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Agie "wire broken" error...but it's not...

Milacron

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Joined
Dec 15, 2000
Location
SC, USA
Agie Sprint, with CD control...finally to the point of running a job. It starts up, axis move, wire/transport belts move, flushing comes on and then after about 5 seconds of action, it stops and get message no. 420 "wire broken or not threaded in"

Cures are-

1. Adjust Agiejet
2. check wire for bending
3. check wire transport belts
4. check wire shear

2 thru 4 seem ok to me, but not sure what they mean by the Agiejet...is that the auto wire thread water stream ? What I really want to know is where is the sensor that is giving this false message ?

Manual says message 420 is triggered by G3, DWC 05 or GL1. But I don't have an electrical schematic on the machine itself....so I have no idea if any of those are on the machine, or in the control.
 
Don, do you have the Manual for the machine? It will guide you through the wire threading quite easily. Before you start though, you should adjust the water jet for the auto threader. If you take a close look at the upper head, you will see 3 small Allen heads that are used to adjust the water jet, again, it is in the Manual. There are also 2 springs that activate the wire shear in the upper head, check and make sure that they are not broken. The wire shear might cover the opening where the wire has to come through, If that is the case, the wire will push up and you will see the wire coming off the brake wheel on top. If you don't have a manual, I will make some copies and email them to you. let me know. I don;t have the exact same model of the Sprint, but all the parts and procedures are pretty well the same.
Rolf B.
 
Actually the wire thread jet works well enough that if I "help" guide the wire with my hand it feeds into the lower guide ok but then I still get this error. The question is what sensor is actually generating this error and where is it ?
 
Shut off the power. PITA, I know, but better safe than sorry.

There should be two slotted screws on the backside of the cover behind the Brake wheel. (the wheel the wire goes around on the upper guide ) Remove the screws and pull the cover straight off.

Inside, make sure that the encoder drive belt (an o-ring, essentially) is present and that it is on the pulleys of both the brake motor and the encoder.

If that checks out, it is sometimes helpful to disassemble the encoder (you have to take off the front cover to get at those screws) and clean it by pulling the shaft out of the housing. Check the ball bearings while you're at it & give 'em a little WD-40.

That usually solves it.
 
420

Is wire threaded ?
If yes:
1. Carbide rings could be dirty - if wire drive is running and you grab the black ring that the wire goes around on the brake assembly it should snap the wire
2. Wire could be slipping in the belts - Try reducing the wire tension to the lowest value and see if you get the "false 420". If it stops either the wire is slipping in the belts or slipping in the carbide rings on the brake assembly.
3. No feed back from brake assembly to DWC - There is a red light on the DWC board in the control. If you turn the brake assembly slowly you should see the light go on and off
4. Bearings in encoder on brake assembly may need cleaned

:typing:
Larry McNamee
visit: EDM Corner
 
1. Carbide rings could be dirty - if wire drive is running and you grab the black ring that the wire goes around on the brake assembly it should snap the wire
Where are the carbide rings ? Do you mean the two rings that form a sharp "V" trough that the wire rides in around the brake on the upper guide ?
 
Yep. Those are the carbide rings Larry's talkin' about.

Oh, and just to clear things up, there should be four slotted screws on the backside of that cover I mentioned above. You only need to remove the outer two.
 
1. Carbide rings could be dirty - if wire drive is running and you grab the black ring that the wire goes around on the brake assembly it should snap the wire
2. Wire could be slipping in the belts - Try reducing the wire tension to the lowest value and see if you get the "false 420". If it stops either the wire is slipping in the belts or slipping in the carbide rings on the brake assembly.
3. No feed back from brake assembly to DWC - There is a red light on the DWC board in the control. If you turn the brake assembly slowly you should see the light go on and off
4. Bearings in encoder on brake assembly may need cleaned
1, 3 and 4 checked out fine. The encoder belt was a wee bit loose but not slipping far as I could tell...but I shortened it anyway...and while 0 ring belt off I could spin the encoder easily...so that wasn't it.

So maybe wire slipping in belts but it sure seemed tight in there to me. As it turned out I hadn't noticed that the program in memory had very high wire tension and wire feed rates...almost at the limits. So I tried the program at more moderate tension and feed and the error finally went away and I was finally able to complete the program (without any material in place anyway)

Now to solve the resin bottle mystery...
 








 
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