[gugu]

Hi there. I have a CHURCILL HC/10 1987 SISTEM FANUC 10T lathe and something is not working properly, because i can't get it started. I worked with it before and it worked great, but suddently it doesn't work anymore. First i thought that the motor was broken and i sent it to be fixed...but after setting the motor back, the problem persists. What happenes is that the fuses fails when turning on the machine. Two of three fuses always fail when turning on the machine (but NOT the same two..they fail kinda' randomely, but allways two of them fail). I called for some electricians to have a look at it but they couldn't find the problem. It's been an year since it stoped working and since then i had to decline a lot of orders 'cause i can't work with it anymore, and it's my only CNC lathe. If anyone has an ideea about what the problem could be, can you, please, help me? Thanks.

[bborb]

Couple of thoughts,
Possibly some MOV's have shorted from a power problem (they're supposed to for protection). Also, an LCR meter can check transformer's integrity.
HTH

[gridley51]

I have Churchill HC 3/15 and HC 4/10 lathes with GE2000 controls.On these the Contraves spindle drive is powered up when you switch the main isolator on.Possibly the spindle motor field is powered at that stage as well.I can`t remember.These machines are very easy to troubleshoot electrically.
If you need electrical drawings or spares for this machine they are available from BSA Machine Tools in Birmingham,England who own Churchill.
Their contact details are on their website at www.bsamachinetools.co.uk
I could give you the email address of their electrical engineer who is very helpful but you really need an electrician who would understand what he told him.
Mark.

[gugu]

Thanks gridley51. Can you give me the email address of their electrical engineer, because i called for an engineer i know and he didn't find the problem. If the engineer you speak about can give some directions, maybe "my" engineer could work it out.

[gridley51]

Gugu,I will ask him.What is your email address as I don`t want to post his here.
Mark.

[gugu]

my email adress is [email protected]

[gugu]

Hi there again!

It's been a while since i had those problems with my machine, but, happily, i managed to fix it back then. Now i have a different problem.

Because of some chips, one of the limit switches on the X axis didn't work and i got an over-travel on that axis. I wasn't around when that happened, so one of my colleagues, not knowing what the problem might be, swapped the card for the x axis with a spare one, that we have. When he did that, all of the error messages disappeared but he didn't have any movement on any of the axes. Then he put back in place the original card, and the same thing happened. We have no error message what so ever, but we can't move any of the axes (no manual jog, no zero positioning). We can open/close the chuck, start/stop the cooling system, but no movement on the axes.

Also, on the Z axis, the current position on the screen is -299,00, but the real position is definitely on the + side (keeping in mind the position where the last program was run).

I manually moved the X axis off the limit switch, but nothing really happened. Another strange thing is that now, when i turn on the machine, the control automatically enters the SYMBOLIC FAPT mode (although before this all happened, the machine would start in NC mode).

Could this be because of some parameters that were messed up when swapping the cards? If i enter the SETTINGS menu, on the first screen, there are a bunch of lines (0 and 1), but they look like this: the first line is ALL "1" and the rest of the lines are ALL "0". If i remember correctly, i think i saw these lines a while ago (before this crash) but they had an "apparently random" set of "0"s and "1"s on every line.

If any one of you owns a lathe like this, could you, please, check for me the SETTINGS menu on your machine, and let me know what values you have there? Or if you suspect another reason why i encounter this problem, any help would be appreciated.