I too have just received my ex controller (upgrade) and have everything connected, all the software installed and have run the wizard all without issue.
When I launch my profile and get to the CNC12 and VCP screens everything looks normal, I clear the reset button and the machine powers up the servos. All the servos illuminate with an amber light. When I jog the machine it very roughly moves and comes to a halt with the error “9031 Drive Fault!”. Every axis throws the same error. I disconnected all the proximity sensors, and removed all the servos but one and still get the same error.
I plan to call in to Avid later today, but thought I’d give the forum a shot first. Many thanks for reading.
What you may be experiencing is your VFD not being programmed correctly. Let me explain:
We use one input for a fault signal for the motors AND the VFD. This means that at any time you are cutting if your VFD goes out, or a motor fails it will trigger that input and put the controller into a “DRIVE FAULT” state.
What’s nice about this is that you get an immediate notification when your motors fault out, AND you can’t start cutting unless your VFD is on and working (no more breaking a bit because you forgot to turn on your VFD!)
If you have a VFD that is not brand new from us, it does need to be programmed so that the controller doesn’t read it as in a fault state all the time.
For those that have routers, other VFDs (not ours) there is a way you can bypass the VFD fault. There are jumpers on the servo board that for each axis AND the VFD you can move to bypass faults. If you have our VFD I would highly recommend NOT bypassing signals and spending the few minutes to program your VFD properly.
Noted. I think we can make this message more clear.
Hi Eric,
Just wanted to verify if it got it right. We have to power the VFD on, even if we are just using the laser, or we’ll get an error? Not a problem, just want to understand correctly.
jim
That’s the preferred method, however you can bypass the VFD fault by moving a single jumper switch if you’d prefer not to have to turn on the VFD. In your particular case with a lot of laser work you might want to do that.
If you move the jumper for the VFD fault bypass you can leave it there however you’ll just have to remember to turn on your VFD when you want to route.
Thanks. I may actually leave it that way. There has been more than one time that I’ve forgotten to turn on the spindle when switching from laser to spindle work Once or twice I wasn’t fast enough with the stop button and that was a mess.
When you’re on a servo system the motor faults and the VFD faults share the same input. That input is configured to “Drive fault” which has some specific logic for servos. Most importantly is that drive faults are ignored until homing is done.
When you have the motor set to a stepper system that fault gets reconfigured to “Spindle Fault” which is look at all the time. So what was happening on your setup is that you couldn’t even home because the control thought your spindle was faulting.
Once or twice I wasn’t fast enough with the stop button and that was a mess.