Arrow 500 A2100 various failures

[JLaw]

In the past week our Arrow 500 has had a realtime system failure, a page fault exception and now won't align and constantly throws a 39-2 alarm up. None of the other system failures are occurring anymore but we can't get the table to align. We've checked the tips switch but the alarm says

X axis TPA/Home failure
Cause: The x acid is not positioned on the TPA/home switch.
Remedy: Verify align feedrates 1 & 2, align trim, align zone, align switch clearance and asking direction configuration data for the x axis.

"The correct TPA switch settings should be LS_X_TPA, LS_Y_TPA, LS_Z_TPA all ON LS_A_TPA (If A axis fitted) should be OFF."

Anyone know how I could set the switches correctly?

[JLaw]

Just reread that and sorry about the typos didn't bring my laptop today and that's just a lot to spell check from a phone. Resolved the issue though. Had to clean the TPA switches, manually position the cam onto the switch with the handwheel then set the machine e using that position. It aligned fine and we haven't had any errors yet, fingers crossed.

[mike_Kilroy]

Originally Posted by JLaw In the past week our Arrow 500 has had a realtime system failure, a page fault exception and now won't align and constantly throws a 39-2 alarm up.

glad to hear u got the sw cleaned and r back up and running. but do u see a trend here? realtime system failure? page fault exception? sounds like u have a bad memory battery and r on the verge of loosing a LOT! I think it is common as batt backups begin to really go dead to have this kind of stuff happen and often u can get around it by a few power downs and ups.... but it may not be long before power dwn ups dont fix it anymore. why wait till u loose parameters? there are folks on here who can tell u how to change the battery before it is too late. I understand if too late it is really hard sometimes to get the data back..... but I am just guessing.

jLAW..... this post is just my opinion, based on nothing, I am just guessing and by no means want u to take what I say as worth anything. If u do something that causes harm based on my post, i am not liable.... I am not a lawyer but hope this paragraph clears me of having to pay any damages for my ideas...

[greg b]

If I didnt know better Mike I could have sworn when my hawkes spindel drive started to freak out it started to come up with those errors and if you remember I was able to dance around mine for a while before I sent it of to you to get the battery/memory module replaced but yes it wont last forever.I can help him with the board battery replacement, but I dont remember those errors when my board batteries started to die and the Arrow has the same spindel drive as the Hawke.I guess the easy way to check is put a multi meter on the little batteries on the boards and see how close they are to 3 volts,that will eliminate them another indication is the time clock on the machine when the boards batteries are on there way out it wont keep correct time.Regards Greg.

[JLaw]

Well Mike, you were right. We are getting realtime errors left and right now and or tool drum has decided to protest our inaction by refusing to jog and occasionally not extend. Anyway you (or someone else, feel free to jump in and help) could walk me through how to check and replace that battery without losing all our bios settings?

[mike_Kilroy]

i dont know how to do that on the A2100, but others here do and have.

u might search the threads - bet u find enough info how to do it imbedded in the last few yrs worth of stuff. good luck!

ps: search out posts by mallardfizz - he helped a lot of folks with the two batteries. I do recall u DONT want to pull battery w/o doing something else - u r not fast enough to swap batt w/o loosing major stuff IIRC

[mike_Kilroy]

email me ur email addrress and i will email u some stuff i found in archives that u may be interested in that might help....

also found this old post:
04-16-2007, 01:15 PM
davereagan

Join Date: Dec 2006
Location: USA
Posts: 232


Hello,
I have a Mighty Mustang C-42 (Taiwan machine new in 1999) with an Acramatic 2100 control, which I love. I'd be happy to help in any way I can, such as fixture offsets, etc. I don't do much contouring work, just 2D, so I don't use a cam system. When I do write a program offline and save as a text file, I have an external 3.5" floppy with USB which I plug into my laptop. I write it to a 3.5" disc and transfer it into the 2100 that way. I have never had a program that came even close to the 1.44mb that a floppy holds. Funny, that's so small by today's standards. I saw your Ebay auction and I think you got a good deal, especially with the Renishaw probe. By the way, with this control, I have noticed that most builders do a poor job of choosing where to put the pendant, which you will be touching for every cycle start, feedrate override, etc. I would lower the pendant, but run it for a week and you'll know where you'd rather have it. Also, putting a 100 watt bulb in that Halogen light brightens it up noticeably over the 55 watt original bulb. I did that and never had trouble with the extra current drawn from the transformer. Easy to find at any auto parts store. Again, feel free to email me with any questions. davereagan@hotmail.com

[slowlearner]

Mike "you da man".

[maver1ck]

Did you get the realtime failures fixed yet? You didn't post the exact fault, but when I've seen realtime faults in the past, it is usually because the WS board is sending a request to the RT board, but isn't getting a response.

I worked on a machine last fall that was throwing up RT failures (System Fail0x8004D - Realtime Timeout) intermittently, but they didn't call me in until their hard drive failed and the machine wouldn't boot up anymore.

I replaced the hard drive and found that both the WS and RT batteries were dead and had to be replaced and have the BIOS setup again. There was a post just a couple weeks ago where someone explained their way to replace the batteries without losing the data, but I've known people to try this method and still wind up losing the BIOS settings.

Arrow 1000 not powering up - CNCzone.com-The Largest Machinist Community on the net!

It doesn't seem like dead batteries should cause a realtime fault, but I don't have a better explanation for what happened on that machine.

By the way, the explanation I came up with for the Hard drive failure was that when they had the Realtime fault, the control stopped responding, and instead of waiting for it to respond again, the operator shut the machine down (while the hard drive was active, corrupting the hard drive). Just a warning, if the control stops responding, give it time to finish writing any data to the hard drive before shutting down the power or you might be out a hard drive too.

[Bob Rudella]

We had those exact errors on our A2100 Arrow 500 last year. I pulled the realtime (right side) mother board to check the ram connections since page fault is a ram (memory) error term. I usually clean the sockets with alcohol and a new flux brush, then lightly shine the memory contacts with a new pencil eraser, then wipe them with a paper towel and alcohol, blow the socket dry and reassemble. Don't forget to ground yourself and sit still. While I had the board out I noticed the fan on the processor chip was gummy as was the heatsink. I removed the unit and the grease under it, what little there was, was dried out and useless. I cleaned everything up, applied new heatsink grease, replaced the heatsink with a larger one with a bigger fan. It's been running fine ever since. If you decide to upgrade the heatsink on yours be very careful not to gouge the board or break the tabs on the chip socket, you may have to use the old clip on a new heatsink. I did all this in response to a service techs advice to leave the panel open and position a fan to blow on the computer, he said it works wonders.

[greg b]

If you take the steps carefully explaned in that other post providing your batteries are not to much lower than 3v DC you can almost be 99% sure you wont lose any voltage to the boards if you follow these steps carefully.Best regards and good luck.