M-One motor continuously spinning

[chris ragozzino]

Hey all,

 

I ran into a slight problem on a shoot recently. When I was calibrating my motor, it would just keep spinning out of control and the only way I could stop it would be to disconnect the power. I messed with the cables a little bit and eventually got it to behave, but this is a bit concerning since it's a fairly new system. Has anyone else ran into this problem? What could it be?

 

Thanks everyone!

 

-Ragz

[Lee Kazista]

When a Preston motor does that it normally means that the encoder is blown.

[Jarrett P. Morgan]

Is it a digital motor or an analog?

 

either way, I would suggest trying a new motor cable. And setting aside the old one until someone with a mulitmeter looks at it. You don't want to really damage something...

[Alan Rencher]

If you are using a digital system, you might want to check the torque. You can reset everything to factory default by holding the calibrate button while plugging the power cable in.

[Peter Hoare]

This kind of behaviour in digital systems (we call them runaways) is usually either encoder damage or some kind of wiring failure. If the encoder is broken, this will happen. If there is a wiring problem and the power to the encoder is faulty, or one of the signal lines is broken, the same will happen.

 

We have an error handling system in the axis1 that detects a runaway and stops the motor turning to prevent lens damage. If there is an encoder or wiring failure, there is not much that can be done besides physically finding the problem and fixing it, but at least it prevents the motor speeding off and damaging any lenses.

 

Pete.

[chris ragozzino]

Thanks everyone. I just recently had another shoot and it all seemed fine, but it is a little concerning. It's an analog system so I'll get the wiring checked out.

 

Thanks again!