initially the actuators were connected up to 3 power supply units connected up in series, each power supply unit had 2 out of 6 actuators connected up in parallel to it. Each power supply unit had the rating of 12vdc 15A… meaning each actuator was getting about 7.5A… The actuators on the hexapod ran fine and no notice of smoke seems to have happened…
we later connected the 6 actuators in parallel to one power supply unit with rating 12vdc 30A meaning each actuator was getting about 5 amps and running it we noticed a small cloud of smoke around the actuators… immediately we turned it off…
we then tried connecting it to a 12v dc 10A power supply and the cloud was still present…
we later went back to the previous design with 3 power supply units (as stated above) and the smoke was still present…
we went on further to take out 2 of the power supply units and just connected the one 12vdc 15A to all 6 actuators in parallel(each actuator getting 15A/6) and the smoke was still present…
in addition the smoke cloud only occurred when the hexapod went to maximum side positions but not much when it move vertically
please help as to whats going on here
Hi,
We’ve been in contact with you via our Support Center and we asked for clear pictures showing your setup and wiring as in our last reply :
"* We thank you for the update, but we really require pictures of the setup as well as the connections to see what may have happened.
Could you please provide us clear pictures of your setup to be able to troubleshoot with you ?* "
Do you prefer that we assist you in this topic forum ? If so, could you please provide us some pictures of your setup ?
As on our previous replies, A white smoke is caused by one of these 3 reasons :
- An over-voltage supplied to the actuators. (above 14V)
- The logic supply from the controller is too high for the actuators (above 5V)
- The actuators are physically stalled.
Your Digital Linear Actuator (4in) Heavy Duty 25 lbs (RB-Sct-97) is rated for 4.5A at maximum load, so a 12v DC 10A or 15A power supply don’t provide enough current for the 6 actuators and may damage them.
Regards,
Hi Brahim,
I did reply to your email… im not sure why you didnt get it… but i even tried sending a video aswell as pictures…
i dont mind where in all honesty just posted here as i was pressured to find out what was going wrong…but i will resend the email with the video in it
Feyi
Hi,
The files need to be less than 4MB, that’s probably why we didn’t receive your video and pictures.
How do you supply power for the SSC32 board ? Is it the same 12V power supply of the actuators ?
Hi,
no power is being supplied to the ssc32 board directly… all we did was hook it up to the computer to send the data and the power is being drawn from the power supply unit presumable?
Thanks
sorry the picture i sent you was when we tested it a different way by connecting a 15A 12v supply to power the 6 actuators and due to this there wasnt enough power to supply to the ssc32 board, so we connected that up to a 5v supply and even doing this there was still a slight smoke present
Hi,
In the pictures you sent previously you have the VS=VL jumpered on your SSC32. This jumper must be removed when powering the SSC32 separately.
Also, your Digital Linear Actuator has a built in battery eliminator circuit (BEC) that supplies power (5V, 500mA) to the servo controller.
In this case, you’re powering the SSC32 from two different power supplies : The actuator’s power supply and the BEC from the actuators.
This probably burned the BEC in the actuators and that’s why you had smoke that came out of it.
You might want to remove the VS=VL jumper to power the SSC32 board separately.
i believe we only noticed the smoke after we modified the power connections and connected up the actuators in parallel to the psu…(30A 12V). meaning each actuator was getting 5A… could this have caused a problem?i’m not sure if anything on the ssc32 board was touched between the changer over process from the 3 psu’s (15A 12v) to the new one 30A 12V)
please find attached the connections we had to the 30A 12v psu when we noticed the fault
I am really confused as to where the problem is… It seems like everything we test doesn’t make a difference…
Hi,
Like we mentioned, the problem comes from the VS=VL jumper on your SSC32. The SSC32 comes initially with VS=VL jumpered.
You should have removed the jumper since you’re powering the servos and the SSC32 separately. This have probably burned the BEC of your actuators since the SSC32 is getting power from two power supplies at the same time. The smoke you noticed is probably getting out of the BECs inside the actuators.
We can’t confirm that the modification of the power connections caused the issue. However, the VS=VL jumper has clearly caused an issue.
Did you try to remove the jumper ?
Thank you brahim for your continuous support with the issue
we hadn’t connected the ssc32 board and the actuators separately when we noticed the smoking… the connection of the actuators and ssc32 separtely was done when the power being supplied to the actuators was changed to 15A 12V for all 6 actuators and there wasn’t enough power to the ssc32 board…
we have taken out the powering of the ssc32 and actuators separately
i also noticed that the voltage regulator on the ssc32 board was a bit loose and i had to resolder one of the legs back on… could a lack contact between the leg and the board have caused a problem ?
Hi,
From now on, we will be in contact with you via our Support Center.
Regards,
