MX3660 as used on Tormach PCNC440

My Tormach PCNC440 made a nasty electrical bang the other day. At first I believed the 48V main power supply had died but it was simply being dragged down by a fault in the Leadshine MX3660 master stepper controller.

As ever the Tormach helpline was supportive and helped with the diagnosis. The replacement MX3660 was likely to be a long delivery delay from the States. It would probably have a significant delivered cost after shipping and VAT were added to Tormach’s ex works price.

Some checking on the web revealed a company called Motion Control Products which was listing the MX3660 but their URL was a dot com address so at first I assumed that they were also Stateside. After looking closer I discovered they were located in Bournemouth UK, around one hour from my home. Although they listed the MX3660 as a line item they were not showing stock. A request for deliver leadtime to their sales team brought an answer from Richard in Sales to say he had found one in stock. Happy days.

A few days later the new MX3660 arrived. After setting the DIP switches to match those on the fried one, I installed it and switched on. My Tormach burst into life and the cover plates could be fastened back in place.

The obvious moral to the story is don’t blindly assume a dot com can’t be a UK supplier…..

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Arduino LoRa power supply issues

I have been working on a control system using a Seeed Xiao processor with a LoRa radio link (also with an OLED display, SD card and RTC). The system seemed to run but not reliably and was causing some head scratching. Was it my code or was it the hardware ?

After lots of playing with the code I decided it must be hardware. I had run a PCB in Fusion Electronics so all the connections were stable and reliable so what else ? …… Stupidity had persuaded me to power the LoRa modue (RFM9x) from the 3V3 stabilised output provided by the Xiao. Which might be fine when in receive mode but when the LoRa goes over to transmitter it takes a whopping surge of current. This was glitching the system.

All the modules are now powered with 5V via their RAW / VCC power input pins and look after their own 3V3 stabilised rail. Problem solved, system working well. Here is a overview image of the board.

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