Fadal ATC Crash

[Fremont Dave]

Hey Guys,
This might be a tough one but I'm a CNC-light machinist so hopefully not for you guys. I bought a refurbished FADAL 4020 that shipped in the beginning of 2007. It came with a few bugs but the factory was great about setting those right or giving me the info to do it. One thing that was not fixed before they rolled over was an intermittent crash during tool changes. I have a 21 station carousel ATC and have the Multiprocessor CNC controller.

In almost all cases this crash occurs after the program has ended and as it loads the first tool to restart the program. As the spindle comes down on the tool the usual pneumatic sound is accented with a thud and the machine alarms out.

My recovery procedure is to clear errors, manually home and cold start the slides, pull the tool out of the spindle, jog the carousel to station 1, reset the tool order, Tool change the empty spindle into the carousel (tc,1), jog the carousel back to the station which has the tool I removed, hit manual to drop the spindle on the empty station, then manually reload that tool.

Initially I thought the issue was the carousel station but rearranging my tools had no effect, it would still crash when replacing the first tool of the program. And while my face cutter is generally the first tool, it also crashes on other tools when I start with them. The error may be thermally sensitive because it happens more consistently though not exclusively when I'm running for several hours. When it's real bad it will crash at the completion of maybe 2 or 3 out of 4 parts and will even crash as I when the spindle drops on the empty station near the end of my recovery procedure. Other times I can run all day and it won't crash. But if I'm running all day, there is probably an 75% chance it will start happening by the end.

My FADAL will sit idle for weeks at a time. But I keep the spindle taper free of a tool and lightly lubed during those periods.

The tool bar actuator is significantly more forceful than any of my buddy's 18 4020's. I once had a FADAL tech tell me I had an optional upgraded component in that area. It noticeably hits the carousel when it spits out a tool. I would think this is problem except for the fact that it very very rarely crashes anytime except when loading the first tool of the program, perhaps only a couple times in 10 years. This makes me think it's a software thing but the code from my post seems pretty harmless. I've listed it below.


After shutting off the spindle and coolant M5 and M9, the programs end with
G49 Z0 Tool length offset cancel and z home
E0 X0 Y0 Home X and Y stage
M01 Optional Stop
T2 M06 Tool Change to Tool number 2 in this case
M02 End of program without rewind

I'm running a test right now to see if removing the bottom two lines and restarting the program with each part fixes the issue. Unfortunately the part runs are quite long so it will take a couple dates to get decent data.

Sorry for all the info but I'm trying to give you everything that might be useful. Thanks for help in advance. The stuff you guys give away for free can make a huge impact on those less skilled.

Dave

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[denmar]

points to check: air pressure 120psi; draw bar broken bellvilles springs (washers) Draw bar assy has a halleffect switch inside (piston); on top pulley there is a magnet (0.06 clearence within them). On enter next command type DI (enter) DS enter, look for spindle orient switch, move the spindle by hand back and forth reading should change from 0 to 1. Inside the tool changer assy are 3 switches: home, extend and fault; the fault switch is activated when on a tool change the head pushes to hard to release the holder goes into fault.Some cases the draw bar assy piston cracks preventing from reading the switch. hope helps.

[bostosh]

I had same machine the Z home cold start position hard indicator was off The V flange V gripper was coming in fast and slightly off causing an intermittent grip.
Sometime get a jolt / bad release of the tapers, Stone the tapers clean

[Fremont Dave]

Hey Guys,
Thanks for the input. Looks like I'm in crutches for the next 6 weeks so I'll check out what I can from the ground level.

Dave

[bostosh]

Is your machine idle then?

[Fremont Dave]

The air pressure coming to the tool is 150psig but the regulator on the tool cuts it down to 80. I'll add an upstream regulator and cut it down to 120 and see if that makes a difference.
The spindle orientation seems to work. It did miss a bit change a couple of times but mostly it seems okay. There have been occasions when I haven't run for an extended period that I will have to grab the tool holder and slow it down when it tries to oriented it. Otherwise it will keep will spin several times then alarm out. To my knowledge, I've never had a hard crash where the spindle was out of orientation. Hoping the bit displays will go away after I restart my machine now
The tool holders are clean. I bought them new with the tool and it had problems almost out of box. Doesn't seem to care which tool holder as long as it's the first one in the program.
Sounds like the fault switch in the ATC is the likely candidate or at least the sensor that is catching the issue.. The spindle does push down pretty good on the ATC when a tool is present. For both picking and placing of a tool, the carousel plates deflect down about .06 or .07 inches. If a tool is not there, there is no movement. However the spindle can still crash when the ATC station is empty.

As I finished up the run I experimented with not automatically reloading the first tool at the end of the program. It did seem like there was a reduced occurrence of crashes but I still saw some when I manually tc,1'd back to first tool and loaded it.

Yes, the machine will be largely idle for a bit. I'll probably cut a pair of good size plates in the next week or so but don't expect many atc crashes as the volume is pretty so low.

Thanks again for the help guys.

[warrenb]

Hey Guys,
Thanks for the input. Looks like I'm in crutches for the next 6 weeks so I'll check out what I can from the ground level.

Dave

Not related to the machine. But I had a fractured bone in my foot during a HUGE order and I couldn't take time off. I bought a peg leg crutch and it saved me a lot of headache. Problem is it's only good for injuries lower than the knee.

[arc8d-drmn]

If you have more than 120 psi you could get "blow by" on those mac valves. Also your orientation factor is too high, or you need a new orientation halls effect sensor and or you need to auto tune the spindle drive for DC zero offset. That will help with the orientation issues.

The air pressure coming to the tool is 150psig but the regulator on the tool cuts it down to 80. I'll add an upstream regulator and cut it down to 120 and see if that makes a difference.
The spindle orientation seems to work. It did miss a bit change a couple of times but mostly it seems okay. There have been occasions when I haven't run for an extended period that I will have to grab the tool holder and slow it down when it tries to oriented it. Otherwise it will keep will spin several times then alarm out. To my knowledge, I've never had a hard crash where the spindle was out of orientation. Hoping the bit displays will go away after I restart my machine now
The tool holders are clean. I bought them new with the tool and it had problems almost out of box. Doesn't seem to care which tool holder as long as it's the first one in the program.
Sounds like the fault switch in the ATC is the likely candidate or at least the sensor that is catching the issue.. The spindle does push down pretty good on the ATC when a tool is present. For both picking and placing of a tool, the carousel plates deflect down about .06 or .07 inches. If a tool is not there, there is no movement. However the spindle can still crash when the ATC station is empty.

As I finished up the run I experimented with not automatically reloading the first tool at the end of the program. It did seem like there was a reduced occurrence of crashes but I still saw some when I manually tc,1'd back to first tool and loaded it.

Yes, the machine will be largely idle for a bit. I'll probably cut a pair of good size plates in the next week or so but don't expect many atc crashes as the volume is pretty so low.

Thanks again for the help guys.

[Fremont Dave]

Not related to the machine. But I had a fractured bone in my foot during a HUGE order and I couldn't take time off. I bought a peg leg crutch and it saved me a lot of headache. Problem is it's only good for injuries lower than the knee.

Thanks for the tip Warren. Blew my Achilles and had it reconstructed so I'm definitely a below the knee candidate. I think I might order one. I won't be crawling up on the mill table with it but it would sure be nice to carry things without a back pack.

[Fremont Dave]

If you have more than 120 psi you could get "blow by" on those mac valves. Also your orientation factor is too high, or you need a new orientation halls effect sensor and or you need to auto tune the spindle drive for DC zero offset. That will help with the orientation issues.

Thanks for the response. I've got a regulator on order and will see if that fixes the issue. Seems likely a likely fix although I'm still baffled why it only fails when I return to to the first tool of the program.
Great stuff on the spindle orientation. I did some looking based on your comment. You might be right about the zero balancing. Sometimes when I open the doors and trip the interlock, (yeah, mine is still connected) the spindle mostly shuts down but can slowly rotate around. The Maintenance Manual is suggesting this could be from the zero balancing being off.

[Fremont Dave]

I just wanted to follow up in case anybody with a similar issue comes upon this thread. I'm still not sure why it always crash when it resets after running the program but we may have figured out a fix. The regulator didn't do anything. But we tried leaving the electronics panel door a couple inches open and put a stand-up fan next to it blowing in. Ran a couple production runs without a single crash. So apparently it's a thermal issue. Given the cost of the drivers boards, this might be a workaround that sticks around for awhile. Both fans in the cabinet are working so it's probably a board defect.