Another SL20 Turret Alignment Question.

[kend]

Thanks to help from this forum I’m getting closer to having our SL20 up but I’m still having a problem with this and have a couple of questions about the instructions on the following page from the Service Manual:

Turret Motor Coupling Adjustment

1) Remove the sliding tool changer cover.
2) Go to Setting 7 and turn off the Parameter Lock. Go to Parameter 43, change
“Z CH ONLY” to “1”.
3) Loosen the turret motor coupling clamp screw closest to the motor.
4) Press the ZERO RET key, then the A key, and the ZERO SINGL AXIS key. This will cause the motor to go to the first encoder Z pulse.
5) With the servos on, move the turret motor coupling back and forth to find the center of its backlash, and torque the clamp screw as close to the center of the backlash as possible.
6) Change Parameter 43, “Z CH ONLY” back to “0” (zero).
7) Press the ZERO RET key, A key, and ZERO SINGL AXIS key. This will home the turret at tool #1.
8) Press the EMERGENCY STOP button and turn the turret motor coupling back and forth to verify that the backlash is centered.
9) Go to Setting 7 and turn on the Parameter Lock.
10) Replace the sliding tool changer cover.

For Step 2, I have to turn off the servo motors with the e-stop before I can change Parameter 43. For Step 4, do I turn the servos back on?
If I do then the servo motor just spins because the coupler is loose. If I leave the e-stop on I get an "e-stop pressed" error. The manual was probably written with a certain amount of assumption that the factory trained tech guy would know some of this, but I don’t. Thanks for your help.

[awesome83]

with the parameter lock off, go to the alarms page. Type DEBUG ,write/enter. will now be able to change parameters without e-stop. BE CAREFULL!

Also while still in debug, after a tool change you should go to the position page, page up to Raw data 2 i think and verify that the A load is decreasing and not counting up.

[Geof]

Originally Posted by kend ......If I do then the servo motor just spins because the coupler is loose. If I leave the e-stop on I get an "e-stop pressed" error. The manual was probably written with a certain amount of assumption that the factory trained tech guy would know some of this, but I don’t. Thanks for your help.[/SIZE][/FONT]

The turret motor is a servo with an encoder and an orientation marker which is called the Z Channel. When the Z CH ONLY is turned on the motor should not spin constantly it should rotate until it detects the Z Channel signal then stop and hold in that position. (This is morer or less the same as spindle orientation.)

Yes you do turn E stop off so the servo comes back on, and if you have followed the instructions the motor should not spin it should stop and hold.

As I understand it the idea is to orient the motor to the Z Channel position and then tighten the drive to the turret. Now the controller knows the turret position from the Z channel signal and then indexes the turret by rotating the motor the necessary number of encoder counts to reach the next tool position. When it stops and the turret clamps back the alignment dogs engage and give the final position, however when this happens the turret may move a little bit from the position the motor stopped at. If this movement is larger than the backlash, or if the backlash is all in the wrong direction, the result is it tries to turn the motor away from the position it stopped at and the servo tries to keep it there until eventually it overloads and alarms out. This is what awesome 83 is suggesting you check.