Ugh, Mondays.....

[Dan Dubeau]

Greeted this morning with a z axis drive fault in our Haas VF2. Spent some time diagnosing that, and swapping servo amps to isolate the problem and save a service call, then the screen on the VF5 went black, so I spent some time digging around and figured it was just the LCD backlights that went out. Haas wants $1000 for the entire screen assembly, but I found just the backlights for $77. Still waiting on a quote for the servo amp, but I'm guessing around $1000-1200 from the last one I swapped last year in the vf5.

We used to have a guy that rebuilt them 10 ish years ago, but he's no longer in business. Would love to find another, or be knowledgeable enough to do it myself but I'm not quite there in my electronics knowledge yet to be confident enough to not fry someone elses machine......If it were mine, sure I'd roll the dice and poke around. There are some caps on the board that look like they got pretty warm....It's 23 years old.....If I had to guess just by looking at it, I'd start there and see what else got fried when they did.

VF5 still works, but it's pain holding a flashlight up close to see the #'s. Luckily muscle memory lets me move around the menus pretty good blindly, but for the onsee twosee stuff I'm doing right now it's a pita. It's funny how much of it is simple repetition though. Got through the entire power on, door lock disable, and homing routine with warmup first try with no light lol.

Had such a good productive weekend too. ha.

 

[Alexander]

The old CRT Haas machines have a pot to adjust the brightness. I wonder if your VF5 has anything like that. Not sure where you are located but in calgary we can get a repair guy from Tomas Skinner over to look at our little TM2P in just a couple hours.

 

[Dan Dubeau]

We're in Peterborough, On. Paying Sirco techs for travel from Toronto adds up.....I usually try and narrow it down, and diagnose issues with a service tech over the phone or email first before ordering parts. Thankfully it doesn't happen too often. Our machines have been pretty reliable over the years, and easy to fix when they go down.

No brightness adjustment on the LCD VF5. We had a power outage last week, and the screen developed a slight pink hue in the one corner that stayed when it came back on. Found a few posts on PM and other places outlining the same symptoms and fix, so I'm pretty sure this is the cause. It could also be the inverter board, but I didn't have a multi meter to check it's output today, so I gambled on the cheaper fix lol. For $100 shipped for the backlights, I'll give that a try first.

 

[Former Member]

Power spikes or dropping a leg on 3phase is brutal on equipment.

 

[Dan Dubeau]

Power spikes or dropping a leg on 3phase is brutal on equipment.

Yeah it's worse on the tools and the parts being cut when it drops though lol.

We've been pretty lucky with power outages during working hours over the years. Can probably count them on both hands with fingers left in the 15 years I've been here. Maybe half of those have led to catastophic tool failures and messed up parts being cut. I think this is the first time there's ever been any machine damage. Not a bad record I guess.

I wasn't cutting anything when it went off last week, but my coworker was. The tool had just retracted to go to another position when it cutout. Had also just saved our work too, when I heard the thunder and told him to save. Lucky.

 

[Former Member]

What can be done is a drop out relay (latch circuit) that if one or more legs drop out it drops the entire feed immediately requiring a manual reset of the power. As soon as power drops power to the machine stops and the motion ceases, spindle spools down slowly (inertia) reducing chance of damage to cutters or machine.
The second advantage a fast blimp will shut stuff down too and this is where weird and funky stuff happens usually not good.

Don't have this on my machine, yet.

Final thought in your machine anything that is powered by 110, through in high power surge protector (power bar), this protects you from spikes on the sensitive control circuits. Cheap and easy. All my control circuits are protected this way. Cheap and effective. Worst case it trips and everything shuts down as control stops.

 

[little ol' e]

Greeted this morning with a z axis drive fault in our Haas VF2. Spent some time diagnosing that, and swapping servo amps to isolate the problem and save a service call, then the screen on the VF5 went black.

Hey Dan, did you check or replace the batteries?

 

[Tecnico]

We used to have a guy that rebuilt them 10 ish years ago, but he's no longer in business. Would love to find another, or be knowledgeable enough to do it myself but I'm not quite there in my electronics knowledge yet to be confident enough to not fry someone elses machine......If it were mine, sure I'd roll the dice and poke around. There are some caps on the board that look like they got pretty warm....It's 23 years old.....If I had to guess just by looking at it, I'd start there and see what else got fried when they did.

Just taking a long shot from way out here but you mention that the LCD of the monitor still works (no back light) and the 23 year old caps look like they got pretty warm, would they be electrolytics? Are they bulged? I think your instincts are correct, those are flags that have me replacing caps in the inverter power supply.

I have seen so many electrolytics, typically in power supplies, that have bulged and often split the ends where they are scored in a cross. I'm sitting in front of two monitors right now that cost me maybe $10.00 between them for caps, the office was going to throw them out.......

Good luck!

D cool:

 

[Dan Dubeau]

Just taking a long shot from way out here but you mention that the LCD of the monitor still works (no back light) and the 23 year old caps look like they got pretty warm, would they be electrolytics? Are they bulged? I think your instincts are correct, those are flags that have me replacing caps in the inverter power supply.

I have seen so many electrolytics, typically in power supplies, that have bulged and often split the ends where they are scored in a cross. I'm sitting in front of two monitors right now that cost me maybe $10.00 between them for caps, the office was going to throw them out.......

Good luck!

D cool:

2 separate machines/problems. The caps were in the 2000 VF2 servo amp. The backlight was in the 2008 VF5. The inverter board in the VF5 looked great.

Those are a few of the suspect findings on the amp board. The backlights are ordered, servo amp not ordered yet ($1200 plus core). Decision out of my control now. The shop managers will talk it over for a week, then ask me what I think again and just do that lol.

I did remember to bring in a proper flashlight today, so that's a nice plus

 

[Dan Dubeau]

Hey Dan, did you check or replace the batteries?

Yes, I've replaced a few of the batteries over the years. The haas's are pretty good for battery life, but the Nakamura lathe needs them every year though. It takes regular d batteries, and requires 14 of them

 

[little ol' e]

Yes, I've replaced a few of the batteries over the years. The haas's are pretty good for battery life, but the Nakamura lathe needs them every year though. It takes regular d batteries, and requires 14 of them

I've had the odd drive axis faults in the past when firing up.
Knowing not to shut the machine down prior to changing the batteries saves many other things from going wrong..

Although you probably know this, some don't, and I'll say most don't...
Powering down the machine can cause loads of faults if changing the batteries while the power is down.

 

[Tecnico]

That's not a happy looking amp board.

D

 

[Dan Dubeau]

I've had the odd drive axis faults in the past when firing up.
Knowing not to shut the machine down prior to changing the batteries saves many other things from going wrong..
Although you probably know this, some don't if not most don't...
Powering down the machine can cause loads of faults if changing the batteries while the power is down.

Yes, that's an important thing to remember. Or else you'll be punching in a lot of parameters by hand from paper, and that's if you're lucky and have them. Many an old industrial machine has been boat anchored because of it. Old place I worked at had that happen to an old Taurus router.

 

[Tom O]

I just bought the battery kit from Haas for the TM1P, $157.00 for the dual holder and $18.00 for Duracell batteries this replaces the original single battery and plugs into the board so next time it’s just replace them one at a time. The old battery is removed.
Heres the video ( for Janger )

 

[Tom O]

Yes, that's an important thing to remember. Or else you'll be punching in a lot of parameters by hand from paper, and that's if you're lucky and have them. Many an old industrial machine has been boat anchored because of it. Old place I worked at had that happen to an old Taurus router.

Ain’t it the truth!!!!
Here’s my Albatross we can’t get it past looking for host.

 

[DavidR8]

But hey, it's got 256k of graphics memory

 

[Dan Dubeau]

LCD Back lights, and servo amp arrived this morning. If I would have known I wouldn't have drank 6 coffee's this morning trying to wake my brain up, but it went ok. They are very tricky to install, especially with shaky hands. Would not have wanted to perform lifesaving surgery today that's for sure. lol

Those are the old ones. Tiny little CFL bulb with a 90* bend in it x2. I did break one removing it, but the re install went much better. Especially once I got it apart and could see how I SHOULD have done it lol. No pics of the install, just wanted it done.

This was a bit of a gamble that paid off. I didn't have a scope to check the inverter board output (nor do I really have the expertise to diagnose at the level......) and make sure that also wasn't the issue, which it could have been, but this was the cheapest part to throw at it, and my confidence was helped by two similar threads on the web both stating the same problem (pink hue) and same fix. I've read conflicting info about the screen going into fault mode if the inverter board is not working, so the fact that the screen was still working, and I could use it with a flashlight held just right, also gave me a bit of confidence that the problem was in fact just the backlights.

Servo amp installed in the VF2 also, and it's back up and running. I did a little bit of everything today, from fixture design in the morning to some programming and machining, to machine repair. Sometimes I love the variety of my job. I need to fix a leak on the pressure switch on one of the compressors too, but there's a machine running a longer cycle. Might duck out to the driving range and hit some balls, then come back later to fix it before going home.

 

[Tom O]

So I got the battery holder because of the low battery warning for time/date they wanted the serial number to make sure it was the right part. I never looked at the board before just the Haas video’s they offer well when I opened it up there is a different board and the only battery there is a coin 2032 that I replaced and solved the low battery warning they did apologize for the wrong part and will give me a refund no problem.
Heres the board I have.