Need some dire help or input here. We have been battling the (what appears to be) dreaded spindle fault 123 for about 3 months now. While I did some research on this, it appears as though the vector drive going bad is the common issue here. The thing is though, we are having this happen on both of our Haas machines simultaneously. We have a SL30 CNC lathe and a VF1 CNC vertical mill. We will run for a week or so without this issue happening at all, and then out of nowhere our machines will start crashing with this spindle fault 123 code. It takes down both machines at the same exact time 98% of the time, and every now and then it will be just one machine or the other.

When this first started happening, we called a Haas technician out. He tested the voltage at the machines, and moved the taps down one step to a different voltage range based off of his readings, saying that if it was a new install, that is where he would put the voltage range at. He mentioned that the vector drive in the SL30 appeared as though it was starting to go bad. We did not have it replaced at this point. After he left, the machines went down later that afternoon with the spindle fault 123 error. We were told by Haas that it sounds like an incoming voltage problem, which I would mostly agree with, but we have had a very helpful technician from our power supplier out here regularly for about 2 months now trying to track down the issue. He has hooked up a dramanice (sp?) machine for a week or two at a time on multiple occasions now to monitor the incoming voltage to our panel to ensure there are no spikes or drops that could be taking the incoming power out of the required range. Everything has looked smooth on their reports that they have been showing us.

The power company also brought up that sometimes when the vector drive is going bad on one machine, it could somehow affect the other machine as well. While this still confuses me as to how this would be possible, we have isolated each machine individually for a period of time by shutting off the breaker at the back of each machine (essentially removing it completely from our system) and running the other machine for a period of time. We witnessed this alarm happen to each machine while the other was isolated. Power to both machines are ran on their own individual lines from our main panel in separate conduits, so I do not see how a short in the line running to the machines could be the cause either.

We have seen this alarm happen in the middle of the day while running parts, we have seen it happen instantly first thing in the morning (like this morning) when we turn the machines on prior to even touching the controls, we have seen it happen in the middle of the day while the machines are just sitting idle, etc. There appears to be no real rhyme or reason to it. We have other machines running on 3 phase power within the shop that have been completely unaffected during this period - it is only the two Haas machines mentioned. We have not added any new machines to our shop recently, we have not done any electrical work, we have had no real unexpected events happen that would appear to have affected any electrical devices here.

To say we are frustrated and at a loss of ideas right now would be an understatement. We have already put a call in to Haas again this morning to try to get someone out here again for this issue, but I am not too hopeful they will be able to find a solution. We are pretty much at a standstill right now on production and we are desperate to find a solution. Does anybody have any input on what might be the cause of our problems?

Thanks ahead of time.