Need some help: Allen Bradley 1398-DDM-009 series A v. 1.36 servo drives problems.

Hi,
I've spent some time haunting the Allen Bradley knowledge base but I cannot seem to get a good answer. I'm hoping that someone here has some experience and can give me a clue.

I have two AB 1398-DDM-009 Series A version 1.36 drives. I also have UltraMaster version 1.62 software on my laptop. These are used drives, supposedly good, purchased on ebay.

I've hooked the drive up to a 6 pole servo motor (6 pole BLDC, 210v, with optical encoder of 1250 lines, and single ended outputs of A, B and I and the three hall sensor (emulators). I know I will need to create a new motor profile for this motor, i'm just trying to access the drive software at this point.

I've tried getting the drive going using the AB Ultra 100 drive installation manual.

When I provide 15 volt dc power to the correct terminals, then provide 120 volt AC to the line input terminals, I get a green blinking LED. Not Green/Orange blinking, just green blinking. I have not been able to determine what this indicates as a fault. I don't seem to find it in the manual, other than it saying you have to read the fault code using the serial communications with the ultramaster software.

So my second problem is that I cannot get communication with the drive (either one) over serial. I have used an arduino as a USB>serial converter and it passes the loopback test, and when I use the ultramaster software to search for the drive, I see the transmit LED blinking on the arduino but no receive blinking. The ultramaster does not find the drive. So no communication. I am only connecting pins 2,3 and 5 from the serial connector on the drive.

I assembled the cables for J1 J2 and the serial port myself, using proper connectors, and they go to breakout blocks where I have wired fault clearing switch and enable switch as per the initial power up diagrams.

Both of the drives give me the same blinking green behavior and both have no communication. Which leads me to think something is wrong with my setup.

I would appreciate any help or insight you can give me on this problem. I will have some standard AB cables soon, and I also have some baldor motors that have differential signals for the encoders that I could try hooking up.

Thanks in advance for any help you can give me.

Michael

I cannot help you with the new motor profile. But, have you tried to select PC Set Up from the Communications menu in ULTRA Master.? Maybe whoever had the drive before had it set to 19200 instead of 9600 baud, COM3, COM2... Also make sure you don't have software like a PLC RsLinx using your COM port... I hope this helps!