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new to me with problems bridgeport prototrak plus

muddstopper

Plastic
Joined
Sep 21, 2012
Location
western NC, USA
First off, I am not, nor pretend to be a machinist. I am trying a new hobby I know nothing about, so cut me some slack,
I bought a bridgeport mill with a proto trak plus 2 axis cnc, 3 axis dro. I was told when I bought the machine the cnc did not work, but I was looking for a manual mill anyways and the price was right. I got the machine home and I dont have 3phase power or a inverter yet so I cant power it up. I did see it run at the machine shop I bought it from. since I cant make any chips yet, I decided to ply around with the proto trak to see if I could figure anything out. I plugged it in a 110v outlet, lights came on, dro works, but that is about it. I then noticed that the estop was unpluged from the control cabinet so I plugged it in and snap, it trips the breaker. Sounds like a short to me so I start traceing wireing and doing test with the meter. Now I already knew that the people at the machine shop had been dickering with the wireing because I could see green wires spliced in to several other wires, I guess the only color wire they had on hand was all green so nothing is proper color coded. I start unpluging wires inside the cabinet, one at a time checking continuity to try and find which wire was shorting out, Everything led to the estop switch so I take off the cover and see more spliced wires with splice connectors and black tape. I pulled the switch and unhooked the green ground wire from frame and my short disappeared. My first thoughts where that the spliced wires where also shorting against the frame since I could see bare wires so I replaced the splices with new wire and everything seemed to work so I reinstalled the switch and reconnected the green ground wire and short came back. So Now I am thinking that there must be another break somewhere in the cord itself. I unplugged the wire from the cabinet and started testing for continuity from end to end of the power cord. No short between wires so now what. After looking at it for a bit, I noticed that the female connector on control box for the estop wire only used 2 wires inside and the male end only had 2 spade connectors to plug into the female . The estop had three wires hooked up to it. Wires in connector are colored black and green. the white wire in the cord doesnt connect to anything in the control panel, yet it is connected to the estop. The green wire is connected to the frame at the estop, but after going thru the wire connector it runs to the transformer. black and white wires are connected to estop button. Since the white wire doesnt go anywhere, there is no way the estop button was doing anything. Now I am wondering if who ever worked on this before, just made a huge screw up, or IF I am just missing something by working on something I know nothing about. My thoughs are that the green wire should be connected to the estop switch on the opposite side of the black wire as these are the only two wires that are connected to anything in the control box, and the only two wires the stop button can actually break a connection. I would try it, but am afraid I could burn up some other components in the cabinet. The wires from the prototrack menu board going to the power unit are white, green and black. The green wire goes directly to a ground lug in control cabinet, the black wire goes to the estop and the white goes to the transformer. The black wire goes thru cabinet to estop but doesnt currently return to cabinet since the white wire is not connected to anything. The green wire returns from estop ground lug to the transformer in the cabinet. I just think thats wrong.thumbnail (2).jpg
 








 
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