[torinwalker]

So there I was, cutting this piece over and over again (ironically, to save money) by setting my G54 further and further toward the spindle... After I was satisfied I had the program running perfectly, I went away for a few days. When I came back, raring to get on with production work, I put a fresh piece of material in the lathe, commanded the CHNC 1 to go, and the X axis crashed big time. The X axis tried to face way too much, wrenching the material (alum) from the step chuck, and tossing it into the back wall. Needless to say, I learned a BIG lesson.

Well, nothing really bad appeared to happen - after some sullen reflection, I adjusted my offsets, put another piece in the chuck, and started producing parts - in fact, I did this for two days - part after part after part... about two dozen post-crash parts in all.

Today, I finally got some more time to make some fine adjustments, so I started up and homed the CHNC 1. But when I ran my program the X-axis lerched in spurts, then failed with a "DAC-limit reached." A soft reset wouldn't work, nor did simply restarting the control. The machine had to be powered off completely before it could recover. I re-homed the machine and again, the X-axis stuttered before failing and displaying the "DAC-limit reached" error.

I decided to go into the X-axis cover to looking for a stretched belt. After poking around and not seeing anything obviously wrong (e.g. really loose or messed up belt), I tried again. However, over the coarse of my investigation, the X axis actually got worse and now can't even be homed. The instant I hit either X button to home, the machine throws a fault. Even with the feed rate set to 10%.

I'm stuck. I took the tiny ball-screw access panels off both X and Z and turned each with a 3/16 allen key - the Z axis is a bit smoother. The X is clunky, as if it's stopping on detents. I can't imagine the ball-screw is bent from a crash, but could the drive have stretched throwing all the tuning off kilter? Could the X-axis motor have become decoupled by a safeguard clutch?

I started poking around in the back, looking for lit LEDs that might divulge a particular error, but the only one is a red LED on the drive board in the upper left corner of the right-side electrical cabinet. I also noticed a buzzing coming from the amplifier board immediately to its right (and not from the identical one immediately to ITS right, the Z-axis drive), but may have been doing this before and I just never noticed.

So now, the control error is of no help. The only error I get is the "AXIS DRIVE FAULT" error, and a red LED on the board itself. The errors won't clear unless I completely cycle the power, and return the instant I even breathe on the X job buttons or turn the ball-screw manually with the allen key.

I must turn to the experts of the CNC Zone in the hope someone here has encountered something similar before.

I have photographs of LEDs, boards, and can produce a wealth of other information if it should prove helpful.

This leads me to ask a couple of questions:

1) Could a crash loosen a belt such that it causes the control to throw an error? (e.g. too much lag)
2) Could poking at the belt exacerbate #1 such that it gets worse?
3) Could it be a coincidence, and the crash did nothing (after all, I machined a dozen parts afterward.)
4) Is anyone familiar with the alarm codes in the back of all this hardware?
5) Can anyone offer advice of any kind?
6) ANYONE KNOW Ex-Hardinge Techs who can help me fix this (for $$$?)

Ugh. A year of using this machine without problems, and now that I'm ready to go into full production, I crash and now this happens.

Thanks, Murphy.


Torin...
--
www.walker-tech.com

[torinwalker]

When it rains, it pours...

I decided to spend the day in the garage trying to figure out what went wrong. I fired up the lathe, tried to home the X axis, and all the lights turned on: L155 ROT (red), 101 Gelb (yellow), and L318 ROT (red). The german manual translated this configuration to potential overcurrent, among other things.

Then all of a sudden, my Wilkerson filter/separator polycarbonate bowl burst at the rim! Now I can't even test the lathe.

Tried super-gluing it, but it just burst again. Tried 'welding' it with my Weller soldering iron - nope. Burst again. Finally resorted to turning both sides of the broken bowl to flatten the adhering edges, super-glued it again, but this time put a small alum ring at the bottom of the bowl to make the shield press up against the bowl to take some tension off the glue. Bingo, it worked. Squeals something fierce, but good enough to continue for now. I have another en-route from Ebay.

So... getting back to business, I kept wondering about the noise associated with those "detents" I spoke of earlier. I thought it was my ball screw, with the little bearings ticking as they went around their loops. I looked at my air-line oiler and the level was pretty much the same as it was when I picked it up a year ago. Perhaps my X ballscrew has failed due to lack of lubrication which would explain why the motor is tripping - it would certainly make sense, sort of. Though it doesn't explain why when I try to home the X-axis that it doesn't even budge (well, a few thou, anyway.)

Had my wife manually crank the X-axis from the front while I homed in on the noise - it was coming from my motor. It sounded awful too. Not like the smooth sliding sound a DC motor usually makes. Checked the Z-axis: Yup. Nice and smooth. X-axis? Clickety-crap. It's like I could hear copper making a kind of crinkling sound. I took all four brushes out, and spun the X-axis. The noise totally went away and it seemed just a little smoother, too.

It's pretty tight quarters in there, but I managed to get my iphone in there and take photo. While twirling the motor around, I could see the copper contacts of the commutator spin by. It all looked normal until I got to one particular spot on the brush contact area:

Attachment 206902

NOW can anyone guess why my machine is throwing drive axis faults?

I wonder if this is related to the crash - could the intense current drawn by the motor have caused the commutator segments to short/fuse together? Is this a typical mode of failure for a DC motor? If so, why did it fail this way?

At any rate, looks like I need a new motor. If you have a spare CHCN 1 Siemens X-axis motor for sale, please let me know.


Torin...
--
www.walker-tech.com

[Machineit]

Torin,

I will keep my eyes open for you. Your picture is too blurry to see much, but I can see your problem.

Until you find another, you might want to remove the motor and see if you can have it repaired. You may just need to get the commutator turned and cleaned up and it would work again. With new brushes of course.

A shop that repairs electric motors or even an automotive starter and generator shop should be able to check it out and see if it is shorted out totally. Once the commutator is turned they can use what is called a growler to check the windings.

I was lucky to find that my CHNC1 had the brushless servo option, worth about $10,000. Funny, but it is probably worth far more in parts than it is all together!

Good luck----Mike

[torinwalker]

Well, that settles it. I took out the motor and checked it out. It was a horrible mess, but I was hopeful that after cleaning it up it might still have some useful like in it.

Uh uh.

When I first pulled it out, it was an oily, sooty mess - like an Exxon-Valdez pelican.

Rotor as pulled from housing

I wiped off the commutator bars and snapped a photo through a magnifying glass (to give my iPhone macro capability :-)

Closeup of commutator bars 1
Closeup of commutator bars 2

Who knows, right? Perhaps the carbon created a loop on the bars such that they took the brunt of the overload whilst my X-axis drive saved the day (and my windings) by blowing a fuse... I mean... anything's possible, right? So into the lathe to clean up the bars:

Turning on the lathe

A few minutes later with an exacto-blade, cuticle clippers, compressed air, and some fine-grit and water sandpapers, the bars are about as good as they'll get and ready to go

All cleaned up

Unfortunately, my adventure ends here. After cleaning it up, I took to to my desk and measured the resistance between bars 180-degrees apart to find the value varied from 14.2 to as little as 6.2 ohms. Testing adjacent bars showed a nominal resistance of 2.1, but toward the bars that were shorted, it started reading closer to 0.6. The rotor is totally smoked. In retrospect, that last photo clearly shows the heat-damage to the resin right around the wire-to-bar connections.

Well at least now I can see the nameplate and have the correct model number for my 1989 CHNC 1: 1HU5040-0AF02-Z. A very good friend has offered to send me a spare motor he kept around for just such an occasion. With any luck, the motor is the only thing wrong with my lathe.

So now I'm wondering... what on earth could have caused this? I mean, I probably did this to myself, but I mean how does a motor fail so catastrophically and yet continue to function properly for a few days. I suppose one could theorize that during the crash, an instantaneous current would have built up as the motor's progress is impeded by the resistance of the part it's trying to plow through and, once the motor stops dead in its tracks, all that current is pulled through just a few windings, causing the wires to short. Later, the heat from subsequent jobs continued to cook the resin until more wires shorted together resulting in a total failure.

Unless.. Could a failure elsewhere have caused the motor to fry, or do y'all think this was likely initiated by the crash?

Has anyone else fried a motor as a result of crashing their machine?


Torin...
--
www.walker-tech.com

[Machineit]

Check your number carefully, but these I think are correct, with "-"s in different locations.

Mike

Siemens Permant Magnet Servo Motor 1HU5044 0AF02 Z 1HU50440AF02Z Z K39 K93 | eBay


Siemens General Numeric Servo Motor 1HU5044 0AF02 Z | eBay

[Machineit]

Also, the build up of carbon in the motor may have combined with the hit on the stop to cause the problem. My external tag says to inspect every 1000 hours. You should blow them out then.

Maybe an 4 where a 0 should be in the two posts I attached above.

Mike

[Machineit]

I believe this one matches perfectly.

Very Nice Fanuc General Numeric Servo Motor 1HU5040 0AF02 Z 174 Volts 3000 RPMs | eBay

Mike

[torinwalker]

Ok, everyone... I received a motor from an ebay store called "Dock Guys". The motor was listed for $500, and they accepted my offer of $350. When I got it and was finally able to check it out, I took the caps and brushes off to see a nice clean set of bars. Instead, I saw tons carbon dust, and it just kept coming out! I opened the motor to find tons of dust and some oil. There must have been thousands of hours on that motor during which it was never cleaned. And... one of the bearings was shot (crunchy as it turned.)

I started writing a stern letter back to Dock Guys asking for some of my money back, but I thought I would at least test the rotor before claiming I was able to salvage some of it. I pieced together a working motor using only the rotor, front bearing, and a little bearing bracket holder doodad that holds the bearing to the front mount. The motor was unusually stiff to turn until I realized I missed a spacer, so out it came, in went the spacer, and back went the motor into the machine.

Hardinge's book describes a specific procedure for tensioning the belt. I had previously put tiny dimples beside the screws so I knew how far down to pull the mount bracket to apply the right tension. I also poked the belt to see if it was as tensioned as I had remembered before I took it off.

With everything back in place, I fired up my machine, tried to home the X-axis, and the bloody thing faulted again. I figured the tension was too high, but just to be sure, I put a 30V power supply on the X wires and moved it back and forth. 30V and negligible current, so, I don't think I have a motor problem...

Perhaps it's a drive problem now. I am terribly fearful of having the machine sit idle with current running to the motor - I don't want to smoke this new one.

The only thing I might be able to do is swap the drive boards and see if the problem moves with the drive control board, or the drive AMP board.

Has anyone done this? Simply swapped the boards? The pots on the boards look similar, so it might be doable.

If anyone has any bright ideas, I'm all ears.


Torin...
--
www.walker-tech.com

[torinwalker]

UPDATE and CORRECTION:

I wasn't satisfied with giving up on a drive fault - the Siemens book says it's overcurrent, or the motor is unable to move easily - so I took my ammeter out and measured the current being drawn. 30V @ 1A in one direction, 30V @ 1.25 in the other. So... 40watts? That doesn't seem like much effort at all.

After moving the axis back and forth several times, I turned on the control - this time, with my ammeter in the path of the motor. I didn't want the control cooking my motor and watching the current would allow me to shut down if something went awry. The motor measured 100mA practically all the time. Not sure if this is normal.

But this time, instead of faulting, the control threw new errors:

1040 ORD 7 DAU-limit reached
1120 ORD 8 Clamping check
2000 ORD 9 Emergency stop

which interestingly is the first error I received before the control would completely shut down, requiring a hard power-off/on to reset. This time, resetting the control actually recovered.

After reset, I lightly felt an allen key in the X-axis ball screw under the front cover plate to see if the control was actually putting power to the motor. Nope. Neither the ammeter, nor my fingers detected any current/movement.

The next error showed up:

1160 ORD20 Contour monitoring
2000 ORD21 Emergency stop

Contour monitoring... well, I only removed the motor and didn't move the encoder, so there's no need to realign the X home or index, but perhaps the change in tension would require me to change some sort of setting, like drift?

Tomorrow, I'll take some tension off the belt to see if that changes the response.


Torin...
--
www.walker-tech.com

[gotbigplans]

Hello All,

We are the unfortunate company who bought this CHNC from Torin Walker, who hid this problem with the machine. After 2 weeks of service, this x axis motor gave out indefinitely, a rotor damaged beyond repair. When looking up the fault code for this machine, I came across this exact thread... by Torin. Great....

Wondering if anybody knows of this motor for sale for a machine being parted out, this machine is scrap if we cant find one. This motor has been to California and all around Canada in search of a company that can fix it, its not going to happen.

Any and all help is appriciated.

[torinwalker]

Hello All,

We are the unfortunate company who bought this CHNC from Torin Walker, who hid this problem with the machine. After 2 weeks of service, this x axis motor gave out indefinitely, a rotor damaged beyond repair. When looking up the fault code for this machine, I came across this exact thread... by Torin. Great....

Wondering if anybody knows of this motor for sale for a machine being parted out, this machine is scrap if we cant find one. This motor has been to California and all around Canada in search of a company that can fix it, its not going to happen.

Any and all help is appriciated.

For the record everyone, the person posting here came to my shop, inspected the machine, watched me make parts on it, then approved of the purchase. There was nothing "hidden" from him. That crash was years ago and I made thousands of products on it since then. Soon after taking delivery of the lathe, he turned on the lathe and zeroed the machine, which means it worked. Some weeks later, he called to for help because of the drive fault. Not sure what happened, but it was working when it arrived at his shop. Who knows what he and his electrician did to the machine beyond that point. Now he wants to save face with his boss and lay the blame elsewhere.

Mr. Gotbigplans: You need a new fuse, probably a new amp, and a replacement (or rewound) motor, and expertise. Three of those things can be found on ebay. Your machine will be fine after that, assuming you don't break anything else.

Please refrain from slandering me publicly. I didn't break your machine nor did I sell you a bad one.


Torin...

[gotbigplans]

For Torin only...

Torin. I did not post here to argue with you, I saw that some people on this thread previously managed to source you a used motor, which is something I am in need of currently.

But since your decided to be juvenile and try to make it out as if it was an honest deal on your end, let me refresh your memory, because I wont lay down and be made out to be a moron the way you just tried.

The day I came to your "shop", the very first thing I asked was about previous crashes and problems. You told me you had a minor x axis crash when first learning the machine, and said nothing came of it.

The electrician your referring to, is a CSA inspector that was making sure the machine is up to Canadian code. No other electrician was called until after this error. So no, an electrician didn't break anything. When the error first happened, you were the first and only person I called, with that exact DAU limit error. You played dumb, acted like you never heard of this error before.

I remember a day later strait up asking you again if something was wrong with the machine that you were hiding, since it was such an unusual problem. Again, you said no and acted offended I'd even ask. It wasn't until I found this very thread and called you out, when you finally admitted to it. Our electrician, after the error, found the motor held together with clear packing tape, and saw the rotor mangled, as shown in previous photos in this very thread. Its a miracle you got as much life as you did out of that motor, and maybe it is an honest coincidence that it only failed right after I purchased. But you were still untruthful about history, played dumb about the error, and tried to put it on everyone else.

FYI Torin, our company consists of 6 machinists and an engineer. There is no upper management were trying to appeal to by pushing blame somewhere else. We have no corporate budgets or bosses breathing down our necks. We could care less, as you might recall me saying something like "Torin, were not asking for our money back, or threatening to sue. We just need to know if the machine is seriously f***** so we aren't wasting anymore money that's not needed". to which of course you acted offended and played dumb. Were a small shop, just trying to get parts out the door. Your idiocy and outright lying has gotten in the way of this and cost us more money we care to admit, so now I'm trying to salvage the situation and previous capital put into this lathe and look for any possible contact that may have access to this motor. That is my reason to be posting on this thread. So, please, swallow your pride and let me try to find this motor in peace.

[mactec54]

For the record everyone, the person posting here came to my shop, inspected the machine, watched me make parts on it, then approved of the purchase. There was nothing "hidden" from him. That crash was years ago and I made thousands of products on it since then. Soon after taking delivery of the lathe, he turned on the lathe and zeroed the machine, which means it worked. Some weeks later, he called to for help because of the drive fault. Not sure what happened, but it was working when it arrived at his shop. Who knows what he and his electrician did to the machine beyond that point. Now he wants to save face with his boss and lay the blame elsewhere.

Mr. Gotbigplans: You need a new fuse, probably a new amp, and a replacement (or rewound) motor, and expertise. Three of those things can be found on ebay. Your machine will be fine after that, assuming you don't break anything else.

Please refrain from slandering me publicly. I didn't break your machine nor did I sell you a bad one.


Torin...

He is not slandering you in any way, and is only asking for help, as you did not Post any other post to say that you had solved the problem back in 2013, so no one will ever know, if you ever fixed the problem, or if it was just a temporary fix, the motor you brought, was junk, as you stated that in your post

The parts you are quoting are the same parts that you needed, did you ever get them and fit them to the machine

[torinwalker]

My lord... As a matter of fact, I did post my findings - just not in this thread. The entire ordeal, my solution, and the analysis of the cause was documented between this and one other thread:

http://www.cnczone.com/forums/hardin...rive-axis.html

What I take issue with is the accusation. To this day he maintains that I sold him a (sic) "frankenstein". Nothing was ever hidden from him, and the deal was on the level. During our nearly three hour meeting during which he inspected and I demonstrated the machine, I told him every single thing I knew about the machine, including the time I had trouble with the motor. I even instructed him that if he were to remove the carbon brushes, that he should vacuum out the carbon dust lest he short out the motor like I did so many years back. I sold him a machine that I had used for years with great success. My entire business was driven by this machine. I turned it on without fail every weekend and made hundreds of parts over many years. No, this wasn't a bad machine. Someone did something to that machine after they started using it. Anyway, I don't want to get into an argument. I spent an incredible amount of time teaching him every single thing I knew about this machine so he would go into the purchase with his eyes wide open. I even machined a pair of my own products before him and his girlfriend - one for him, and one for his boss, to demonstrate that the machine works.

It is unfortunate he ran into this problem, and I honestly don't know why it happened, but it wasn't me. He wants to lay blame. The machine was working, and I had every expectation it would continue to work after I sold it to him.

The other thread contains a large amount of information about why my machine crashed so many years ago, what I did to restore it, and the investigation that ensued to get to the bottom of why it happened.

As for the packing tape... it wasn't there to "hold" the motor together (which is absurd). Four 1/8" rods are what hold the motor together. The tape was used to stop the magnet from pushing out when I was reassembling it. I just didn't bother to remove it afterward. It's interesting the picture painted by a little imagination.


Torin...

[gotbigplans]

He is not slandering you in any way, and is only asking for help, as you did not Post any other post to say that you had solved the problem back in 2013, so no one will ever know, if you ever fixed the problem, or if it was just a temporary fix, the motor you brought, was junk, as you stated that in your post

The parts you are quoting are the same parts that you needed, did you ever get them and fit them to the machine

I can say for sure none of those parts were replaced after seeing the motor disassembled in person. I'm not sure about fuses or amps, I haven't gotten that far yet, but the motor has been all around north america for many opinions from different repair companies, and nobody is willing to fix because it is not just a rewind or magnetization, the entire rotor needs to be rebuilt on top of that. a quote for which was over 7 grand for a custom build.

I contacted Siemens because I found a motor with near identical serial numbers (one character off, a single 1 instead of 2) a few months back, and tried to find out if it was compatible. Siemens actually managed to track down an old timer that worked on the floor when these motors were made. He told me that hardinge had them custom built for this machine, so no plug and play with other motors is possible in any way.

Unfortunately, the only way this machine will ever run again is if someone is parting out a machine and we get a hold of a used motor, or a similar situation. If you ever do hear of one becoming available, please keep me in mind. I've been watching ebay for 4 months now and haven't seen the same one come up.

[torinwalker]

I just went over my previous thread and it might not be entirely clear how I solved the problem, so I'll try to make it clear here:

The garage was very cold that day - about 4 degrees Celsius. When I turned on the machine, it was so cold the motors coudn't reach the intended velocity commanded by the control, resulting in a fault. Not knowing if this was bad, I started checking things.
Among other things, I thought the carbon brushes might need replacing. After pulling two of the four out, they seemed fine, so I put them back in. (THIS is what I suspect caused the motor to burn up)
After replacing the brushes, I believe I pushed a lot of carbon soot up against the rotor and upon commanding it to move, current rushed across multiple windings shorted by the carbon dust. The amp put out lots of current, fried the winding, and popped a fuse in the process.

After LOTS of investigation, I ended up buying a used motor from ebay (whose bearings were shot but still had a good rotor), pieced together one motor from two bad ones, and tried it again. Too much current. I then suspected the amplifier may have been implicated in the motor failure. I later learned that these amps suffer from resistor failures, but I wasn't sure which of these caused the fault.

I photographed the numbers on the amplifier, looked throughout ebay, and eventually found a matching amp (same part number, slightly different version) and bought it for about $110.

Plugged in the amplifier, and nothing. Eventually traced it to a cartridge fuse. Replaced the cartridge fuse, and all started working again. Used the machine FOR YEARS afterward.

You will need: A replacement motor. Many rewind shops will fix that motor for about $900US. I happened to find a used motor from a NY surplus shop for $350.

I think the amplifier is "Siemens DC Circuit Board 6RB2025-0FA01, USED, WARRANTY"

And the cartridge fuse was, I believe a CC style 4A cartridge.

The machine should run with simple swapping of the amp. As for re-fitting the motor, I didn't bother with the belt-tensioning. I just put it in there and pushed it up with both thumbs until the belt felt as tight as it did before I disassembled it.

In retrospect, I shouldn't have run the machine cold. If I had just waited until the shop was warmer, I think I never would have encountered the first fault, and never would have caused the second fault as a result.


Torin...

[gotbigplans]

For Torin only...

Torin, your one of the most egocentric and narcissistic people I have ever met in my whole life. I'm here asking for help and you cant help but troll my post and defend what was, by anyone's standards, dishonest. I'm trying to be very professional, but we are the people with a broken machine we were promised would serve us for a long time, you are the one with the thousands of dollars and posts online about all the problems it has. I read this thread, dosen't sound like the problem was ever really fixed, just by luck and much jerry-rigging, one time it fired back up and ran awhile again. Get over yourself, this is seriously ridiculous. Unless you have a lead on where I can get a motor, I am done engaging in your alternative reality.

[torinwalker]

Uh, ok then. You must have cross-posted while I was offering information. Well here is some more. Just don' t plug in a new motor without investigating the amplifier too. Like I said - I wasn't sure if it was the carbon from the brushes or the amplifier.

Quote from an email from SRI:

Servo Repair International does not offer to rewind motor armature only. SRI will only offer to repair the existing motor. This includes, rewinding motor armature, replace bearings, brushes, re magnetize magnetic motor frame assembly, clean & paint motor. Burn in motor under load with a CNC controller.
Warranty: 9 months for parts & labor provided. Delivery: 10 working days
Price: $995.00 - $1.195.00 (This is a ballpark price since I don't have the motor in house)
SRI offers free evaluation on all servo motors. If you want to send motor in please call or e-mail for a Return Authorization number.

Thank You,
Gary Cummings
Servo Repair International, Inc.
3812 William Flynn Highway
Route 8, Building # 7
Allison Park, PA 15101
T: 412-492-8116
F: 412-492-8126
C: 412-841-8115
E: [email protected]
Web: servorep.com