Ran two parts last night, shut everything down the way i always have, and this morning i go out and start it up, and theres no atc tab on Pathpilot, There was power going to the atc as the drawbar button on the side worked, but then i tried unplugging the power cable and now theres no power going to the board at all. Checked all fuses and no wires appear to be broken, cant find multimeter to check ohms but normally you can tell if they are broken.
No breakers are tripped in the main box and also pathpilot isnt giving me the little air pressure bubble anymore either, i updated PP to the latest version and that didnt help either. Have had the machine for about 2 years now and havent had any issues like this before, it is a 2018.
The atc is connected to the machine control via USB. Have you identified that cable? If you unplug it and reconnect do you see status messages in PP Stutus page?
Once you reconnect you have to re select ATC in the settings tab
Ok, so when you unplug the USB from any of the connections, such as to the gigabyte controller, or up in the atc box they all show up on the pc screen, then I tried switching it back to atc, and tried to reference it, and the check cabling and wires error comes up, I noticed the one wire that is just hanging there and could not find any place for it to plug into, even though it is plugged into the board[the small grey wire going into the 4 prong green box in the middle] not sure what that would be for, the servo motor controller has power going to it but no leds light up on the board. When I disconnect the large grey wire from the board and reconnect it there is an audible click somewhere like their is power going through it. No errors come up when I disconnect that wire.
Power down, re-seat USB and I cleaned/re-seated connectors to ATC board, checked the indicated terminals for power supply voltage, power back up and somewhere in all of that, it fixed itself.
I think my power supply “wigged out” somehow and the ATC wasn’t getting power.
It is probably safe to power down completely and clean/re-seat and/or meter the connected devices with it powered down to try and troubleshoot.
The 440 has a different ATC board and different instructions which I wouldn’t apply here without understanding that it is a different board and may make things worse but it has you unplug the connectors one at a time to try and rule out a potential short or fault on something going to or from the board as to why it faulted.
Ok, so i unplugged every single wire going to the atc and cleaned them all, the fuse listed in the atc trouble shooting guide has continuity, and I have 68+vdc across wires 205 and 204. I tried switching to the atc, then shutting down the machine and restarting everything, and the atc tab was still there when I started it, but the carousel was not showing, anyway I tried to ref it and those are the errors I got on screen afterwards.
There aren’t any leds lit up on the atc board currently, but the stepper motor controller does have power, which that goes through the atc board anyway.
the 770atc connects to the controller through two usb cables, I believe it would be considered a USB-A to USB-B or a USB-1 or USB-2 to USB-B, Not exactly sure of the diffrence between the A and the 1-2, this is what it looks like though, which the controller is recognizing the fact that it is being unplugged or plugged in, just that the ATC tab in pathpilot doesent show up, im not sure if replacing the cord would help since i still dont know whats causing the fact that there arent any leds lit up on the board, which i wouldent assume the USB-B cable would be the power source for those lights.
USB has power and ground sources at the PC/controller side along with the signal wires which are allowing it to establish a connection to the CP2102 chip on the ATC board. The CP2102 then talks over the serial side to the ATC microcontroller. It’s a game of pass the message. The message gets to the CP2102 but not to the ATC microcontroller (or the microcontroller is reporting failures).
The ATC board requires external power for the rest of the circuitry to interface with the USB to serial chip. This is likely why you have this issue (similar to mine) where the PP controller PC “sees” the ATC controller as far as the the USB-Serial CP2102 chip but there is no response from the microcontroller or response from the peripherals (inputs/outputs) the microcontroller expects to communicate with which need the secondary power supply (70V in your case) and PP determines it is a a no-go and disables the ATC.
Norman’s advice is probably the best diagnosis at this point given you have no LEDs on the ATC board.
You should open a support ticket (if you haven’t) and talk to support…
