[6inall]

Ok, here's how it went. I have 4 Fadals all 4020's from the early to mid 90's mfg. I had one of them powered up the other day and was setting it up while running the other machines.

After getting my fixture set up, I went to load in tools. The next thing that happens is the spindle starts to index for tool change cycle. Before it can put the tool in the carrousel, I hear a "pop", followed by the spindle load meter maxing out but no spindle movement. Did the "E"stop/ reset tried it again. No pop this time but spindle load meter still pegs out instantly.

My question here is, is there a good way to troubleshoot between the spindle motor and the drive unit? I have seen the fadal motors short out before but usually worked in shops that would just call up a tech. But now im out on my own and looking to do as much of the repairs as possible. I am fairly well acquainted with troubleshooting and repairing machines. Just figured I would ask if there was someone out there been thru the same issue.

[carbidecraters]

Being familiar you should be able to open the back of the cabinet and look at the drive and see what error is on it.

[6inall]

I opened up the rear cabinet, there is no digital panel on the Baldor drive unit. There was a burnt and shorted wire in the spindle drive cabinet to the right of the Baldor Drive. I cut it back and reconnected it, no help there. I attached a picture(or tried to) of the burnt wire.


With machine on, I can freely rotate the spindle by hand. I tried to do a tool change again and it moved the spindle just a little. So I tried turning it by hand and it made it around to locate for the tool change with my help. The error below comes up if I try to turn the spindle on or if I try doing a tool change.

The error that comes up on the control screen is:
C axis fault(s) as follows:
error #10
Motor Overload

***EDIT***
I forgot to mention, the red circle is the wire that was burnt to the back of the wire going to the yellow circled area.

[carbidecraters]

You may have a spindle drive issue. Your best bet is to send it to Practec LLC - Baldor & Sweo Drive Specialists for analysis. We seem to send them a drive every couple of years from older Fadals...worst case for us was $1100

[Edster]

I had a 94 Fadal VMC15 that I thought toasted the spindle drive. It turned out to be a fuse in the drive. The drive was a Baldor SWEO drive. I don't rember the simptoms but I know the spindle didn't work. There were a few fuses in the drive, we found the culprit with a meter and had a replacement from Grainger. The machine is still working fine at it's new owners shop.

Good luck.

[6inall]

I checked the drive unit for fuses, replaced the big fuse on the lefthand side of the drive. Old fuse checked bad, new fuse did not improve the situation. Next, I decided to check the capacitors at the top of the drive, one checks good, the other no reading.

Also, I think i may have found the actual root of the problem. There is a component at the back of the drive below the capacitors that appears to be burnt. Going to have a local tech take a quick look, if he can't do anything with it, will probably be sending the drive out for repair.

Thank you CC for the link to Practec, and thank you Edster for your suggestions as well.

But for now, time to get the rest of the machines running, will update as this progresses.