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IndustryArena Forum > MetalWorking Machines > Milltronics > Partner 1F w/ Centurion 5 won't keep servos enabled
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  1. #1

    Partner 1F w/ Centurion 5 won't keep servos enabled

    I've got a '93 Partner 1 with a strange issue.
    When I turn it on, it boots normally to the estop message. I can press reset and clear it, and home the machine.
    After somewhere between 2 and 60 seconds later, it goes into an Estop state again, even if I haven't moved anything. If I hold in reset I can operate the machine and it works perfectly otherwise.


    I have jumpered across all of the limit switches to rule those or a broken wire out. No change.
    Spindle drive is fine, no errors unless the machine triggers the external fault line on estop.
    I changed our relays on the mcode board to see if it was a flaky relay. they all seem to work, don't know if the latching circuit for the enable relay could go bad.

    I suspected bad capacitors on the 160VDC power supply, replaced those. It stopped blowing the 1A fuse from capacitor - to case gnd, so that's something. No change in Estop behavior though.
    It is getting 220.75V 3ph input, so nothing is out of spec there. Shop power is 250V but I ran it through some buck/boost transformers upstream. 110v transformer is outputting 110-111v.

    Any idea what else I should check? 24v/15v power supply seems OK but I haven't put an oscilloscope on it yet, so if it's dropping out it's too fast for my multimeter.

    I really want to have this running as a second op machine in my shop and not on a truck to the scrapyard, but I am stumped.

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Dec 2017
    Posts
    72

    Re: Partner 1F w/ Centurion 5 won't keep servos enabled

    Sounds like one of the servo drive cards or the spindle vfd is getting hot and throwing an estop flag. Someone else may have a better way, but I would probably try unplugging the drive cards to see if the problem goes away. If I recall, having a card unplugged wont cause an estop. If the problem goes away, plug one axis in at a time to find which axis is causing the failure then its a matter of figuring out if its the motor or the driver. It goes without saying, do all plugging in and unplugging with the machine powered off.

  3. #3
    Quote Originally Posted by ImTippmann View Post
    Sounds like one of the servo drive cards or the spindle vfd is getting hot and throwing an estop flag. Someone else may have a better way, but I would probably try unplugging the drive cards to see if the problem goes away. If I recall, having a card unplugged wont cause an estop. If the problem goes away, plug one axis in at a time to find which axis is causing the failure then its a matter of figuring out if its the motor or the driver. It goes without saying, do all plugging in and unplugging with the machine powered off.
    I'll give that a go, haven't tried unplugging an axis driver yet.

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Jul 2010
    Posts
    548

    Re: Partner 1F w/ Centurion 5 won't keep servos enabled

    Hi Npolansky, in your post " If I hold in reset I can operate the machine and it works perfectly otherwise. " Holding in the reset when coming out of E-Stop jumpers around the "E-Stop string" if hold in the reset and it continues to work, then there is a problem in that string.

    Get with the machine and a meter and give me a call.


    sportybob
    952-288-6340


    I will be at the shop for a couple hours tomorrow, If not, then back to work on Wednesday 8am - about 9PM

  5. #5

    Re: Partner 1F w/ Centurion 5 won't keep servos enabled

    It doesn't give an instantaneous E-stop when I let go of reset. Sometimes it will last up to a minute before it goes back into Estop, other times it's just a few seconds. I'll call wednesday.

  6. #6

    Re: Partner 1F w/ Centurion 5 won't keep servos enabled

    There was a fluorescent light in the enclosure flickering...causing noise in the 110v line...causing the Estop signal intermittently...flickering lights, I tell you.

    Sigh.

    Well, it works now. Tomorrow I am going to northern tool to replace those original fluorescents with some 12V LEDs like I have in my HAAS.

    Points to the oscilloscope for helping show the noise in sync with the light. I didn't even think about the lights, forgot that fluorescents barf EMF when they aren't working perfectly.

  7. #7
    Join Date
    Jul 2006
    Posts
    130
    Quote Originally Posted by npolanosky View Post
    There was a fluorescent light in the enclosure flickering...causing noise in the 110v line...causing the Estop signal intermittently...flickering lights, I tell you.
    Thanks for the follow-up, interesting finding

  8. #8
    Join Date
    Dec 2017
    Posts
    72

    Re: Partner 1F w/ Centurion 5 won't keep servos enabled

    Yes, thank you for following up. That is an interesting issue that would have taken some head scratching to find

  9. #9

    Re: Partner 1F w/ Centurion 5 won't keep servos enabled

    Hopefully it helps the next person who runs into this!
    Now to stick it all back together, clean it up, drop some proper windows in, and we might just have a running machine. I'll poke my head over into the Fusion 360 postprocessor thread once I've done that. My Partner 1 has an ethernet port, serial port, and a floppy drive. I'm going to have to figure out the best way to get programs onto it and what it's internal memory size and blocks-per-second processing rate is so I can adjust my workflow accordingly.
    My HAAS has 80K of memory, so most of the time I just use DNC and give it 100k to 1MB programs drip fed over serial, and utilize the smoothing and tolerance parameters to make sure I stay under 100 blocks/second to ensure full speed machining even on 3d surfacing or HSM roughing toolpaths.

    IIRC the milltronics has a 486 running at at least a few hundred MHz vs the HAAS's 16MHz processor, so I am hoping it'll run some surfacing ops smoother. We shall see.

    Other things I'll need to tackle: This machine didn't come with a coolant tank, so I'm going to need to sort out mist coolant or fabricate a tank. It's plumbed for mist coolant but I have yet been unsuccessful in making it work- I'll probably rip it out and replumb it for a Noga or Fogbuster setup.

    To be continued, thanks all for the help!

  10. #10
    Join Date
    Jul 2010
    Posts
    548

    Re: Partner 1F w/ Centurion 5 won't keep servos enabled

    Hi Npolanosky, NICE find! It might be just be a bad starter in the lights, I have some nice LED lights available, UL listed. I have tried the 12V units and unless the heat sink is big, They will fail.

    ( driving in the wind is different then sitting in an enclosed space.)

    I have some of the "bent" windows, but shipping would suck. Home depot has 3/16 Plexiglas, heat with a hair drier and bend slowly.

    go to F10 (util) F8 (info) and text me a pic of what is there. This will tell what software and motherboard you have.

    The spray mist ( if you have the spray mist unit) is controlled on the front panel button "spray mist" it turns on a solenoid valve to run the spray mist.

    Give me a call and we can discuss that as well.

    sportybob
    952-288-6340

  11. #11
    Join Date
    Sep 2010
    Posts
    529

    Re: Partner 1F w/ Centurion 5 won't keep servos enabled

    I built my own MQL style sprayer quite a few years back, works very well for me, but I machine 99% aluminum... here is a dropbox link to the unit:

    https://www.dropbox.com/s/wsggc0nmez...rayer.pdf?dl=0

  12. #12
    Join Date
    Sep 2020
    Posts
    3

    Re: Partner 1F w/ Centurion 5 won't keep servos enabled

    So as a bit of an update to this thread, since I have recently purchased the Mill from Nick, I was having an issue where upon start up, it was in an odd state, where it wasn't in a "reset" state, nor was it in an "estop" state. Surfing through the manual I stumbled upon the key commands for a standard keyboard to call an estop (Alt+F2) which would work to put it in an estop state to where I could actually hit reset and have it turn on. However, if I hit the estop button, it would estop for a few seconds then start blipping between estop on and off, but not reset and typically coming to rest after a bunch of beeping at being in that in between state. I was able to get a copy of the wiring diagrams for a model G (this is a model F) and went through the entire estop wiring, and finally found the issue. At some point in it's life, the ground reference wire was instead wired to the negative side of one of the large capacitors through a resistor, which is then connected to another resistor before going to ground, leading to the erratic behavior. Swapped it over to gnd and no more estop crazy behavior, the mill comes up successfully in an estop mode each time, the reset button now works 100% of the time, as does the estop button.

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