My WISE chucked up a #3 error code the other day, so I contacted Robin at WD to arrange a fix... and then the devil on my shoulder suggested I have a go myself. I've never seen a WISE ripped apart to this degree, so I thought I'd share it in the hopes of demystifying our little magic boxes. (Machine is an ex-demo whose warranty died with the last stegosaurus, so there's absolutely no danger; if yours is still in warranty do not open it!) Error 3 has to do with the self-test not completing, apparently, and one of two things could be happening: a) the limiter magnets aren't catching the end(s) of the cycle, and/or b) the self-test is timing out because the motor is too slow. Here are the magnets in question - they connect to the "push" and "pull" terminals on the mainboard: They're working properly. That leaves b): motor too slow. To be honest, it has been slowing down for months, and it may have dipped just below the self-test timeout threshold. First and easiest test is for the power brick. Should be chucking out 15V DC, and my multimeter read 15.19 V. Power supply is fine, so the motor is seeing the required voltage (12V, oddly - why a 15 V supply? Maybe the motor is being overclocked). Next step is to lubricate all the moving parts in case the motor is being slowed down by friction. This is where it gets gory. Subframe and connections removed, then the end-cap from the non-motor end, and the worm drive and puller head comes out: There was quite a bit of crud in the grooves of the worm drive, so I took the puller off and blasted it with some acetone, along with the inside of the puller. Quick dusting of WD40 to both, and now the worm gear literally falls through the puller under gravity with almost no resistance. That leaves the motor and gearbox... sigh: This is what it looked like after cleaning; the gears were all caked in old grease and the casing had plenty of metal swarf in it. Took all the gears off their pegs and cleaned everything, followed by some black PTFE dry lube. Bit of WD40 inside the motor, too. (In case, like me, you're tempted to change the motor for a faster one, here are the details: It's 77 mm long, 37 mm in diameter and the locating hole pitch is one inch. It's 4500 rpm before gearing, so a 5000 rpm motor - if you can find one with that worm spline - will give a 10% speed increase.) Right - everything that can be cleaned and lubed has been cleaned and lubed, so let's put the sucker back together and pray... plug in, switch on... and the puller flies backward faster than it did when I got it. Problem must have been the clogged-up gearbox. This fix cost me zero pounds and maybe an hour's time; I have absolutely no idea if the WISE can be fixed by any vendor over here, but I bet the fee is extortionate even if they could. (And if they can't, it goes back to the US - more time and more money.)
Good work! Every "Wisedom" should be shared so we can still go electronic way. I'm a bit intressed in how old is your unit before this happend and was the ballskrew-axel very dry? I don't really like when I'm unavoidable to get my things some good service. I'm fearful for when that day greets me...happy for you btw!
Mark, You mentioned metal swarf in the gears. There may be various reasons but more than not it may happen if the gears are rubbing against each other. This most probably is caused by grease failure as you have pointed out and since you did not mention how long the Wise has been of service to you, there is insufficient clue to determine an accelerated wear n tear in your case. The point is metal swarf should not have been there in the first place if everything works correctly, i.e. lubricant separates 2 parts of metal, if the lube cakes up because it attracts too much dirt or extreme cold to the point that it fails, lube fails, metals start to rub, creates unnecessary friction and eventually produces metal swarf. As in your case you have mentioned the cleaning and regreasing the gears solved the problem, the fact that you live in UK, I am wondering how long a time you leave your Wise in extreme cold weather? UK is in its winter season right now and triggers me to think all sorts of lube related problems arise at this time of the year (not just on Wise but in general to everything including motors and engines). Yes it is a bad idea to use thicker viscosity grease which will effectively halt all metal to metal contact operations in cold times, but using dry lube you need to be consistently applying them over some time of use. Dry lube like the PTFE you used tends to thin out faster than it should and not a permanent solution (heck there is no really a permanent solution anyway unless you have full control in the environment). On the other hand, obviously thicker grease that comes with Wise is bad if you expose the machine to extreme cold temperature. WD40 is a penetrating oil and is never to be intended to be used on long term. It dries out way faster over just a few days. Despite a yes in does help you to clean up those gunks in the beginning. So if you do not store your machine in a controlled temperature environment, changing to different lubes according to temps and weather, unfortunately is the best solution. Otherwise a wet lube will always stay fine to keep apart metal 2 metal contact, except to the point where natural dirt and dust in the air has made them unworthy of its purpose, then clean them up with acetone or ATF or mixture, and simply reapply.
But anyway Mark. You made an excellent job of fixing the error 3 and this post is valuable to the Wise community. Sorry I forgot to say this.
I may have exaggerated about the swarf; we're talking maybe a pinch of fine powder. I have no idea how old the machine is - it's an ex-demo, after all - but I've had it a couple of years and sent maybe 500 rackets through it (though it got a right pasting at last year's All England... and it'll get another one this year!). It's in my living room, which never really gets below 15 degrees, so I think the old grease just got tired. I've often rubbed a pencil lead on mating gears as a more permanent solution.
Did yours need recalibrating after the fix, by the way? Mine was pulling slightly tight - must have been the motor finding its torque again - and needed pegging back a few ounces.
nice. and a great start to the new year! my old one has been sitting around, dead, for a while now. maybe it is time to do something more adventurous. unfortunately free time is hard to come by these days.
Do a motor swap - a 130-150 rpm motor will certainly perk things up. How did yours fall over, in the end? Is it error coding?
Mark, thanks for sharing the error 3 solution, I tried to clean every single moving parts inside the tensioner, reasssemble , the first run error 2 occurred, then error 3 for the rest of the tests. I also noticed it's slower than a good working tensioner head (i have 2), then i used stop watch to find out how slower is the defective vs the good one, 8.72 sec. vs 7.56 sec. for each testing cycle, so I 've looked back to your suggestion, clearly it takes longer to complete the self test cycle. I could swap the limiter magnets or/and motor from the good one to find out what's wrong, but doing so would void the warranty since the second one is 6 months old. what would you suggest to do? Error 3 has to do with the self-test not completing, apparently, and one of two things could be happening: a) the limiter magnets aren't catching the end(s) of the cycle, and/or b) the self-test is timing out because the motor is too slow.
I got error 3 yesterday after opening up and greasing some bits. Easy fix: put the to 2 case screws back in the right way.... If you put the longer one in on the right and over-tighten it, it seems to prevent internal movement and cause the error. All good now!
I did clean and lubricated careful wormdrive and gearbox, but it's not the case, i'm thinking the motor is slower, i used 19v adapter from notebook , hope to power up the motor so it can run faster, but same error 3 occured. now i'm stuck, doing more reading, but everyone else sending back to WISE for repair.
Does it still pass selftest if the case is open and just held on lightly? Nothing fell out whem i tried that on mine, so I hope its safe to do.
n no, when power up, it's counting 9to0 then solid error 3 on screen, can't do anything after that. I turned off and on then the cycle repeated.
I ended up getting a Error Code 3 recently while I was stringing... I turned off and turned it on again, and it seemed like it worked luckily. I will bookmark this thread just incase i need to fix it in the future =)
today I just had motors swapped, but nothing changed, so It's not the motor. I'm still getting error 3. then I changed the load cell from the new to the old, and the new head got error 3, so pretty clear that faulty load cell is error 3 code (new head doesn't have limit switch magnets, replaced with optical sensors). I'll try to figure out how to fix this load cell, otherwise I must ship back for repair,.
Reviving old thread to include disassembly instructions with photos written by @tcliang. Turns out the link to his pdf in a different thread no longer worked. Good thing I saved it in my dropbox and am able to reattach it for any owner that would like to give their WISE some TLC. @s_mair - i knew there was a post/instructions created by a BC member. If there is any more to add i will do so.
Curious if you're the only user and if it's because you're not using the desktop browser to view the post.
