Troubleshooting common issues with electric actuators in everyday machinery
Lately I’ve been fighting with an actuator on a small feed hopper I built for my workshop. It randomly stops halfway when extending, but only under light load, which is the weird part. I already checked the power supply and the wiring, and everything seems fine. The actuator itself is only a couple of years old, but it’s been used pretty regularly. Before I replace it outright, I’m hoping someone might have run into something similar and figured out what causes that kind of behavior.
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I had something close to that with a lift panel in my garage. In my case it ended up being a combination of dust buildup and a limit switch that wasn’t making full contact. I didn’t catch it at first because the actuator still moved, just inconsistently. I started comparing it to some of the specs shown on https://www.progressiveautomations.com/pages/actuators to see what the expected travel smoothness should be, and that’s what pushed me to check the internal switches. A quick clean-up and a light lubrication actually fixed it, so you might want to open yours up if it’s serviceable.