Replacing battery in a Haas control?

Hi!

I bought a almost virgin Haas TL2 a few weeks ago.
From time to time she complains about her battery (CRC-error in offsets).
Had a quick look inside and found a rechargable 3V on the mainboard.
The lathe is built spring 2008, so the battery should be OK, but its a VARTA
The main question is what happens of I unsolder the battery? Will I lose all information? What information?

Any information?

TIA,
Nick

We had a similar issue on a VF-5/50.
I spoke with HAAS and they said that this alarm (#201) is generated if the machine thinks a parameter has changed in the time between when it was powered off and back on. (I guess it scans at power off, then scans again at power on to see if anything is different.) You can actually go to alarm history to see if a parameter changed.

To resolve this alarm:

- Pick any random parameter to use.

- Go through procedure for changing a parameter, and change this chosen parameter to another setting (1 to a 0, or 0 to a 1).

- Then change this parameter back to its original setting. (basically change the parameter, then put it right back.)

- Power off the machine and back on again. This should take care of alarm.

As for the onboard battery, they said you must plug in an external battery BEFORE removing the one from the PC board or data will be lost. (I'm not exactly sure what data will be lost)

Hope this helps.

Kevin

Thanks, changing a param (from an unused offset) was a temporary fix I found out.

So I'll have to unsolder the old battery and a new one in with a parallel supply.
This info helps (but doesn't make things much easier).


Nick

Replacing back up battery

Hijacking this thread as it has the proper title.

My '92 VF0 is not yet under power and the voltage is 3.xx just below the minimum.

1) What do I lose if the back up battery fails, all parameters etc. or simply the spindle and feed hours.

2) What is the method to replace, piggy back then cut out original or R&R under power.

Thanks

Definitely expect to loose all machine data such as parameters, offsets, programs, etc. I believe the software may need to be reloaded to but not 100% certain of that. There is a brown 2 pin plug socket righ above the battery where you can plug in an external battery with leads, available from HFO P/N?. Once you have the external battery plugged in, then it is safe to remove the old one.

Regarding the CRC error, sometimes you will need to toggle the parameter, power off then back on, change the parameter back to what it was originally. Cycle power again and see if the CRC error goes away.

Good luck.

Haas TM 1P Battery Replacement and Full System Recovery Procedures

Haas TM 1P Battery Replacement and Full System Recovery Procedures

if i can install an external battery , is there any reason i need to reinstall the old one ?
it just sounds redundant , but i may be missing something.......just sayin' ......

tnmgcarbide said:

if i can install an external battery , is there any reason i need to reinstall the old one ?
it just sounds redundant , but i may be missing something.......just sayin' ......

Click to expand...

Wouldn't that eliminate the possibility of being able to jumper in the backup to retain everything while changing out the one on the board?
Thus when you unplg the jumpered one you would loose everything.
I think the idea was to swap out the one on the board before failure.
Don't ignor the low battery voltage warning until it's too late.

no.

the idea was that the jumpered backup itself serves as the battery and i wouldn't need to tear down the
freakin' machine control 3 boards deep to change a battery that could have easily been mounted in an
accessible location in the first place .

if they could provide a remote jumper for a backup, backup battery then why the fuck not put the battery
there in the first place -where you could swap it out without turning off the machine .

the haas is my favorite cnc control . the FANUC 0-M is my least favorite control , but it has the batteries where you can easily get to them.....go figure.

What provdes power to the board when you change that battery? Or would you just plan on reloading everything whenever the battery needs changed?
Ever had to reflash the BIOs on a PC motherboard after replacing the battery? Better have saved a copy of the .BIN file before the computer wouldn't boot!

if i could replace the battery with the machine powered up , it wouldn't be an issue.

Just started to get the low battery voltage red message on startup of my TM1. Any idea how long I have before I get the error message and possibly loose memory? I am ordering parts today. Should I leave the machine on or leave off until plugging the aux. battery in?

Regarding that nice video on youtube about battery replacement, I've been thinking about the risk of using the plastic battery holder instead of directly soldering in the battery. Haas may have chose to directly solder in the battery to eliminate the possibility of loosing good contact of the little prongs and having a loss of memory.

Any ideas on this?

And is the battery with the three leads spot welded on available?

I picked up battery holders from Mouser, I wish I had 3 since I used one for the jumper pack. I ended up putting that on the board too.

Sounds like it takes at least a few weeks for it to totally drain, I used mine for a couple weeks before I worked up enough courage to swap them, and at the time I thought there was only one battery on board and I was monitoring the voltage through the backup battery that was already installed. The backup battery will get drawn down to the same level as the existing battery within a few days, so keep that in mind if you think you can just leave it in there and go on with your life, not a good idea.

My VF-4SS has 2 batteries on the board! They don't seem to be connected together like the tech support person said so I connected them on the back of the board while I did this operation.

I marked all the cables with a silver sharpie as they came out, even though they all have tags with the location of where they go. I also took pictures of everything as it came out just for backup.

Here I am at the 3rd board in, where you see 2 batteries. The one on the left is fine, the one on the right is only reading 1.3v!!!


Carefully remove the board with the backup battery attached(mine didn't really need to be attached at this point but I did it for added safety)


It was obvious which battery was connected to the backup due to the voltage readings being the same at the batteries, I started with that one by desoldering the battery, then soldered in a battery holder and installed a surefire battery I had on hand


I then took the extra pads and jumpered the positive side between the batteries because they didn't seem to already be there, the grounds were tied already.


Desoldered the other and dropped it in, I actually chopped the positive side out of this one so I didn't have to disturb the jumper wire on back.


I removed the jumper wire, cleaned up the excess solder and reinstalled everything.

Are you sure that it is not connected through an internal layer to something else? It appears that BT1 connects to J6 as well, is that right? It could be that BT1 is a spare and you just use a shorting connector at J6 to temporarily connect it whilst replacing BT2? I am not sure that connecting these batteries in parallel is a good idea. Any difference in potential between them will cause one to drain the other.

BT1 is connected to J6, BT2 is not. If they were connected in parallel, they would have the same voltage across the batteries.

When I got the alarm, BT1 was at 2.7v, I replaced the battery on the pigtail with a new battery and it brought it up to about 3v but BT2 was still under 2v.

There's a spot on the 3rd board back in the stack that allows you to add an external battery. I grabbed a battery pack at radio shack and the appropriate pigtail and soldered it up then connected it to the board. (after backing up the parameters .... just in case) I swapped out the dead battery on the board.

In retrospect now that I'm done, I could simply add longer pigtails to my holder so it's easy to get to and swap out the baterries from the holder while the machine is powered up. Why HAAS didn't do that in the first place is beyond me... but hey its on an older HL1BB that has served me well for years.

Did you chck the other pins on J6 for voltage? It seems odd to use a four pin connector for just two wires but it could be they just use four pin connectors everywhere to reduce parts count. If BT2 does not connect to the header then it must not matter if power is interrupted whilst changing the battery. My '90 VF-1 has only one battery that keeps the parameters and programs in RAM. The program is in ROM.

magno_grail said:

Did you chck the other pins on J6 for voltage? It seems odd to use a four pin connector for just two wires but it could be they just use four pin connectors everywhere to reduce parts count. If BT2 does not connect to the header then it must not matter if power is interrupted whilst changing the battery. My '90 VF-1 has only one battery that keeps the parameters and programs in RAM. The program is in ROM.

Click to expand...

That is a darn good idea. I'll have to remember this for next time - I'll make up a new pigtail with some connectors I have here with all 4 wires so I can test this.

Back to my battery replacement. I successfully changed out the battery with the plastic battery holder. In order to prevent the battery falling out, I tied the battery, similar to the original zip tie, in place with some waxed nylon cord tied in a bow. It is quite secure and to change the battery, the cord can be untied and re-tied. But when looking at the other plastic battery holder, (they came in packs of two), I noticed some small features that appear to be for some kind of battery retaining clip.

Does anyone know if this is what these features are for and if a clip is available?

This mod makes changing the battery next time from two hours to two minutes.

Thanks!

JFettig said:

I then took the extra pads and jumpered the positive side between the batteries because they didn't seem to already be there, the grounds were tied already.

Click to expand...

That's because one battery backs up the control memory and the other battery is for the Dallas DS1286 non-volatile RAM and Clock module, next to the battery.

Those clock modules have a lithium battery in them and an external Vbat input. The battery not connected to the "ext bat" connector is for the Dallas NV RAM module, which then uses its internal lithium battery as a backup battery when you replace the one on the board, so no external battery is needed while that is replaced.

You risk causing harm to the control by connecting both batteries in parallel. The SRAM in the control consumes far more current than the NV RAM module, which drains the batteries faster.

Those SureFire batteries are good for 1400mah at 3v, the Tadiran Lithium cells in AA are good for 2400mah and in C they are good for 8500mah.

Older 6264 SRAMs have a standby current of 1 microamp typical, if they are the LP variant, the 62512 SRAMs that are used on later HAAS controls have a standby current of 60 microamps.

With 4 (seen in another image on google) SRAMs totalling 4 megabytes of storage, the draw is 240 microamps when the machine is off. That's about 1/4 of a milliamp, or 4 off hours for every 1 mah of the battery. That means the longest theoretical life of a 1400mah battery is 5600 off hours.

There are 8736 hours in a year, which would suggest if you run 1 shift a day for an entire year, the batteries need replacement once per year, on average.

There are plenty of factors I'm not including, like the power draw fluctuates on the SRAMs depending on certain input states.

But anyway, those Dallas NVRAM modules have a finite life to their builtin lithium batteries. Tying the batteries together will double your SRAM retention life, but you risk losing whatever HAAS has stored in those 50 bytes of NVRAM (like a machine serial number or maybe the option codes), potentially FUBARing your self in the process.