This time it happened when my air pressure went low (I have it as a warning). So I got a 9047 Pressure Low, and then a 490 Reset Initiated, Press Reset to Clear.
Which is really strange!
All my wires seem fine…and once it is in the state I can’t get it out until I reboot the MCU (ie: off/on). Restarting CNC12 won’t fix it, so it is somewhere in the hardware’s software side of stuff. Flipping my e-stop manually does trigger the estop state, but returning it off doesn’t reset anything.
This is super odd.. I have not seen a failure like this before.
I know I am repeating myself, but it would be good t start with the wiring… I just had another customer who had a loose wire in their E stop circuit after assuming it was good.
I would check the screw terminals at the Acorn board for the E Stop (input 1) follow that to the Interconnect board and make sure the connectors are all tight and seated well there.
The Acorn inputs go to an ethernet plug on the interconnect board. (J8) then they exit via a ribbon cable (J7) and head to the “860” board which is the board that has all of the M12 plugs on the side of the control cabinet.
Check that ribbon cable.
From there it goes to the M12 cable to the actual E Stop switch. I’d recommend opening up that switch because there are screw terminals in there that should be checked for tightness as well.
Now, if you find a “smoking gun” doing that check I think we have it. If not, if there is some repeatable way you can reproduce then I think we can pin it down:
-If you can reproduce this you can “software bypass” the E stop (basically force it on) If doing that fixes the problem we can pin the problem down to the interconnect board or the 860 board.
If this is not repeatable and is random another approach you could take would be to wire an E stop directly to input 1 on the Acorn, bypassing all of internal wiring and circuit boards in the control box. Shorting pin 1 to ground initiates an E stop closes the estop circuit. Opening it tells the controller there’s an Estop.
If you go a long time without any issues we can likely point at the interconnect board as the issue (the 860 is a very simple board and almost never fails)
I am interested in seeing the logs because it will record if the actual E stop has been registered as being pressed, or if something else caused the E stop. (You can see that from PLC detective, but the logs keep it saved for reference later)
I took a look at the wiring again and tightened all the bolts, pushed all the ribbons a bit to make sure they are seated. I don’t see any problems. I’d have to disassemble things to get deeper in to check everything, but this isn’t a big enough deal for me to want to do that. The last time it happened was back in June when I first reported it.
Do you want to see another log file? Let me know which one.
Yeah, it is interesting that my air went low at the same time the error happened; it may be related for some reason.
I can’t reproduce it; if I could reproduce it, I could probably narrow down what is causing it.
I don’t really feel like it is related to the actual estop circuit, but something else; I was hoping PLC detective would have gave me enough info…but I couldn’t figure out what got it into the state. So, I don’t really want to hack up a wire to my estop to bypass it, as it is so random and rare.
I’ll poke at PLC detective when/if it happens again!
What do you have that air pressure input set to? Go into advanced and see exactly what the wording is for that input in the wizard.
If it is set to anything other than “pressure low message” than that is the culprit.
If it’s just set to message I still think this could be electrical. That e stop signal passes through that interconnect broad, and my suggestion of wiring your estop directly into input 1 on the acorn bypasses every circuit board in the control box. If it’s not an input setup issue this would be the way to determine if it’s hardware.
Ah, if it was only that easy! It’s set to “Warn Me”, and the ATC code I wrote loops when the user forgets to turn on the air, and waits until it is on before unclamping the spindle.
It probably is electrical, but if it was the estop wire opening, it would give a “406 Emergency stop detected” in the log as the first thing, and then when cleared it would give a “335 Emergency stop released”. The order in the log is “490 Reset Initiated, Press Reset to Clear” - so this leads me to believe it isn’t related to the estop wiring at all.
yeah… that’s not a bad conclusion to draw… I would hope that the logs are written in the exact order the events happen, but if they all happen at the exact same time I wonder if it picks a random order, or alphabetical, numerical, or some other order?
And just so we’re on the same page: If you go to the advanced side in the Acorn wizard you have your air pressure input set to “Pressure Low Message”, not something else?
There are a few other air pressure input settings you can pick from, and some have the ability to put the machine into a reset state if needed.
Something else you could do, is you could just disable the air pressure input altogether (temporarily) and just watch the input manually for your looping script. #5000x will let you look at an input even if it’s not configured.
On my machine - S30C spindle - the air sensor is part of the logical estop chain, so I can’t even run the machine without air pressure. Why? It’s not just the ATC; the spindle itself needs a constant airflow to keep dust out of the bearings. Do the Avid spindles need constant air?
(Not to mention all the other air-activated doo-dads I’ve got)
But I will admit I broke too many things trying to do an automatic tool change without air pressure before I wired in the air sensor
When running, yes. That’s an automated part of the smart spindle. It will feed air into the case pressure when the spindle is running. The control/spindle will not operate if there’s not air.
You are talking about Case Pressurization. I’ve got the Hiteco spindle; it is recommended to run case pressurization all time to keep dust and abrasives from getting in the spindle. But it’s not completely necessary when cutting wood. I don’t like the machine to e-stop when air is off; I like to jog it around and run the warmup routine before I turn on the air. I usually find out right away when I do a tool change.
