haas mill and lathe strartup issues!!!!!!! HELP!!

I am new to this forum. just wondering if anybody had any advice for me? recently having some problems all over the shop floor. my haas vf1 battery went dead and the power went out. I replaced the battery and reloaded all the parameters and setting. I got all the alarms to clear but now the power just shuts off. Sometimes its 30 seconds after I start it up and sometimes its 5 mins. I have checked the auto off setting and it is set correctly. I get no alarms it just shuts down and reboots automaticly. then I lost a spindle drive amp on my mori seiki cl-203. so I am looking for a place to repair or buy a new amp for the mori. reasonably priced. Then to top it all off my haas gt 20 lathe faulted out last night for a dc buss overvolt. I did some work checking voltage on the power supply and other things in the electrical panel. now when I shut it down and turn it back on it tells me the servo is off, emergency stop was push, which it was not pushed, and a low air pressure alarm. I am know that calling the haas tech would be my best option but I do not have the money to do that rite now. my closest dealer is over 200 miles away. they rake me over the coals just to come to my plant, before they do anything! Looking for any advice that could be helpful. I am thanking anyone in advance that can help me. im kind of at my wits end with all 3 machines going down within a month.
Haas vf1 is a 1997 with a 20 hp motor with vector drive.
Haas gt20 lathe is a 2007 20- hp motor with vector drive.
Mori cl-203 is a 1997 10 hp motor.

I had my battery go out on my TM2P the very day I got it powered up (used machine). I tried everything in my power to fix it myself, got to where you are now with no alarms or anything, but still couldnt get it to work. Had to resort to HFO, they had to basically wipe the memory and start from scratch. He was there for two hours, but an hour of it was helping me to get the machine setup, so probably figure an hour to fix the parameters issue.

Some food for thought. The memory backup is there to keep the memory contents in a known state. When the battery dies and the memory is powered up, the state of the memory is random and unpredictable. You must go though an initialization procedure to clear the memory before you can use it.

I bet your problem is that the memory was not cleared after you attached the batteries.

The spindle drive on your Mori.. The spindle drive, its not just a SPINDLE drive on a MACHINE TOOL.. They are used on other things...
It doesn't need to be the same one, it doesn't need to be the same manufacturer... Its a big VFD, takes inputs, sends a few outputs.

I bought a new spindle drive for one of my Fadals.. Then when the other Fadal's drive puked, I was able to find a drive for almost free
that had come off an idustrial AC or something... My advantage, I had an example with parameters, and all the wiring done...

Just some food for thought... If you have more time than money..

My thoughts on having all of these problems in such close proximity.. Do you have a power problem???? Are you getting surges off the
grid? Do you have a short somewhere in the building, or on the run into the building? Is there a nest of squirrels living in your transformer(s).
Are the start capacitors on your compressor somehow occasionally backfeeding into your system....

Just seems like too much all at once, and it seems like a bad electrical problem to me(from the outside).

Sometimes the biggest problems are the stupidest things, and I can't count how many times I've discounted simple basic things and then
spent time and money chasing a problem that turned out to be that simple basic thing I discounted right from the get go, because it could
never be "That"...

Just tossing some ideas at you.

Example of a stupid one... The solder joint in a fuse cracked... That resulted in a few run aways, and quite a few scrapped parts, and lots
of random, erratic errors...

I have also found that when one thing breaks, all the other machines and systems in your shop get jealous about all the attention the broken
thing is getting, so everything else breaks so that you will pay attention to it also.. Fortunately this only happens once a year... The
unfortunate part, it ACTUALLY happens once a year.

Good luck on it... Once you get it all fixed, if your machines are like mine, you won't have to worry about it again until 2017.

would this be something I could do? clearing the memory? I already lost all my programs because I didn't have a back up. stupid mistake that I will never make again. some of my old machines only have an rs232 port and the laptop I was using is no longer working. on those machines I have taken pictures of the programs so at least I have a printable copy. thank you for taking the time to respond to my post.

Bobw thank you for all the info. my co-owner is an electriction. I have asked him several times to check the incoming power. I know he "phased down" the power on that side of the plant but I do not know a lot about the power stuff. is there somewhere I could look to find out which spindle drives are compatable with my mori? I have tons more time than I do money rite now.!! so I can do the research, just wondering if you knew a place to start? I think the haas mill problem is something stupid that I am overlooking. so I know what you mean about trying to find the stupid stuff. also you are so rite about everything breaking down once a year, seem like it happens when the seasons change. I think its murphys law, when one think breaks you find broken stuff everywhere you look! Thanks again for taking the time to respond to my post. It is very nice to know that other people experience similar problems and are willing to help people with the knowledge they gain from fixing those problems.

I'd give HAAS or the HFO a call and see if you can get some phone support on how to reinitialize the memory after replacing the battery. If they aren't complete douches, they should at least telly you how to do that over the phone.

Perry Harrington said:

I'd give HAAS or the HFO a call and see if you can get some phone support on how to reinitialize the memory after replacing the battery. If they aren't complete douches, they should at least telly you how to do that over the phone.

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Call Oxnard / tech support / and go though the voice runaround but once you get to mill support ask to talk to SAL he is the man!
He will know your problems without asking anybody else or looking in a manual. If you get someone that says you should just call your local office ask for his name (so you dont get him again) and call back later. They will help you get though it.
Gary

Bobw said:

The spindle drive on your Mori.. The spindle drive, its not just a SPINDLE drive on a MACHINE TOOL.. They are used on other things...
It doesn't need to be the same one, it doesn't need to be the same manufacturer... Its a big VFD, takes inputs, sends a few outputs.

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Maybe so on a Fadal, almost certainly not so on a Mori. Probably a Fanuc serial AC spindle or yaskawa equivalent. Absolutely not an easy swap for a common VFD.

bethany said:

Bobw thank you for all the info. my co-owner is an electriction. I have asked him several times to check the incoming power. I know he "phased down" the power on that side of the plant but I do not know a lot about the power stuff. is there somewhere I could look to find out which spindle drives are compatable with my mori? I have tons more time than I do money rite now.!! so I can do the research, just wondering if you knew a place to start? I think the haas mill problem is something stupid that I am overlooking. so I know what you mean about trying to find the stupid stuff. also you are so rite about everything breaking down once a year, seem like it happens when the seasons change. I think its murphys law, when one think breaks you find broken stuff everywhere you look! Thanks again for taking the time to respond to my post. It is very nice to know that other people experience similar problems and are willing to help people with the knowledge they gain from fixing those problems.

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All of your problems scream of power issues. I'm not a big believer in coincidence when it comes to this kind of thing! "Phased down" doesn't mean anything that I am aware of.

gregormarwick said:

Maybe so on a Fadal, almost certainly not so on a Mori. Probably a Fanuc serial AC spindle or yaskawa equivalent. Absolutely not an easy swap for a common VFD.



All of your problems scream of power issues. I'm not a big believer in coincidence when it comes to this kind of thing! "Phased down" doesn't mean anything that I am aware of.

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I think that is a startrek reference

im not familiar with Oxnard. where are they located. would I need to call a certain location to talk to SAl?

I also still believe we have a power problem. my co-owner is one of those guys that says " if it was a power problem then why aren't all the machines hooked to that transformer having problems? Power doesn't work that way it cant pick and choose which machine to pick on." and of course I have no defense because I don't know anything about power. I believe he does not want to do all the work of retracing the lines and checking voltage on everything. Im not sure that now it makes a difference because we have lost a good portion of the good working machines. Anything I can say to him to make him think it was his idea? That's the type of guy he is.

Oxnard? not familiar with them? are they located in florida? im in Pennsylvania? would Sal help me even tho I don't own any of there equipment?

gregormarwick said:

Maybe so on a Fadal, almost certainly not so on a Mori. Probably a Fanuc serial AC spindle or yaskawa equivalent. Absolutely not an easy swap for a common VFD.

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That's no fun, and kind of sucks.. I went with the Yaskawa's on the Fadals, one had an old Baldor and the other had a POS old Mits. What I liked,
and still like about the Yaskawa's... Support, its not a black box... The problems can be diagnosed, they will walk you through it over
the phone, and you can buy parts to fix 'em. The used one I had bought a while back died... Yaskawa gave me support over the phone, for free,
and a new board was around $300 and she was up and running...

sorry

I just looked it up you mean haas automation in Oxnard California rite? what is Sal's last name? Do you really think he would help me with out wanting to send a local service tech to come to my plant? All calls in the past I have made to haas that is the answer they give me. One time I only called about a code to unlock my machine after so many hours and they wanted to send a tech. I had to call back and call back to get them to send me fax with the number on it. So my experience with them is, we want your money!!! I have had at least 2 running haas machines since 96. So I like the machines just not the service.

bethany,

I don't have anything to offer beyond what has already been said. What I can tell you is that many of us know what it's like to have the shit hit the fan all at once, many of us know what it's like not to have the money needed to repair something the right way, many of us know what it's like to knock yourself out day after day only to walk into a shit storm day after day all over again, and many of us know what it's like to have a partner who dumps it all on you.

Hang on man we do what we do because we are good at it and you will get through this.

Make Chips Boys !!

Ron

bethany said:

I also still believe we have a power problem. my co-owner is one of those guys that says " if it was a power problem then why aren't all the machines hooked to that transformer having problems? Power doesn't work that way it cant pick and choose which machine to pick on." and of course I have no defense because I don't know anything about power. I believe he does not want to do all the work of retracing the lines and checking voltage on everything. Im not sure that now it makes a difference because we have lost a good portion of the good working machines. Anything I can say to him to make him think it was his idea? That's the type of guy he is.

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That's a crazy response. The machines are all different, they are different ages, and have different sensitivities to incoming transient spikes or under-voltage conditions. I agree with BobW that power incoming may be part of the problem, and look at the fact that you've got a machine that's 9 years old, and (2) 19-year old machines with issues. Electronic/electrical power control stuff ages like everything else, and things like input filters and capacitors take a beating. Smack your partner with a 2x4 and tell him to wake up.

bethany said:

I just looked it up you mean haas automation in Oxnard California rite? what is Sal's last name? Do you really think he would help me with out wanting to send a local service tech to come to my plant? All calls in the past I have made to haas that is the answer they give me. One time I only called about a code to unlock my machine after so many hours and they wanted to send a tech. I had to call back and call back to get them to send me fax with the number on it. So my experience with them is, we want your money!!! I have had at least 2 running haas machines since 96. So I like the machines just not the service.

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Yes HAAS in Oxnard. They have helped me many times with no questions over the years. Doesn't matter if they are under warranty or not... Actually if they were under warranty they would insist that the local HFO do the work.

Don't know Sal's last name, just a real knowledgeable and friendly guy in Tech support.800-331-6746 ask for mill support.
Gary

Just wanted to thank everyone again for there advice! Also wanted to let you guys know that i called Sal at Oxnard and he was awesome! Thank you Gary. We figured out that i needed a low volt power supply so i swapped the one from the broken lathe. One machine working....2 to go. Wish me luck.

Yep he is the man! Sounds good but I would echo some of the other comments about the power. Waaay to much of a coincidence with three machines down.
Gary