Replacing Partner 1 Brushless Servo Amps

Purchased a Partner 1 with the brushless servo drives a few months ago. Was told it had a problem with the Z axis - bad servo motor. Long story short (See my previous post) discovered two bad servo amps and was able to get the servo motor running with a different servo amp. Been away from the project for a while but dug back in seriously this weekend. Have the Z axis drive removed and replaced with a newer drive - the motor runs but here is where I need help. Since the machine was not working when I brought it home I have very limited knowledge of running it. The Z axis servo motor is not installed but it is wired into the machine. I have tested it using the test function of the drive but am not sure if the motor runs the right direction or not. Can someone tell me which direction the Z axis travels with a positive voltage applied to the input of servo amp? Or is there a way to jog the axis without first homing the control? I also have the Y axis servo amp wired in but will need to get it set up and running with the replacement servo amp so need to do the same kind of testing on it as well. Have the position feedback lines disconnected on the Z axis right now.

I'm pretty sure you can move axis's without homing by holding in the reset button and then hand wheel as needed. This is so you can get off a limit switch if necessary, but would also tell you if you move the hand wheel plus and the axis moves plus, you are going in the right direction.

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Originally Posted by SEK22Hornet

Purchased a Partner 1 with the brushless servo drives a few months ago. Was told it had a problem with the Z axis - bad servo motor. Long story short (See my previous post) discovered two bad servo amps and was able to get the servo motor running with a different servo amp. Been away from the project for a while but dug back in seriously this weekend. Have the Z axis drive removed and replaced with a newer drive - the motor runs but here is where I need help. Since the machine was not working when I brought it home I have very limited knowledge of running it. The Z axis servo motor is not installed but it is wired into the machine. I have tested it using the test function of the drive but am not sure if the motor runs the right direction or not. Can someone tell me which direction the Z axis travels with a positive voltage applied to the input of servo amp? Or is there a way to jog the axis without first homing the control? I also have the Y axis servo amp wired in but will need to get it set up and running with the replacement servo amp so need to do the same kind of testing on it as well. Have the position feedback lines disconnected on the Z axis right now.

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If the servo motor is running the correct way, the Z axes when moving down will be moving in a negative direction

F7 params F1 level, type proto3, enter then 3, enter, then escape back to see the F1 button showing Home push F1 then it will show the F10 home here, Hit F10 and you can jog if no errors on drives.

Ron

Thanks Ron! I'm at work right now but if I am following the steps in my head correctly - it sounds like what this is doing is resetting the "home" to the current position of the drives - sounds like it may be exactly what I'm looking for! I may have a few minutes tonight to give this a try. Will this stay set or will I need to do this each time I restart the machine? Dan

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Originally Posted by mactec54

If the servo motor is running the correct way, the Z axes when moving down will be moving in a negative direction

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The mechanics I can figure out easily enough - my question is really asking the polarity of the control voltage to the input of the servo amp. I noticed while tracing the wires out that the Y and Z axis are both wired with one polarity while the X axis is wired opposite polarity. Just trying to avoid a runaway - don't want to slam anything against the stops. Dan

Dan,
You will have to do this ever time you boot control but will save you thumb holding reset button, Be careful as it does reset the 0 axis location and you can run into hard limits easily, use only for diagnosing drive issues. Keep your hand over the e stop button for a runaway which you will have with no encoder feedback. Take the belts of the axis when you start and you should be ok.

Ron

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Originally Posted by rl49

Dan,
You will have to do this ever time you boot control but will save you thumb holding reset button, Be careful as it does reset the 0 axis location and you can run into hard limits easily, use only for diagnosing drive issues. Keep your hand over the e stop button for a runaway which you will have with no encoder feedback. Take the belts of the axis when you start and you should be ok.

Ron

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Thanks Ron - Sounds good. I plan on pulling the belts on the X and Y axis. The Z is already off since the motor is still out laying on the control cabinet right now (I have a clamp holding it in place). I'll probably finish wiring in the encoder on the Z axis as well before trying this. The X axis is still wired to the Servo Dynamics amp right now. I need to get the Z axis finished up then I'll move on the Y.

Tried the override sequence without any luck - set the Parms, set level 3, went back to the home screen - showed F10 Here grayed out - pressed it and it turned green. Screen never stopped showing the message to press cycle start to start sequence. Pressing cycle start did nothing either. Did have the X axis motor drive disconnected so will go ahead and flip the belt off of the X axis, reconnect the drive and try again later. good news is no smoke at least and the power held in. Could not get to a jog screen. Did try holding the reset switch and turning the handwheel with no luck either - must be more to that method since it would have to have something tell it which axis to move. Dan

You hold in the reset button, hit the Jog key (F2), then you use the keyboard keys to move XY or Z, 4 or 6 for X, 8 or 2 for Y, or the = or left arrow key for Z. The graphic should be on the screen when you enter jog mode. The hand wheel (MPG) doesn't work in this mode.

After entering parameters and escaping back to home screen you have to push F1 first that makes the F10 button active on my C5 and C6 controls then hit cycle start.

F10 (Here) Home-Here
F10 (Here) is only active if the correct password has been entered in the setup parameters.
The machine can be homed without moving the axis. Toggle the F10 (Here) key when the key is lit and push Cycle Start. The position of the machine will be assumed as home zero. This action is useful in that it allows jogging, handwheeling, or MDI’ing without physically homing first. It is not recommended you run programs unless the machine is homed in the normal fashion as the software limits will not be valid after F10 (Here).

from page 143 C6 Programming Manual

RL49 - thanks for the information and the reference to where it is found - I was able to find a copy of the manual to download from the Milltronics website.

I finally got the override to load and used it to check the Y axis - motor spun but errored or with excess following error instantly - thinking that may be telling me its turning the wrong way so I have swapped the polarity of the input to the amp. Was not able to get the override to load again. Acts like my Cycle Start switch is not working. I have a spare switch so I will swap it out and try again. Need to look up the post from Sportybob that tells me how to look at the inputs and outputs to the controller to see if it is one I can see change in the screen.

Tore into the control panel and found 4 switches that were not making contact every time they were pressed. Has some used switches so I replaced those and things work a lot better now. Have the x axis jogging. Guess I'll move on to the y next.

Been away from this project for quite some time but finally worked on it Saturday. I was able to get the Y axis servo up and running. Had to swap the phasing of the Hall sensor wires to get the motor running smoothly in both directions. Still having issues with the Z axis. That servo motor was rebuilt and has a different encoder than the Y motor, so unfortunately, I can't just copy what worked on the Y axis. Also getting some run time errors now - those concern me. Error 192 Run Time Error, History line Main, /error Address 0008:0109.

Finally back working on this machine again. Got the Z axis up and running (both the z and y need more tuning) after replacing the servo motor. So now that things all move, I thought I'd try homing the machine. So I powered everything up, hit Reset, selected Home, and hit cycle start. The screen went back to the main screen and absolutely nothing else happened. No movement, no error messages - nothing. Am I missing some steps in the homing procedure? I did not have air hooked up, so I went ahead and hooked up an air line. Same result. I can do the home here procedure and jog all three axis, but the machine does not appear to want to home normally. Any suggestions?

This machine is a hobby project and I basically took a year off from playing with it to build a new shop. Shop is done and machine is in it's new nice heated and air conditioned home so I decided to get back on this thing. I had finally figured out the correct hall sensor wiring and got the Advance Motion Controls BE25A20amps set up right. Have both the Z and teh Y axis running smoothly. With help from Sporty Bob yesterday, I wrote a couple little programs to run the Z and Y axis back and forth at 100 ipm (one at a time) to set the gain on the amps. Bob told me to shoot for a following error of .032 on the machine. At his direction, I set the gain in the axis parameter to 0 (it was at 100) and re-homed the machine. Running the y axis first, I adjusted the Loop gain and ref in gain on the amp to get the lowest stable following error on the Y axis - this was about .032. Moving to the Z axis, I was able to get it to about .025. Here are a couple pics of the amps. Wiring them in was't too difficult but took time to get teh hall and winding sequence correct. So far I am leaving the X axis amp in place - until it decides to give problems.