[kunz82414]

Hi, I am a beginner and need some advice.

I purchased a Fadal 2216 and transported it to my shop on a flatbed trailer. I have it powered up with a phase converter and need to "unlock" the unit from transport mode. The previous owner stuck a piece of steel barstock in the spindle to keep it from moving during transport. I powered it up to move the spindle in jog mode.

I turned on the machine and phase converter and the circled item in the attached photo began smoking and smelling like burnt plastic after about 2 minutes of being on. The phase converter was installed by professionals, so why would this item be getting so hot? It appears that it is meant to get somewhat hot, but not to the point that it is smoking. Is there any chance it was just burning off some debris that got stuck to it during transport?

Any advice is appreciated. Thanks.

[Jim Dawson]

That is your spindle braking resistors. When idle, they should not be getting hot, there should be no current flow to them. They only are use for decelerating the spindle and should never be active when idle or steady running. That would be an indication of DC bus overvoltage in the spindle drive, I would expect the DC bus to be not greater than about 340 VDC when operating on 240V input power.

Make sure the machine is wired for the correct input voltage, and that the RPC is outputting the correct voltage. The phase to phase voltage measurement should be within about 5% or better, and no phase to phase measurement should be much over the nominal input voltage. It is possible that your RPC needs to be better balanced by adding or removing balance capacitors as needed. Did you buy a CNC rated RPC?

[kunz82414]

Jim,

Thank you very much for the response. Sounds like I need to get the electrician back out to help with the phase converter. This phase converter was part of the package deal from the previous owner who had used it to run this machine in the past.

Thanks again

[ianagos]

Overvoltage will fry the circuit in the drive therefore it will always be putting power to that resistor when the machine is on. Pull the fuse on the side of the drive and it will stop but you will lose the ability to break the spindle so it will coast to a stop. I tryed a couple drives and no dice but I used a inv-0030 from Glentek and it fixed me right up.

Make sure your phase converter legs are balanced and the generated leg does not go to the control.
Also they sell a single phase transformer.

[kunz82414]

When you mention the single phase transformer are you saying the machine could be hooked to direct to single phase power via the transformer?

[ianagos]

Yes that’s exactly what I’m saying. I have one like that came with a t-813 installed.

[kunz82414]

I guess mine has a T-816 and a Glentek drive. It was re-built by West Coast CNC in 2015.

[ianagos]

T813 is for dc motors and t814 is for ac motors. it’s about 1k to replace the transformer.

[kunz82414]

Attachment 403466

I changed my transformer "tapping" around to match the 240v input of my L1, L2, and L3 legs based on the attached table in the photo. Turns out that it was setup for 210v. Over voltage issue seems to be resolved. Thanks for your guys' info and help; it got me going in the right direction.

[ianagos]

Yup that will do it. Glad your machine didn’t give up from the extreme overvoltage. If you didn’t know the manuals are available free all over the net and it shows the proper procedure for tapping the transformer.