Fadal VMC20 88 control keyboard not working, but it works in my VMC4020

I started getting some intermittent inoperative keys on the newish Calmotion keyboard on my 1994 VMC20 on Friday. It was the second day of a bit of a heat wave. Only about 80 degrees, but considerably warmer than it has been.

I started it up yesterday (Monday) and the keyboard was giving me trouble again. Eventually it stopped working completely. I swapped it with the keyboard/1090 board interface assembly from my 4020. I still got intermittent inop keys in the VMC20. I could get the keyboard/1090 from the VMC20 to work in the 4020 though.

I did a few more swaps, including trading 1090 boards. I got the VMC20 to work just long enough to get a job halfway set up. Then it started acting up. I even had the pendant wheel and axis switch start acting up. It got stuck in X-axis jog and coarse mode regardless of the position of the axis or resolution switches. I shut it down and restarted. It worked for a bit, although the T key stopped working and eventually the keyboard stopped working completely.

I have done a few more swaps back and forth to no avail.

One extra annoying thing is that a special slitting saw that I only have one of is stuck in the tool carousel on the VMC20, so I had to reprogram the toolpath for another slitting sawblade to set the job up on my 4020.

Two days down and I'm going crazy. I have called Calmotion and had an ongoing email dialogue with a technician there, but not getting it figured out. The latest thing to try is swapping the 1040 board from the 4020 and to check the cable going out of the 1090 board.

I called FadalCNC, but the tech was out.

I called the local Fadal guy, Eya, but he is out of town. The guy I talked to didn't know enough to help. I was supposed to get a call back from another tech sometime.

Since all your problems are based in the pendant,I would look there first. Check cabling and check voltage on the power supply. This would be tough to diagnose without being at the machine

Tedger said:

Since all your problems are based in the pendant,I would look there first. Check cabling and check voltage on the power supply. This would be tough to diagnose without being at the machine

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Thank you.

So I swapped the 1040 card and it did nothing. Then I moved on to the 1030 card and that fixed it. For fun I put the old 1030 card back in and it works. So it seems that the issue was a bad connection/corrosion on the 1030 board.

Unfortunately the keyboard that was working fine in my 4020 is not working now. I think swapping it back and forth messed up the very poorly made ribbon connector between the keyboard and the 1090 interface. So I ordered a new keyboard from Calmotion.

Many thanks to Glenn at Calmotion for helping me troubleshoot this issue.