fadal will not power up

**machinehop5** · 05-02-2019, 10:32 PM

on the Freqrol AC Spindle Drive....disconnect R S T U V W terminal wires...test resistance from Freqrol ground and each leg R S T U V W

**billsnogo** · 05-08-2019, 07:59 PM

Originally Posted by machinehop5

on the Freqrol AC Spindle Drive....disconnect R S T U V W terminal wires...test resistance from Freqrol ground and each leg R S T U V W

I have no open lines between the ground and those terminals. When ever the machine would not power up the red led blinked on the external spindle brake, and I decided to take a look at the board. It states "LED2 (regen) will light when clamp is active". What is the "clamp" and why would this possibly light up when only the main switch has been turned on? Anyone have any ideas?

Still waiting on the varistor to arrive and still need to buy another main fuse. Could any of this be that I have the wrong leg hooked up to the control side? PP says L3 is the generated leg, and wonder if this might contribute,but the control side does not power up until the green button is pushed though, so maybe not......thinking outloud.....

**billsnogo** · 11-06-2019, 08:24 PM

Update, I finally got the 1170 board repaired. Machine powers up but the spindle inverter is not powering up. Bummer.......
I will later test to make sure all three legs are getting power at the spindle inverter, but if they are, any good leads where to look next besides a service guy?

edit: I checked the three main fuses in the switch box and the #1 fuse is open. This is different as the other two were the #2 fuse. So there has to be a short in there, but these fuses are not cheap, so..... where to start?

second edit: Now that I think about it more (can't sleep....), it might not be spindle inverter. A tell tail sign when I the machine would not fully power up was when the enclosure light would be dim and not full brightness. When I first powered it up with the repaired board today the enclosure light flickered and the machine sounded like it did before when it did not want to fully power up, but only for a few seconds before it cleared up and the light came on full power, I THINK I did not have the spindle leads hooked up to the transformer. My guess is that it did that until the fuse gave up the ghost. So.......seems the problem or short is somewhere else.......hmmmmmm. Any ideas? What else uses 3 phase on the fadal other than the spindle motor?

I think at this point I am either calling a tech, or see if my friend that fixed the board can take a look as there is something definitely wrong and this is above my abilities.....

**billsnogo** · 11-21-2019, 10:07 AM

Well, started trouble shooting after getting some good advice on ways to start. Thinking the spindle motor is bad, I don't have a megohmeter, so I used a multi meter to test ohms. I disconnect the leads between the inverter and spindle motor and check each leg of the lead to ground in the cabinet and there is some resistance. I need to go back to the motor itself and see if the same. Hope it did not kill both the spindle motor and drive. Not a ton of info out there, but believe this is a valid way of testing the spindle motor, correct?

**billsnogo** · 11-30-2019, 11:03 AM

Well, looks like spindle motor is suspect. I connected to the paired together leads up at the spindle motor, ohms where good at .34-.38, BUT it there is a short to ground, and the megohmmeter shows bad. The Megohmmeter only has led light for reading, but only lights up to 40 on a 40-60-100 selections.

So according to the fadal manual, it needs to be at least 80 megaohms, and then it needs no short to ground. I have an encoder going bad where sometimes it fluctuated spindle speed above 7000rpm, I wonder if that hurt the motor. The motor is pretty crusty looking, so thinking it is original and when I bought the machine the fan was not working on top of the spindle.

Anyone know of a good motor repair shop in Minnesota? Any tips on making pulling the spindle motor easier?