LitePlacer.com forums

Hello all,

I've recently completed building my liteplacer, and everything seems to be functioning properly, except the solenoid valve. The valve does not activate. The result is that once an item is picked up it will remain on the needle even when the machine attempts to place it. At no point does the software give any sort of error message. I used a multimeter to determine that when the "Vacuum On" box is clicked the FET switch only receives about 0.5 Volts. When the "Pump On" is clicked, the other FET switch receives about 3 Volts, and works perfectly.

I was wondering if anyone else has had a similar issue, or if anyone has any ideas for me. Is there a problem with my TinyG board? Everything else on it works. And I should mention that the valve did work when I ran some preliminary tests last week.

Thanks for your help!

This is already worked on privately, but for reference: This kind of issue is either at TinyG, the FET or the wiring. You can identify it with these steps:

- Try the valve (or pump, if that shows a problem) directly with 24V to find out if the components or the switching is at fault. If the valve and pump are ok:
- Measure TinyG control pin without any connection. If it goes from 0 to 3V and back, TinyG is fine.
- So, it is either the FET itself or its wiring.