My setup is T500s with rotary encoders. They’re mounted on a panel with knobs to remotely adjust the tuning of a short wave radio transmitter (motors inside turn vacuum capacitors). I’m using the kill switch input to disable the knobs in case they get bumped. I’ve found that the system generates a LOT of RF noise, which interferes with short wave reception. Here’s 5he odd bit, though: if I power off the T500s while kill is active, then power them up, there’s no noise. As soon as I un kill it, lots of noise. But when it is killed again, the noise continues until it’s powered off. Like there’s a sleep mode when powered up in kill. How do I get the system to go back to this powered but not making noise state that happens when I power it up with kill on?
Hello.
The “Kill switch active” condition triggers a soft error response, which by default is configured to decelerate and hold the motor at that position, so it is still energized. If you want the kill switch to de-energize the motor, you can change the soft error response in the “Advanced settings” tab of the Tic Control Center to “De-energize”.
Brandon
Hi Brandon, maybe I wasn’t clear on this. There’s no RFI when the system is powered on IF the kill input is already active (in my case it’s a toggle switch). If it is powered on not in the kill active state, it makes noise. If the kill is active and you power it on and it’s not making noise, and you turn off the kill, it makes noise. But if you turn the kill BACK ON it continues to make noise! My goal is to have it revert to that initial power on in killed state that is quiet. So what is different in the unit between entering killed from active, vs. Powered on while killed? Because there’s about a 20 dB difference in radiated noise between the two…. For what it’s worth, the drivers are in a fully enclosed grounded metal box, the power supply is internal and has a CorCom line filter plus ferrites on the ac cable, the motor cabling is shielded, bypassed at the drivers, and ferrites on the cables. The motor frames are also grounded to the transmitter chassis. There’s not a lot more I can do with suppression, I need to kill the generation of noise.
Ed
I suspect the RFI is coming from the motor being energized. When the system is powered up with the kill switch already active, the motor will not be energized until the kill switch is released. If you let it energize the motor, then trigger your kill switch, by default, it will decelerate the motor to a stop, then hold it in an energized state. If you want the kill switch to stop the motor from being energized, you can change the soft error response to “De-energize” as I suggested.
Brandon
Ah! So when I power it up in kill, the motors do not energize at all vs being weakly energized holding position when killed later. I knew it had to be doing two different things.
Ed
To clarify, by default the motors will be fully energized according to the configured current limit (i.e. they are not “weakly energized”), even in a soft error response, although there is an option in the “Advanced settings” tab to use a different current limit during a soft error.
Brandon
Although bad terminology, “weakly energised” was referring to that soft error current limit… I’ve got my normal limit about 1680mA and error limit at about 100mA.
Ed