Triac VMC servo emergency stop error

[steve1465]

Hi, i've recently bought myself a 1997 Triac servo and had to move the electric cabinets from the back of the machine to the side. This required a certain amount of rewiring as you can probably imagine. Now after startup when I press the home button I get "emergency stop error" and cant do anything else till i've rebooted. The wiring has been checked through and it all seems to match the wiring diagram I downloaded off this site. The machine has air and pressing the axis override button makes no difference. Anyone got any idea what's going on ?

[Denford Admin]

Is that the home button on a Tutor keypad like this ?

I'm guessing that there is something wrong with the servo drive or motor wiring...when they try to move they must be tripping out, causing a break in the e.stop circuit.

[steve1465]

Well thanks for the reply but i've moved on from that now (the e-stop problem was dodgy wiring) and am about to update the system. I've been told the only way to do this is to fit a motion control PCI card (which will cost £960) and an appropriate breakout board. Any idea how accurate this info is ?

[Denford Admin]

Because it's servo drives you will need a better control system, ie more expensive than a stepper BOB running Mach3.
Not sure it should cost you that much though.
We don't / can't offer any upgrades for a Servo rack system but you could look at the Baldor Nextmove ESB which I'd bet is cheaper than that.
This is a USB controlled 4 axis servo controller with enough I/O for the machine.
If you had VRMilling v5 there is a good chance that the existing Triac Mint (the PLC logic program) will work on the ESB with a few tweaks. It won't be straight forward though and you'd need to learn how the logic works...which you'd have to do with any new motion system.

[steve1465]

As I understand it the motion controller would be fitted to a pc , which would become the controller . The servo drive cards , limit/homing switches, coolant, atc and spindle drive would be connected to this motion controller through a breakout board . While appreciating this is a simplification is this correct ?

[Lone_Ranger]

As I understand it the motion controller would be fitted to a pc , which would become the controller . The servo drive cards , limit/homing switches, coolant, atc and spindle drive would be connected to this motion controller through a breakout board . While appreciating this is a simplification is this correct ?

Yes, it is correct, however you must then have a "front end" that sends the commands to the motion control card, if you have the motion control card either inside or connected to externally ( USB or Ethernet connection) you will need a software like Mach3/LinuxCNC to actually create the commands to operate the machine and run the G code and provide the user interface ie screen, mouse and keyboard.

Not likely you can utilise any of the original Denford software for this kind of setup. You will of course still be able to utilise the original drive amplifiers and servos! Worth a try though You`ll need to talk to the Denford guys about that I reckon, Admin does say it might be possible

Be careful regarding the drives and servos, if they are a type that only accepts analog input (Most older DC drives and DC servos are like this) then you will need a system that will output analog type signal 0~10Volts DC, most decent motion control cards will do this but you will need a breakout board that will also handle the analog signals.

Most of the cheaper breakout boards that are designed to work with Mach3 etc only handle "step~direction" type signals.
The most popular motion cards for use with servos on a machine "retro-fit" would appear to be the Galil "Econo" range and I believe these are around the $900 US Dollar mark and probably about another $300 US Dollar for a Galil ICM (Breakout board).

It can be a bit of a minefield once you start down the retro-fit road, always try to get/keep the original stuff working if you can, usually much simpler

Regards
Rob

[david]

Hi,

I have faulty baldor D281 motion control card for a triac P. C. (denford). The firmware is ESMINT 3.28 V1.6H/S - JD5. We would like to purchase this card, is it still available? Please let me know as soon as possible, I need it urgently for students' semester projects.

Thank you.