Well I installed my new CNC mill Friday and had it wired up Saturday morning. I had the machine up and running and played with it for about a 1/2 hour then shut it down. Sunday morning a former co-worker machinist stopped by to help me figure it out and check out my new machine. We had the unit up and running for about an hour and ran a few test programs and everything was going well. We then started to check out the conversational software built into the control when the computer froze up. I power cycled the machine twice via the 3-phase disconnect located on the back of the control box but got no video 
the rest of the machine was lit up but no display was present. I then shut down the phase converter and opened up the control box and checked all the connections and blew out the dust and chips from the CPU unit which is just a regular older pentium standard PC with a single controller card.
Upon firing up the few month old American Rotary 15hp converter it was making a vibration sound like the motor was hard to start. I shut it down and inspected it, everything looked fine so I hit the start button again and got the same noise then all of a sudden a hiss came out of the box with a room full of SMOKE! After removing the from cover you could see oil spewed out of one of the caps.
Turns out after talking to American Rotary that the start capacitor blew and this happens when there is a load on the line when trying to start a phase converter. I'm 100% sure that nothing was on so that was not the case. The manual also stated frequent starts and stops can cause this.
I was told to pick up another start capacitor from Grainger and that I should be fine........keeping my fingers crossed that every works after I install the new cap later today.
Mac
the rest of the machine was lit up but no display was present. I then shut down the phase converter and opened up the control box and checked all the connections and blew out the dust and chips from the CPU unit which is just a regular older pentium standard PC with a single controller card.Upon firing up the few month old American Rotary 15hp converter it was making a vibration sound like the motor was hard to start. I shut it down and inspected it, everything looked fine so I hit the start button again and got the same noise then all of a sudden a hiss came out of the box with a room full of SMOKE! After removing the from cover you could see oil spewed out of one of the caps.
Turns out after talking to American Rotary that the start capacitor blew and this happens when there is a load on the line when trying to start a phase converter. I'm 100% sure that nothing was on so that was not the case. The manual also stated frequent starts and stops can cause this.
I was told to pick up another start capacitor from Grainger and that I should be fine........keeping my fingers crossed that every works after I install the new cap later today.
Mac
