I have an early '90s Star CNC lathe with a Fanuc OTT-C control. I can't get it out of the "Not Ready" state. I have had the machine for over 15 years, so I am familiar with it, but this has me stumped.
At first I made the mistake of thinking this was the same as E-stop. It is not. I checked everything related to the E-stop string. However, this is a different circuit. What I have now is just the words "Not Ready" blinking at the bottom left of the screen when I turn the power on. There are no other alarms on the control or any of the drives. The hydraulics DO come on. If I press the E-stop button, trip the hard over travel switches, or trip the door interlocks, then I get an "Emergency Stop" message on the screen, which I can then reset and go back to the not ready state.
I've gone through all the troubleshooting I could with the tech from Star. He thinks it's a Fanuc issue. The Fanuc techs had me check a bunch of diagnostics. That all looked normal (to them). What they've got me looking at now are the servo drives. There are three dual-axis drives. When the machine is powered up, there are two green LEDs that should come on: +5V and DRDY. I'm not getting the DRDY lights. Fanuc says it's weird for those to not come on and not get any alarms. They suspect a bad axis control board. But there are 2 axis control boards. One handles two drives and another handles the third drive. I'm not getting DRDY on any of the three drives. So both axis control boards are bad?
If you've made it this far in reading my ramblings, I thank you. Tomorrow, I am going to see if I have the same of either of the axis control cards in any of my machines so that I can swap them out. I don't have high hopes of that changing anything. Then I will probably throw in the towel and have Fanuc come out to diagnose the machine. If anyone reading this has any ideas or suggestions, I'd love to hear them. Thanks!
At first I made the mistake of thinking this was the same as E-stop. It is not. I checked everything related to the E-stop string. However, this is a different circuit. What I have now is just the words "Not Ready" blinking at the bottom left of the screen when I turn the power on. There are no other alarms on the control or any of the drives. The hydraulics DO come on. If I press the E-stop button, trip the hard over travel switches, or trip the door interlocks, then I get an "Emergency Stop" message on the screen, which I can then reset and go back to the not ready state.
I've gone through all the troubleshooting I could with the tech from Star. He thinks it's a Fanuc issue. The Fanuc techs had me check a bunch of diagnostics. That all looked normal (to them). What they've got me looking at now are the servo drives. There are three dual-axis drives. When the machine is powered up, there are two green LEDs that should come on: +5V and DRDY. I'm not getting the DRDY lights. Fanuc says it's weird for those to not come on and not get any alarms. They suspect a bad axis control board. But there are 2 axis control boards. One handles two drives and another handles the third drive. I'm not getting DRDY on any of the three drives. So both axis control boards are bad?
If you've made it this far in reading my ramblings, I thank you. Tomorrow, I am going to see if I have the same of either of the axis control cards in any of my machines so that I can swap them out. I don't have high hopes of that changing anything. Then I will probably throw in the towel and have Fanuc come out to diagnose the machine. If anyone reading this has any ideas or suggestions, I'd love to hear them. Thanks!