Denford Software & Machines

I'm trying to diagnose a problem with our Quatromill, which was working last time we used it (several months ago). Essentially when we power it up, the Fanic OT-A displays a '1008 Spindle Drive Fault', which we can't clear under normal operation.

We've had a probe around the cabinet at the back, and the spindle drive unit is not powered, which would probably explain the error. The power seems to be applied via a relay, but this is never energised. There is power on the other side of the relay contact. If we manually operate the relay, the spindle drive unit powers and the error is removed from the screen.

We've checked all of the fuses and breakers that we can find, and also the voltages on the I/O card, which all seem correct. The only thing we have noticed is that diagnostic 0701 indicates that CRST is active, but the e-stop button is not pressed. Interestingly, diagnostic 0712 shows no flags at all, which does not make sense.

Is this likely to be a parameter setting that causes the drive relay not to be energised, or should we be looking for a hardware fault? Has anyone seen this kind of problem before? Does anyone have any wiring or further diagnostic information that they would be willing to share with us?

Any help or pointers will be gratefully received. Many thanks for reading!

Patrick

It may be sat on a axis limit or as simple as a switch stuck in. Try pressing in the axis limit overide button to see if it allows the drive to power up.

Martin wrote:It may be sat on a axis limit or as simple as a switch stuck in. Try pressing in the axis limit overide button to see if it allows the drive to power up.

As it happens, this was pretty much spot on. The axis limit override allowed us to power everything up, but it wasn't a stuck switch. We traced the wiring back to a junction box mounted behind the panel at the front, and started to unscrew the box lid. We weren't quite prepared for water to flow out of the box, nor were we prepared for what we found inside:



Two wires had corroded completely through, and the others were getting close to failing. Now that we've cleaned up the box, added new terminal blocks and stripped back the wires a bit, the machine is working perfectly. We've also added a small drain hole and replaced the seals...

Thanks so much for the pointer!

Is it coolant that's caused that
Makes you think twice about breathing in the vapours if so !

Denford Admin wrote:Is it coolant that's caused that
Makes you think twice about breathing in the vapours if so !

Yes - coolant was running down the outside of the tube on the left and over time, it must have caused the sealing grommet to fail. After that, it was just a matter of time. Probably not the best stuff to breathe, though!