Last night we had a crazy storm rip through Pittsburgh, which got me thinking. Fortunately I knew it was coming and had my machine off and unplugged. Does anybody use or have recommendations for a UPS that would run long enough to allow an orderly shut down? Or, if that’s way too expensive, surge protectors that would kill the power and protect the equipment even if the shut down was sudden?
Thanks,
Garth
I have run my PC and controller off a UPS for many years to handle any small power glitches. I get them a lot where I live, especially during spring winter storms. Nothing has had to run off the UPS for more than a few seconds.
The spindle is of course not covered by this. With the EX controller, I’d expect that any outage to trigger a drive fault and the program would stop.
I’ve gone through a lot of UPSes from different brands over the years. My observation is they all fail way earlier than they should, and lose capacity much sooner than they should. They all use 12v sealed batteries that are relatively inexpensive to replace if you go with a generic brand.
I guess the best one I’ve had luck with is from APC, model BR1500MS2.
If you’re on EX you can pretty much kill the machine and start right back up where you left off with the job restart feature
But that assumes your computer is backed up by a UPS, correct? If the power glitch blows out the power to your computer and causes it to restart, then CNC12 also reboots, and your program is lost, I assume. Perhaps a laptop will immediately run off its own internal battery if the power outlet goes dead, but a desktop would die without the UPS. Or am I missing something?
Nope, you can yank the power cord out of the control and gracefully restart a job:
This is an internal video I made for a customer that shows the process of starting from a total power failure
Thanks Eric. That’s really helpful!
Garth
I love how-to videos like this. I knew this was possible and haven’t had to try it yet, but this video likely saved me hours trying to figure it out.
Thanks Eric!
A question that might relate to this…
Is there a way to cycle thru the Gcode and have the machine move line by line?
So with the EX controller and CNC12 knowing that a power outage occurred, and perhaps with the servo motors giving feedback for when they are not responding according to the speed of the gcode, does that mean (hypothetically, of course) that one could run a very long program overnight without anyone actively monitoring the machine? I’m thinking of a very boring, low intensity, small step-over 3d carving job.
Or does Avid still default to the legal necessity to claim that you should not run the machine without active monitoring?
I don’t think there’'s any “legal necessity” on our part… but as a matter of good shop safety it’s not wise to leave a machine unattended like that.
All it takes is a spinning bit in wood for just a little too long and you’ve got a fire.
Just look up some videos of people starting spoilboard fires drilling holes. It doesn’t take much at all.
My personal advice from someone who ran these machines full time:
Take advantage of the resume feature and just turn off your machine at night, home it out in the morning and pick up where you left off. The risk is not worth it.