For you haas tech guys

[Delw]

2009 vf2ss full 4th axis
when you turn off the machine, there is a red light on the back of the machine in the cabinate that shows power on or off on the drives as the power is draining off the drives its suppoise to slowly get dimmer and dimmer.
as well as the drives themselves are suppose to drain down slow in the dc range.

on my machine you turn the breaker off and Immediatly the power drops to 25volts dc, (I think its 380 dc when on). Was told its not suppose to do that or is ie not normal.

the diode test on all the drive shows 650-660.
all the drives are grounded on the ground strip with the EXCEPTION of the 4th axis drive its grounded to the ground on the drive(2 ground wires instead of one). I was told because HAAS likes to do this on the 4th and 5th axis drives to ensure its grounded,even thought the 4th axis its grounded directly to the table when its bolted on.

The reason I am asking.
On power up I get a ton of errors sometimes, mostly z callibration errors, some x calibration errors, it could take a half dozen times or more to get it to power up with out errors. this has been going on for 7-9 months. now most of the time to get it to power up when its giving me those errors I walk in the back and shut the main breaker off, turn it back on and the machine powers up with no errors.
these errors are not every day they are spotty, sometimes they will go on for a few days then stop for a few weeks, sometimes once a week ( yeah its a bear to trouble shoot).

beings that the drives are all wires together with the power. one power line feeds all drives and the machine having a calibration error on the x as well it was kinda narrowed out to be a mocon board and not a particular drive, so the mocon board was swapped, it may take a few weeks to see if this fixed the error problem or not.

I guess my real question is why does the power not drain slowly like on other machines when the main power is turnd off? I was told this is not normal, could it be a problem in getting the problem with the calibration drive alarms.

My HFO does know about it so its covered no biggy. I am not complaining about my HFO because there the best hands down and I know how electrical trouble shooting goes. besides its no big deal as its covered and my machine is running all the time. if it wasnt running I can guarentee you they would be over that day and have it fixed so I was running again.

When I get some time I will go get the error msgs numbers and post them. the out of calibration error msg says the drive is bad or the mocon is bad.

Delw

[haastec]

Definitely post the alarm numbers when you have time. Also, what if any troubleshooting has been done so far?

[Haas__man]

I believe the alarm you are getting is alarm 986 calibration failed. I have seen this on one machine before. The alarm only occurs when using smart amps. It is usually accompanied by an axis drive fault.
If it is always the same Amp then the problem is a faulty Amp.
If it is a many different axes then the problem lies with the Mocon PCB. i.e as the mocon has been replaced - you should have no more problems!!!
Please post again if problems continue.

Hope this helps

[Delw]

these are the errors i have gotten just over the last 4 months 6-19-2010
the errors have been going on from around dec. very rare however, since march they been getting worse. some days its really bad sometimes no errors for a week or so.


this only happens on power up
keyboard not found maybe 3-4 times error wont show is it will not complete boot up (power down restart no issues)

161 x axis drive fault 3-5 times just recently around august
163 z axis drive fault 50+times
986 amp failed self calibration 100+ times (its double of the 163 and 161 errors)

heres one that just happened ,a few weeks ago .
just turned machine on ran warm up spindle only took home etc etc, then loaded part in machine hit start button hear pop and machine alarmed out in 2 axis's no axis's moved at all not noticeable if that.
103 x servo error too large 1 time
105 z servo error too large 1 time

powered down reset and it ran fine.

Trouble shooting that has been done, is tech did diod test, checks the powering down part of the drives as explained above.
because it seems that its 2 different axis we were in kinda agreement that the mocon board was probally the issue.
also I am sure you know that when powering down you can get false alarms as the screen will flicker and you will see it happen. However the Tech didnt think that was doing the problems at start up the next day.

When it happens I was checking power (main voltage at breaker box)and it always read the same ie no spikes. I thought maybe at one time because the power sometimes goes out at night and while the machine is powered off the breaker I always leave on. that didnt make any difference either.

Again I am not pushing the HFO to find answers I am a pretty easy going guy. the reason I am asking on this board is for my own knowledge and to get a better understanding on how the haas electronics work s a fadal hitachi etc etc, plus I dont want to waste the techs time as they are busy,

heres another something that may be tied to it as its electrical and drive related.
I have a full 4th axis rotary table 210 bought new with machine, it was sitting in the box for damn near a year before I ever used it. I did plug it in once to make sure it turned on and worked for warrenty per my HFO.
a few months ago I had a job that reuqired full forth, , little job inco with a convoluted slot width of .120 and .050 deep due to corner rads we had to run a 1/16 ball endmill cuts were obvisouly extreamly light.

as time went on a few hours one of the parts was done, I got a phone call and was tied up for a while, I heard a light buzzing noise. walked out to the machine and the load was around 60% on the a axis. it was jus stting there all finished.
hit jog to check out other side of part before I pulled it buzzing went a way. so while the next part was cutting load wasnt even noticable. part got done and was sitting and buzzing started ago and load meter was climbing just not that high.
also when I hit jog I thought I saw the a axis jump. when the brake was disengaged. thought that was weird. saw it a few more times as well.
a week ater had another 4th axis job no buzzing be I still saw the a axis jump.
so I was thinking the drives needed to be tuned ( called HFO) and they sent someone else out to also fix a minor leak. he said buzzing is normal and there is no tuning of drives. I knew better than that on the buzzing as if the machine buzzed liked this I guarentee you it would be on a truck the day I bought it back. Anyway called my the electrical genious at my HFO and he said he would get out to the shop and check it out but its not normal.
unfortunatly we didnt get that far due to the trouble shooting of the above problems. he's coming back out anyhow but we want to try the new mocom board for a few weeks first.

forgot to also add the reason I mentioned the 4th axis in this post and the 4th axis gounding in the first post, was because that ground wire is only on the 4th axis amp no other amps have 2 grounds directly to them. My tech made the comment that he didnt like the way the 4th was wired and entertained the thought that , that might also be a problem. if we continue to have problems after this mocom board exchange.
Delw

[haastec]

It sounds like they are doing all of the right things for troubleshooting; glad to hear that.

Don't worry about the post coming off as negative because it did not to me at least. Additional feedback and insight is usually a good thing.

Keep us posted on the progress.

[Haas__man]

The fourth axis (A axis) is grounded differently to the other axes. I do not know why it is grounded differently but I do know that it NEEDS to be grounded this way (depending a little on the age of your machine).
X,Y and Z axes are usually grounded to the chasis, but the A axis Ground/shield is connected to the negative terminal on the A axis servo amplifier. DO NOT attempt to connect this to ground or serious damage to the vector drive and more will occur.
Did your problems start when you first started using your HRT210?
Also - the buzzing noises are normal - but excessive loads when stationary is not normal. There could be a problem with parameters. You should have a parameter listing that came with your rotary table unit - you could check that these are set correctly, however if a tech has already visited the machine then i'm sure he would have checked this already.

Hope this helps

[outctrl]

crazy question, how is your machine grounded ? is it a ground wire to earth with ground rod or carried over as 4th wire, or is it carried over with conduit. make sure there are not two sourses for grounding. had weird problem like yours at a customers on two milltronics. he had ground rod and ground carried over with conduit. eliminated conduit grounding, problem went away on both machines.

[Delw]

Originally Posted by Haas__man The fourth axis (A axis) is grounded differently to the other axes. I do not know why it is grounded differently but I do know that it NEEDS to be grounded this way (depending a little on the age of your machine). X,Y and Z axes are usually grounded to the chasis, but the A axis Ground/shield is connected to the negative terminal on the A axis servo amplifier. DO NOT attempt to connect this to ground or serious damage to the vector drive and more will occur. Did your problems start when you first started using your HRT210? Also - the buzzing noises are normal - but excessive loads when stationary is not normal. There could be a problem with parameters. You should have a parameter listing that came with your rotary table unit - you could check that these are set correctly, however if a tech has already visited the machine then i'm sure he would have checked this already. Hope this helps

I will check the parameters for sure, the machine was hooked up when we bought it as a 5xis machine with a trunion.
No the problems didnt start when I hooked up the 4th axis I dont believe , but it could have as that was about the same time frame that I was told to make sure the 4th axis spun for the warrenty. as I had made a joke to the tech one day about I have a damn brand new 4th still sealed and should trade it out for a trunion.


I won't rewire the ground ever, I figured there was a reason was just curious as to why.
Delw

[Delw]

Originally Posted by outctrl crazy question, how is your machine grounded ? is it a ground wire to earth with ground rod or carried over as 4th wire, or is it carried over with conduit. make sure there are not two sourses for grounding. had weird problem like yours at a customers on two milltronics. he had ground rod and ground carried over with conduit. eliminated conduit grounding, problem went away on both machines.

Thats good info, I used to run a ground rod by every machine, but when we moved to this place I never did that even with the new haas last year. it was something I thought about doing but never did.

I know that Hitachi lathes were always having issues if you didnt run a ground with a ground rod into the ground.

this one has a ground coing to the ground on the fuse box hard conduit to the box and machine. Maybe just for the hell of it I should break out the hammer drill.