[dyakush]

For the past few month I’ve been using this forum almost daily as I try to get 3 VMC’s running, an Arrow 500, Arrow 1000 and Sabre 1500 all having Ac2100 controls. These machines have been sitting idle for the last couple of years. Like to thank all the contributors to this forum for all the help I’ve received from reading past posts.

The Arrow 1000 has the Blue Vickers Drives.
X axis is an AS10300
Y axis is an AS10302
Z axis is an AS10301
A axis is an AS06300
Spindle is an AV2400
PS is an APS7500

Drawings# 91203813

Where can I get the user manuals for the AS10 series the Vickers website doesn’t have them in their discontinued section. Would like to get at least a complete list of the errors.

The machine boots up fine. The 39-41 error happens right after pressing machine power on.

The display on the X,Y,Z & A drives all have a small blinking “u”.
After the machine power on is pushed X,Y,Z,&A drives change to a slated “l” with a blinking “.”(period) next to it. After about a minute the Z axis shows a “F” the X,Y,Z & A “.”(period) disappears. The Z axis drops about 3mm and all Drives go back to the small blinking “u”.

The Spindle’s SysOK, CPU and Relay LED’s all stay green.

I have checked and cleaned the contacts on all axes and nothing changed.

Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

[dyakush]

Have just received the user's manuals from Dave at Siemens. Turns out the "39-41 error" is a AC2100 software generated error so any insight on that would still be appreciated.

[meckardt55]

What does that error code tell you??

Mike cncmachineservices (dot) com

[mike_Kilroy]

....
The display on the X,Y,Z & A drives all have a small blinking “u”.
After the machine power on is pushed X,Y,Z,&A drives change to a slated “l” with a blinking “.”(period) next to it. After about a minute the Z axis shows a “F” the X,Y,Z & A “.”(period) disappears. The Z axis drops about 3mm and all Drives go back to the small blinking “u”.

Did they send you the manual on all the drives (AS, APS, AV)? If no, let me know and I will send them to you.

Your problem is the Z axis is being overloaded: the F on the display is FOLDBACK error in the drive; drive has a parameter set to foldback and keep pushing, trying, then after 60 seconds turn it into a real FAULT, pulling the drive fault contact, causing control to give you an error. It is good to take pix of the fault window that pops up and include it in your post so everyone can see exactly what the fault is - there are english words associated with all faults in those windows that say more than the 2 digit code.

Anyway, next step is to remove the Z motor from machine - just leave up there hooked up, and run it again to see if still F foldback; if not, then likely you have a mechanical jamb that the motor cannot move thru. If still F then you may have a stuck brake in the motor (not releasing) or a smoked motor. Check your brake, smell the motor.

[dyakush]

Mike thanks for your reply and yes I did get all the drives and PS manuals. Some documents that I don’t have though are the Machine App ,Axes, Servo and NC programming settings/parameters.
While pulling the Z axis motor, as you suggested, we noticed the limit switch seemed to be further up than usual. So we lowered the Z axis by hand passed the limit switch, powered up and the 39-41 error was gone and the drive no long had error F. But new errors appeared 44-44 and 44-45 and the Z axis would start creeping upwards but the controls didn’t indicate any movement but when E-stopped the controls would suddenly show the new position.

[dyakush]

oh sorry ,here's the photos of errors

[mike_Kilroy]

... But new errors appeared 44-44 and 44-45 ...

Glad you qare making progress!

But, like I said before, those codes mean nothing to most of us. There are indeed plain WORDS that explain what they mean listed with the codes. If you want help, you GOTTA give those words or most of us have ZERO clue what the code means.

[mike_Kilroy]

ah, did not see ur words posted later until relooking.... ok. sounds like you went from a working Y axis and broken Z to Z ok now (it was pushing into the hard stop at the top of slide) and broken Y.

My saying seems justified here yet again: "Usually the last thing we did is what causes the problem." Sounds like you knocked a wire or cable off the Y axis stuff somewhere while you were working on the Z.

[dyakush]

While tracing the wires we noticed the Z axis seemed to be a lot higher on the limit switch than usual. So we moved the Z axis by hand away from the limit switch. Restarted and the error was gone but the Z axis was moving upward on its own. We stop it and went into System Configuration and got a message that we were running Version 2 of the software rather then Version 3 which we are authorized to use. It turns out that when we had the hard drive rebuilt the wrong Version got installed as well as the wrong M1Y file so the machine doesn’t have the right parameters installed. So sorry for not verifying this rather important component we’ll have new drives next week and start all over getting the machine up.

But if you’re up for some more troubleshooting we do have a somewhat similar problem with our Arrow 500. This unit has the bds4 drives and also a new Hard Drive but with the right version of software. Ac2100 boots up fine but as the Z axis hits the limit switch while aligning it triggers the Overspeed Fault (bottom red LED) on the bds4 Z drive. According to the bds4 manual this is either excessive speed, the resolver is miswired or has a intermittent connection. So we started checking for bad connectors on the Z axis, we couldn’t find any. Getting nowhere with that we started to see if we could recreate the same Fault on the other axes. And sure enough we could. What we found was that as soon as we turned the main power switch on, the axes that were at their limit switches would pull the Overspeed Fault and the one’s that weren’t would be fine until we pushed them to their limit switches. This happens without the AC2100 running. So the question is, how are the limit switches linked to the Overspeed Fault.

[meckardt55]

I would think that the 3 phase contactor that supplies power to the axis drive power supply has to be stuck on or it is getting 115 vac somehow to the coil. The drives are drifting. How fast do the axis move prior to the over speed fault?? What lights do you have on the axis drives and drives power supply?? What does your electrical ground look like???

[mike_Kilroy]

agreed. as the bds4 ages it is not uncommon to have trigger finger overspeed faults; the fault circuitry is one of the most often areas of this model's drives we repair.