Taiwan - SYNTEC - 6MB or 6MA - Controller Discussions

[itsrakesh]

Hello Syntec Engineer,

We bought 6 CNC machines from a Chinese Supplier that use Syntec Controllers. I had serious doubt (still have) that those were Syntec Controller (no PLC but a WIndows CE based Open Source). Your company didn't respond to our request but the supplier provided Receipts and a letter from Syntec (in Chinese) that they are genuine. Does this screen looks like yours? The model they claim is 10MF-8E.

Note: I have checked the control panel, looks like they use your hardware.

Also, do you know why we have the loss pulse issue (I am suspecting a hardware limit issue). I have asked for help in Machinist forum also.

[SyntecEngineer]

Hey Frank. What you are requesting can be done, but it can also me a tedious task. Controlling an output with an S bit or I bit are the easiest things to add in. You can simply find the sbit for the key on the keyboard and add into the ladder that the s bit will trigger an O bit, or your output. If you do this I recommend making it a combination. For example hitting S430 and S431 together trigger O1, or hitting "A" and "S" at the same time will trigger the output and you need to connect the ladder in a way that it will stay on until it is hit again.

as for the output to come on when this spindle is off and there is no machining being executed. You can add in the ladder when C64 is off (spindle off) the output turns on. The part of when no machining is being executed part is a little more challenging. You would have to go through the ladder and find the ready state in ever scenerio (the statuses that nothing is going on yet) made in your ladder and make sure those statuses are on along with C64 and only then the output will be on.

I don't know exactly what you are trying to control so I dont know if that is the best way, but it is a way. The manual S bit controlled way I think is straightforward enough as far as editing your ladder goes.

Always make a machine back up in case something goes wrong in your editing. It has happened to all of us.

[SyntecEngineer]

Hi Rakesh,

Sorry if you didnt get a response. Chinese new year shuts the company down in that part of the world, which is probably where your request went. As for the controller I can't answer it by just looking at it since we have none of those models in stock in the U.S. The AOC monitor is not usually used by our controller, but if you requested a screen larger than the ones we build that may have been custom and could still be our controller. Im sorry I'm not 100 percent familiar with the 10MF-8E model.

What I can do is pass it on to some engineers in Taiwan and get there opinion. Also on the back of our controllers we have a serial number. If you can send me those numbers I can check the serial number to see if it is under our warranty and matches the product to make sure it is ours. Please PM me your email and phone number so that I can get a picture of the back of the controller from you and get this solved right away.

[itsrakesh]

Thanks Syntec Engineer, for getting back to me here and through PM, appreciate it.

I understand but I was referring to our lawyers repeated requests in March, 2017. Anyway, the supplier provided receipts and detailed response from Syntec through their lawyers. I responded to your PM with all the paperwork from March, 2017. Please take a look and let me know. I will get you the serial numbers after the Viet Nam holidays (same as in China).

Just to make it clear, these orders were placed in Nov, 2015 and we got delivered in Sept, 2017 after a long painful legal battle. I don't know how your warranty works in terms of date but I doubt they will be still under warranty. So you know - none of them are in operation yet. No one wanted to touch these 6 machines (costing us over $400K), now I am trying to put them back in Production before we buy any more machines. Our folks are much more comfortable with Mach3 and NC Studio but not with Syntec. And it's almost impossible to find a CNC Engineer who knows Syntec in Viet Nam.

The real question is - Does Syntec sells it's hardware and code base (on Windows CE) to CNC manufacturers in China, may be as OEM? The supplier claims they used their own monitor with full permission from Syntec , and I looked inside the control panels of each unit, the hardware look authentic (or excellent duplicates).

[routerhead]

I am using the Syntec 6MD, and does anyone have any experience with this alarm;
(R44.4) Double Driving master-slave excessive error alarm ?
It doesn't seem to trip anything and programs go through it to completion, but I find it showing up in the alarm history. Sometimes I also get a lost pulse on the Y-axis.
Thanks!

[serum]

Syntec engineer has been very helpful and changed my ladder for the m8/m9 command to work. Thank you very much sir!

About the error; Sounds like one of the two motors is out of sync with the other. The master is using the homing sensors to make the machine home properly. The slave should follow with the same amount of pulses fed back to the Syntec. There will always be a slight drift. Bad PID tuning of the servo's for example. Normally, the maximum allowable drift can be adjusted.

Another possibility is that one side simple binds. Easy to test if you take off the motors or unplug the motors from the controller and move the carriage around (normally the brake is applied through a resistor that makes moving it near impossible) thinking about that, perhaps a different resistor on one of the two servos could cause an unbalance when braking. Perhaps you could contact your supplier for help?

Did it had this issue from the beginning or did it just started?

[routerhead]

Syntec engineer has been very helpful and changed my ladder for the m8/m9 command to work. Thank you very much sir!

About the error; Sounds like one of the two motors is out of sync with the other. The master is using the homing sensors to make the machine home properly. The slave should follow with the same amount of pulses fed back to the Syntec. There will always be a slight drift. Bad PID tuning of the servo's for example. Normally, the maximum allowable drift can be adjusted.

Another possibility is that one side simple binds. Easy to test if you take off the motors or unplug the motors from the controller and move the carriage around (normally the brake is applied through a resistor that makes moving it near impossible) thinking about that, perhaps a different resistor on one of the two servos could cause an unbalance when braking. Perhaps you could contact your supplier for help?

Did it had this issue from the beginning or did it just started?

It doesnt happen all the time, just like the lost pulse and i believe happened from the beginning. I need to check connections again, and the carriage does move freely, so no binding.
Ill continue to poke.
Thanks!

[SyntecEngineer]

Serum glad I was able to help you out with that! If you need more stuff down the road let me know.

Routerhead I have looked into the alarms you are having. I sent you the different things that can cause pulse loss that you can look into. As for the R44.4 alarm. I didnt have any documentation on it because that is actually an alarm that is entered into the ladder of your controller by your machine maker. With that being said I dont know how effectively I can assist you with it, but for me to even look into it I will need to obtain your ladder to see when that alarm is triggered. (Hopefully the ladder has enough comments for me to know what is going on in the machine.) If you would like to you can send me the machine back up of the controller I can read the ladder and alarm.

I think serum has brought up a good idea of what the alarm is. Your machine manufacturer should definitely have the documentation or information on that alarm since they wrote it into the controller and it is caused by the hardware of the machine. If you can get in contact with them that would probably be the best solution. If you cannot I will try my best to decipher the ladder and come up with a solution.

Lastly I know it was a different thread, but I have a step by step document for attaching the network to your controller I will send you.

[serum]

Yes! Very thankful for your help!!

According to the manual, you can measure more tools and assign them to a certain tool-holder, for example T20 can be assigned to holder 1. (MG 1). so I would expect the machine to do an ATC if i give a T20 command using the location of T1.. It doesn't do anything though when i press start. Start blinks once, and no further action Would be nice to use this, I have this 80mm mill for flattening the spoilboard, but it's a bit of a struggle to measure, since the cutting edges are not at the same Z height as the center of this tool) (so i need to adjust the X/Y coordinates of the toolsetter for this tool once, measure it, and use delta Z for getting it at the right height for trueing the spoilboard. (that way all the tools are at a perfect Z-height).

Would it be possible to have a T1 in the program, but to use a G42 T20?

I know of offset of T20 is changing once I do a T20 in the tool-measuring menu. So would this value be used by the G43 command or is G43 ignored when T1 is active in the program?

[SyntecEngineer]

Serum Ideally yes thats how the T0000 can be programmed. Each bucket can be saved into a Rbit and when you enter Txx then the program should scan all the bucket register bits and find which Register bit value matches the user input value and tool change at that location.

I know the way your software was developed by the machine maker only accounts for T1-T8. Any other T# is ignored. After looking into it I found that this is how a few machine makers advertise the ATC with 8 tools programmable.

With that being said the controller itself can handle 90 tools where the user can decide which of the 8 spots has which tool number. I can provide the service for rewriting the programs to handle that for your machine and upgrade it. You can always shoot me an email for details on that upgrade.

[itsrakesh]

Hi Rakesh,

Sorry if you didnt get a response. Chinese new year shuts the company down in that part of the world, which is probably where your request went. As for the controller I can't answer it by just looking at it since we have none of those models in stock in the U.S. The AOC monitor is not usually used by our controller, but if you requested a screen larger than the ones we build that may have been custom and could still be our controller. Im sorry I'm not 100 percent familiar with the 10MF-8E model.

What I can do is pass it on to some engineers in Taiwan and get there opinion. Also on the back of our controllers we have a serial number. If you can send me those numbers I can check the serial number to see if it is under our warranty and matches the product to make sure it is ours. Please PM me your email and phone number so that I can get a picture of the back of the controller from you and get this solved right away.

I just wanted to Thank SyntecEngineer publicly for his help. He helped the best possible way considering our controllers were out of Warranty. We got them working - one was a loose connection and the other had a bad cable.
Also, I heard from our Machinists that they like Syntec more and more as they use it - a lot more flexible.

Question: Does Syntec offers any kind of paid training (in person/classroom/online) on its controllers? It can be anywhere in the world as long as it's in English.

We are looking to buy 16-18 more machines within the next 3-4 months and will prefer at least half of them to have have tool changers. Considering the cost and learning curve of Syntec, I will feel a lot more comfortable to pull the trigger if we can have one or two engineers formally trained.

[SyntecEngineer]

Glad I could be of assistance Rakesh and I'm glad your machinists are enjoying our control system.

As for the training yes Syntec can provide that. I can usually provide in house training around my area (California). Besides just the training it allows me to get to know the machinists so they can text/call me whenever they have issues. Are your engineers in the country or international? If international then perhaps I can briefly go over the controller pages/functions on a video conference or set them up with someone in their area. I'll contact you with more details via email.

Glad you are considering Syntec for your machines! Can't go wrong if you ask me. (no bias here)

[serum]

Yep, i must say, after 2 months of use, i am an enthusiast too. (also enthusiastic about SyntecEngineer's support)

6MA/6MB question

In case of a worn tool, can you pause and replace/measure the tool and restart the program where it left?

[Frankmali17]

Hey Guys,
I just checked this thread after many weeks... Very busy at work now.. machining wood...

SERUM... I'm not sure I would recommend changing a tool in the middle of a program.. but I can think of something like this.

If you stopped a program... changed the tool... and somehow got the machine to go through the tool measuring and recording procedure... in the "Monitor" screen.. where you can simulate, and see the code run at the same time...
(This is the screen I like to have up when running programs) I know that You can select a line number for the controller to search out.. For example.. a line that starts with N450... and start the program from there...
It seems to scan the hole code from the beginning.. but on my machine, it ignored the fact that I had tool #4 loaded.. and should be using tool #6...
SO I need to make sure the spindle already has the correct tool #6 installed, before it continues the program from that line.
BE CAREFUL when trying this.. as you also need to make sure your tool length offset is also correct.
But the short answer is YES.. you can start to run a GCODE file from somewhere in the middle.

[Frankmali17]

I have a pretty troubling situation, that I hope you guys, or SYNTEC ENGINEER can advise me on.

TO start, I had a homing sensor fail on my ballscrew+Servo motor driven Z-axis.
It's a proximity switch.. and I already replaced it.. but there is still a problem I don't like.

SO.. when the sensor failed, and I was homing the machine one morning.. the Z-axis moved UP (typical positive homing direction) but it went past the usual position, and continued untill the ballscrew maxed out against a physical METAL Stop... IT WAS SCARY.. and SYntec showed a Z-axis ALARM.. I think for overlaod,.. but definetly for servo-related error...

I did fix the homing sensor.. but a new annoying problem now happens.

HERE IS SOME IMPORTANT INFO I LEARNED... Syntec and Yaskawa work very well together. They truly work in closed loop... but homing is a bit different than other contollers...
I have Sigma 7 motors and drivers... the Z-axis has a incremental encoder.. but apparently yaskawa uses what they call and "index" pulse... so once every full rotation or something like that.. there is a special pulse..
kind of like a "zero" pulse... So it seems that SYNTEC watches for the homing sensor to trigger, but then looks for the "index" pulse to truly be homed.

I know this for a fact, because when we were first setting up our machine, the Y-axis was almost coming off the linear rails when homing, ( I have planetary gearboxes on my Y-Axis)..
So of course, I moved the homing sensor, about 5mm.. to change the homing position, by that much. It didn't HELP.. then I moved it 5mm more.. still didn't help.. another 5mm more, still no good.
SO After I moved it about 25mm.. it finally worked....
A yaskawa guy explained that it's because the Servo motor and drive use that index pulse...

SO MY PROBLEM is that somehow, my Home in the Servo and Home in the Syntec Controller are not in sync.

When the machine sees the home sensor.. it goes a little further than before..
SO ALL MY Measurements are off..
I DID find a parameter that allowed me to enter a value of how much I think the true Z-Axis Zero position should be adjusted.. But I'm not sure I like that as a pernament solution.

How Can I change Back that Z-Axis index pulse to line up with the home sensor again, as before?... the homing sensor is in the exact same physical location.

Please share your ideas

THANK YOU

[serum]

Interesting. I'm sure my X and Y axis don't use this yaskawa encoder index (also using the sigma 7's, 850W motor, 1000w driver) ; it arrived with no motors attached to the y axis, in order to fit the shipping container; after receiving the machine, i moved the gantry by hand a couple of times, twisted the motors by hand before mounting them again and no error showed up. I took the X axis apart to align the cars on the lineair rails. Z axis behaviour unknown to me.

Just be sure to remember to re-align the ATC, to save some of your ISO30 holders.

Btw, I made a cheat-sheet for measuring the Z and Y position on the tool forks (inline ATC only) so you only need to measure 1Z position and 1Y position. Just use a dial indicator to measure the tools position in Z height and Y depth. Works like charm on mine. Only need to measure X position for each fork and all the other Y/Z values are calculated from 1 measurement, on fork 1.

[mikejeffers9]

Hi Guys,Frank, I feel for you. My machine is set up more like serums in that once it finds the proximity switch, the axis reverses direction a certain number of pulses. I hope you didn't damage your servo or encoder, but I think that is where I would look. You may have sheared a key or swedged it enough so that there is slight play between commanded pulses and how many pulses the encoder is seeing, especially when reversing. This would show up only when reversing direction. So if there is play in the key, the encoder throw an error. Really, I am just guessing here, but I would start with checking backlash.

[Frankmali17]

Hey Mike, I checked my coupling, and motor, and ballscrew, and there is not backlash...
But it seems to be stable for now.

[southpaw]

Interesting. I'm sure my X and Y axis don't use this yaskawa encoder index (also using the sigma 7's, 850W motor, 1000w driver) ; it arrived with no motors attached to the y axis, in order to fit the shipping container; after receiving the machine, i moved the gantry by hand a couple of times, twisted the motors by hand before mounting them again and no error showed up. I took the X axis apart to align the cars on the lineair rails. Z axis behaviour unknown to me.

Just be sure to remember to re-align the ATC, to save some of your ISO30 holders.

Btw, I made a cheat-sheet for measuring the Z and Y position on the tool forks (inline ATC only) so you only need to measure 1Z position and 1Y position. Just use a dial indicator to measure the tools position in Z height and Y depth. Works like charm on mine. Only need to measure X position for each fork and all the other Y/Z values are calculated from 1 measurement, on fork 1.

Hi Serum,

I'm visiting the Netherlands from the U.S. would it be possible to come visit your shop? I'm considering purchasing a 1325atc and would love to see one in action. PM me if you have any time in the next week. *Your mailbox is full so I was unable to pm you.

Sent from my SM-J700T1 using Tapatalk

[serum]

PM has been send!