging the spindle drive thyristors (a closer inspection revealed a tell tale scorch mark on the heatsink). A new Sprint board was going to be £230 and a replacement thyristor £30, being a teacher I'm more time rich than money rich so I opted to replace the thyristor myself. 5 months after placing an order with Mouser my part arrived and I replaced it, applied new thermal paste to the heatsink, and upgraded the supply to a 6mm single line from fusebox to machine. It worked for about 30 seconds! Now every time I power on the control box the VOR, GOT, GCR relays click on and off and the spindle powers itself up automatically.
My question is this; should I continue trying to repair the existing control system, or would you advise buying new hardware and going for a Mach 3 conversion? Any thoughts or advice would be much appreciated.
Thanks
Dan