[85burban]

Everything has been going fairly smooth drip feeding and the whole machining process and then small things are happening. Starting to cut on part and the machine stops faults with a E stop button pressed and z axis fault but the tool is right by the part just as it was 30 seconds ago on the first go around. So I hit the reset button and the relay clunks in the back go to jog and take everthing home start the part again and no problems. It has happened three times in the last week. Has anyone had this problem?

[Al_The_Man]

Unless there is an associated alarm number or description it is a bit of a job to trouble shoot, apparently something is causing the Z axis to fault and trip the control relay, so start looking at the Z axis system such as counter balance if it has?
Al.

[underthetire]

I would assume we are talking about a knee mill....
The servo drive is getting an error, thats what is causing your Estop.
Is the spindle getting warm/hot. #1 cause on tree knee mills getting a Z fault. The spindle heats up the quill and it starts binding in the casting. Check the oil lines as well. those break inside and you can't tell. If thats all good, you may need to either tune the drives or replace the Z motor.

[85burban]

I would assume we are talking about a knee mill....
The servo drive is getting an error, thats what is causing your Estop.
Is the spindle getting warm/hot. #1 cause on tree knee mills getting a Z fault. The spindle heats up the quill and it starts binding in the casting. Check the oil lines as well. those break inside and you can't tell. If thats all good, you may need to either tune the drives or replace the Z motor.

Wel it only did it three times. It did it a few minutes after i start the machine, the first move to start cutting part and one time after it had made that move to cut twice. Yes it is a knee mill, so if it does it more frequently its the z motor . how hard is it to change ,because i have been up on top checking belts and what not so I know how to get to it

[underthetire]

Easy. If your adventurous you could take the motor out, blow out the brush dust, find a replacement encoder and re-intall it. Those encoders get loose internally and thats usually what fails. I would still check tuning of the drives first, if the tach signal is up too high on those, it will fault the axis.

[85burban]

Easy. If your adventurous you could take the motor out, blow out the brush dust, find a replacement encoder and re-intall it. Those encoders get loose internally and thats usually what fails. I would still check tuning of the drives first, if the tach signal is up too high on those, it will fault the axis.

When you say tuning of the drive I dont know how to do that