Error messages. How do you deal with 'em?

[lamed]

Hi guys
My neighbor have a cincinati milacron arrow 500 with the acramatic 2100.
He is working with it for a long time, And i'm rather new to the whole CNC business, (dealing mostly with the cad part.)

Now just today he had a brand new error message that he never had while aligning the machine. he got a "c axis tpa/home failure".
(Although, a wonderful, great person) He isn't the most tech oriented, so I grabbed the operating manual and found... nothing about troubleshooting. Every time he gets an error he has to get someone over there to fix it.

Is that how everyone are doing it? getting assistance when something goes wrong? Having a lot of computer background I'm sure most problems are manageable only if you have the right information, And it seems like the companies are reluctant to give just that.

Hmm, that's one, two, three, too many threads started about the acramatic 2100 failing in two forums on cnczone, maybe they wanted it to stop working for everyone in 2008 :/

[ragman]

Start by calling up the local agent for your machine. Describe the problem to them and then see if they will give you some pointers to start with. Do your checks and if no good call the agent and try again. I've been doing this for over 15 years now, and although my knowledge is far from ideal regarding cnc's, I can now fix most problems that arise with the machines I am working with. (I also now have some reliable and good contacts around the place that I can call for advice) Good luck!