Hi, I hope I’m missing something obvious and there is a simple fix for this….
I’m using the EX controller with a plug n play 4 hp spindle on 4896 pro cnc. My spindle is powered up but won’t spin during a cut program or during the spindle warm up routine. Here is a screen shot of what I see:
I just finishing resurfacing my spoil board (no issues), I ran the utility to re define the work surface and then went to run a new cut file and the spindle wouldn’t turn on and there was no fault codes that I could tell, it just start running the program with out actually spinning.
I have tried restarting, I even reloaded a new router profile and ran through the configuration wizard. My VFD screen reads F100 when it’s a rest but when i tried to run the warm up routine it changed to F199 but still never started spinning… I appreciate any feed back you can provide.
So this was an exciting 24 hours!!! Long story short, everything seems to be working again. I’m not sure what went wrong but I know what I did to fix it.
Using the VFD manual and pro subscription to Chat GPT, I reset and then reprogramed the VFD because I though that might be the problem - turned out it wasn’t but that was a fun process
Like I said before, the acorn board was putting out analog voltage and the vfd was registering a frequency but the spindle wasn’t turning until i changed the following setting in the acorn wizard:
Once I slide the slider right, away from the default setting, it just started working. I would like to know if anyone else has experienced this or something similar. Thank you
This may have also been a random static issue. One other thing i did before things went haywire was to blow the dust out of cabinet while it was powered up which, in hind site, is probably a bad idea. Beyond not blowing it out while the control box is powered up is there anything additional I can do for grounding or is that already designed into the machine? I have AVID’s PRO 4896 with Leg Kit, AVID EX controller w/ steppers and AVID Plug & Play 4 HP Spindle.
I am glad this worked… however just to state for others who may read this: Please don’t do this unless you’re WELL versed in VFD setup. VFDs have a TON of programming options… They’re made for all kinds of applications beyond spinning a spindle and as such they can be configured in all sorts of ways that can be dangerous to you, or your spindle. With a few wrong parameters you can actually burn up a spindle.
We program our VFDs on a special programming rig here at HQ. There are a very specific set of parameters we setup that have been vetted by us and the manufacturer of the spindle and VFD.
We work really hard to make sure that your spindle works as intended, and that you (the user) don’t have to do this.
This MAY have solved it temporarily, but it’s not the solution. Please contact support. There’s a chance you might have a loose wire or a sticky relay and they can help you through this.
Absolutely!!! I was in no way versed in VFD setup and I wish I had never gone in there but it does appear to be working out. I checked everything with a multi meter and my frequency and voltages all align with the commands I’m entering in the MDI. I will be reaching out to AVID support to see if I can get a list of the parameters they set to cross reference with the parameter list that I have created just to double check that everything I did was correct for the long term.
Also, this morning went back in to the set up wizard and slide this bar back to how it is shown in this picture just to see if I could recreate the problem but it didn’t and everything still seems to working the way I would expect.
I’m not sure what caused this or if anything I did actually fixed it but next time the machine does something un expected I will slow down and try to explore the problem more methodically.
