Motor Time Out on SX100/SX100R

[John Donovan]

Occasionally one may see motor time out errors reported by Probe for EPMA from the Sx100 spectrometer or stage motors. For example:

"Motor move on motor 2 (target= 76412, actual= 76413) timed out after 100 seconds..."

This error is caused by the instrument not completing the commanded motion within the specified timeout time and is caused by three different hardware issues:

1. The spectrometer glass optical encoder is dirty, causing the spectrometer to "skip" certain positions.
2. The spectrometer lead screw is dirty, causing the spectrometer to "settle" on one side or the other of the offending speck.
3. The stainless steel rod that slides in the brass detector body is dirty, causing the spectrometer to "stick" in certain positions.

All three issues can be easily fixed by careful cleaning of the surfaces by your service engineer.

Note that because the Peak-Sight software does *not* check for the motion complete flag, it will *not* report this error for spectrometer or stage moves that fail to complete.

[Jeremy Wykes]

We consistently have overnight runs fail with errors like this (from the sxlogger log):

06-Sep-2014 20:32:15 (E) SxAcqWin QtiWdsOnWaitMoveSp Time-out on Sp3
06-Sep-2014 20:32:15 (E) MachLib SpecAmov (19769) -> Error status from Wds : not ready

Does this error also arise from a dirty encoder, leadscrew etc?

[Probeman]

We consistently have overnight runs fail with errors like this (from the sxlogger log):

06-Sep-2014 20:32:15 (E) SxAcqWin QtiWdsOnWaitMoveSp Time-out on Sp3
06-Sep-2014 20:32:15 (E) MachLib SpecAmov (19769) -> Error status from Wds : not ready

Does this error also arise from a dirty encoder, leadscrew etc?

Sorry Jeremy, but somehow I missed this posting when you posted it last year!

I would certainly think this indicates a hardware problem.

[Probeman]

I think it’s probably nothing, but I loaded a *.mdb this morning (first one since shutting down the electronics yesterday), and used the PictureSnap window to move the sample (recalled the previously calibrated picture, but did not recalibrate it).  Although everything seemed to move okay, I did get an error message:

From SX100 GetMotorStatus
SX100 time out problem

As far as I can tell, everything worked okay after that so I don’t know what, if anything, it means.

This could indicate a stage problem.  Is the stage oscillating slightly in the optical view after the stage move?  My software will wait 300 sec for the stage to "settle" after the move command, but if it is still oscillating after that, it throws a"time out" error. This indicates that that the stage hardware needs an adjustment.

Interestingly both JEOL and Cameca do not test for a motion complete status after moving the stage, so my software is usually the one that first catches hardware problems with the instrument!