Blank screen on supercontroller

Discuss Thermwood 3-axis Machinery, Controller, and Software.

Moderators: Jason Susnjara, Larry Epplin, Clint Buechlein, Jim Bullis

Post Reply
Lenny Stahl
New Member
Posts: 5
Joined: Sat, Jul 03 2021, 9:43AM
Company Name: Springwater Cabinetry
Country: CANADA

Blank screen on supercontroller

Post by Lenny Stahl »

Hey guys

Just wondering if anyone has ever encountered this issue

Machine is cs41

Supercontrol screen will not come on. When powering up machine it just briefly flashes "no signal" and then everything goes blank.

Both Siemens controllers inside supercontroller are flashing E A831

Things we have tried so far, reseating complete motherboard every single connector and card inserted into motherboard.

Checked wiring, checked all the fuses, swapped motherboard out for a different one, swapped power supply out for a different one, hooked different screen up to supercontroller,

Any ideas will be appreciated
Jeremy Schiffer
eCabinets Beta Tester
Posts: 1119
Joined: Tue, May 10 2005, 9:36PM
Company Name: Corlane Custom Cabinetry LLC
Country: UNITED STATES
Location: Carnesville, GA
Contact:

Re: Blank screen on supercontroller

Post by Jeremy Schiffer »

You've pretty much tried everything I would have suggested. We have a CS41 as well, and every once in a while it goes thru spells of blank screens, random crashes, etc., and usually reseating all the cards and plugs on the motherboard clears it up. I'd think the computer would boot up even if the Siemens modules are wonky.

Even though you have swapped mother boards, have you made sure the onboard battery is good? When that battery dies, the computer won't boot up. We had that happen a year or so ago, went crazy changing and unplugging/re-plugging stuff. Thought the machine was dead for good. Turned out to be that $1.00 battery.
http://www.corlanecabinetry.com

Intel Core i7-5820 3.3GHz, 16GB RAM, NVidia Quadro K2200 4GB, Windows 8.1 Pro 64 bit
CS-41 4x8
CS-45 5x12
Lenny Stahl
New Member
Posts: 5
Joined: Sat, Jul 03 2021, 9:43AM
Company Name: Springwater Cabinetry
Country: CANADA

Re: Blank screen on supercontroller

Post by Lenny Stahl »

Thank you for the reply Jeremy. I'll post what we found in case it can help someone in the future

First we were having some strange issues a while back, machine would quit in the middle of a job like the router kept spinning but the machine just stopped as if she forgot what she was doing lol.

Computer booted up but didn't load thermwood software

USB ports quit working

And table saws in shop and stationary routers and vacuum system, everything was acting just goofy until we checked the main ground wire on our building and found it all rusty and loose

We mentioned this to a few people and it's surprising how many people have had this exact same issue in their shop, all they're big machines like our router now, have they're own ground rod. And thermwood actually writes it in big bold letters in they're operators manual that the machine should have its own ground rod

Anyways we were going to replace the video card and power supply until we found (out of the blue) this computer genius who can check all the cards and he found them to be working and our actual problem was a fried motherboard.

And that has an interesting story to it too

We had just replaced the motherboard recently, when we bought the machine we found the previous owner had a spare motherboard with it. Now could it have been a faulty one that had acted up earlier and he changed it out and kept the old one? We don't know. But when we swapped it, it worked (for a little while)

On the actual motherboard there is a little grounding screw that was missing as well

So we changed the motherboard again, pounded in a ground rod right behind the machine and fixed the main ground to the building. Hopefully everything will behave for a while now

Hope this can help someone who has similar issues
Post Reply