Spindle Fault 123 - 2 Haas machines simultaneously

Need some dire help or input here. We have been battling the (what appears to be) dreaded spindle fault 123 for about 3 months now. While I did some research on this, it appears as though the vector drive going bad is the common issue here. The thing is though, we are having this happen on both of our Haas machines simultaneously. We have a SL30 CNC lathe and a VF1 CNC vertical mill. We will run for a week or so without this issue happening at all, and then out of nowhere our machines will start crashing with this spindle fault 123 code. It takes down both machines at the same exact time 98% of the time, and every now and then it will be just one machine or the other.

When this first started happening, we called a Haas technician out. He tested the voltage at the machines, and moved the taps down one step to a different voltage range based off of his readings, saying that if it was a new install, that is where he would put the voltage range at. He mentioned that the vector drive in the SL30 appeared as though it was starting to go bad. We did not have it replaced at this point. After he left, the machines went down later that afternoon with the spindle fault 123 error. We were told by Haas that it sounds like an incoming voltage problem, which I would mostly agree with, but we have had a very helpful technician from our power supplier out here regularly for about 2 months now trying to track down the issue. He has hooked up a dramanice (sp?) machine for a week or two at a time on multiple occasions now to monitor the incoming voltage to our panel to ensure there are no spikes or drops that could be taking the incoming power out of the required range. Everything has looked smooth on their reports that they have been showing us.

The power company also brought up that sometimes when the vector drive is going bad on one machine, it could somehow affect the other machine as well. While this still confuses me as to how this would be possible, we have isolated each machine individually for a period of time by shutting off the breaker at the back of each machine (essentially removing it completely from our system) and running the other machine for a period of time. We witnessed this alarm happen to each machine while the other was isolated. Power to both machines are ran on their own individual lines from our main panel in separate conduits, so I do not see how a short in the line running to the machines could be the cause either.

We have seen this alarm happen in the middle of the day while running parts, we have seen it happen instantly first thing in the morning (like this morning) when we turn the machines on prior to even touching the controls, we have seen it happen in the middle of the day while the machines are just sitting idle, etc. There appears to be no real rhyme or reason to it. We have other machines running on 3 phase power within the shop that have been completely unaffected during this period - it is only the two Haas machines mentioned. We have not added any new machines to our shop recently, we have not done any electrical work, we have had no real unexpected events happen that would appear to have affected any electrical devices here.

To say we are frustrated and at a loss of ideas right now would be an understatement. We have already put a call in to Haas again this morning to try to get someone out here again for this issue, but I am not too hopeful they will be able to find a solution. We are pretty much at a standstill right now on production and we are desperate to find a solution. Does anybody have any input on what might be the cause of our problems?

Thanks ahead of time.

meter or megger your regen stack to ground, - obviously unhook it from the vector drives first. Its weird that both would go down at the same time. On my VF-4SS, the regen stack was shorting to ground, I later found out that was the "spindle noise" I was having around 7000rpm.

Ok, been using Haas since '98..WTF is a Regen stack? I could google it, but wont.
Both machines at the same time, that has to be incoming power. But they had a tattle tale on there and no power spikes. During that time did any faults come up?

Buck-boost transformer interfaces between the incoming and the machine tool panel. I have seen company's use these when they had sketchy power.
Gary

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Originally Posted by Kool Parts

Ok, been using Haas since '98..WTF is a Regen stack? I could google it, but wont.
Both machines at the same time, that has to be incoming power. But they had a tattle tale on there and no power spikes. During that time did any faults come up?

Buck-boost transformer interfaces between the incoming and the machine tool panel. I have seen company's use these when they had sketchy power.
Gary

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It is the box shaped thing on top of the cabinet with all of the holes in it. It has resisters in it that absorb the current that is generated when the spindle is stopping quickly.

Check the incoming power from the power company. Perhaps one of the phases went high and blew something. Measure the voltage between each phase A-B, B-C, A-C and see what you get. Since it hit both machines has to be something in common, power is logical issue.
Russ

Some random thoughts:
Could it be some other device that runs intermittently and is drawing more current on startup than it used to? Not necessarily a three phase device. Could the power company monitor the power at one or both of the Haas's instead of the power panel? How about electrical power connections that might have loosened from heating and cooling over the years or accumulated some corrosion? Good luck. That sounds really frustrating.

Something else to consider... Check for floating ground. We had some voltage fluctuations at various machines in our shop 2 years ago that was causing some problems. Different than yours, but the floating ground was the problem, so it's worth a look.

Good luck!

Mike

Beg, buy or borrow a real power logger like the fluke 1738 Three-Phase Advanced Power Logger Fluke 1738 | Power Data Analysis

It will catch issues a multitester is not capable of seeing. Like others are saying, a floating ground or bad transformer could do some funny things.

So, I have read your posts over the last week or so while still going through this. Haven't had time to respond until now. For everyone's curiosity sake, here is what we have found...

Last week we scheduled a site visit with both Haas and Duquense Light (our power provider) at the same time to get to the bottom of this. After a brief discussion, we all agreed that the incoming voltage was not the issue based off of the monitor reports that Duquesne Light was showing us. At this time, we had no other real options or ideas except to replace the vector drive on one of the machines and see what happened.

We first replaced the vector drive on the SL30 CNC lathe. The following day while working, the SL30 stayed running while the VF1 started crashing regularly with the "spindle fault drive 123". Two days later we had Haas come out to replace the vector drive in the VF1 and we have been running without issue now for about a week, so I think it is safe to assume that our issues should be resolved.

As stated, every now and then one machine would go down without the other, but 95% of the time it was both machines at the same exact time with the same frequency. We did some digging into when this started occurring to see if there was any other variables. This is when we remembered that towards the end of November, we had a power surge/outage over the weekend. When the machinist came in on Monday to fire up the machines, he noticed the fuses were blown in the control panel. He replaced the fuses and went along his way. It was within a week or so that the "spindle drive fault 123" errors first started happening. This power surge/outage was sort of overlooked the whole time because of the simultaneous crashes, and the fact that the machines were fused which should have protected the drives. We could only think it would have been incoming voltage issues that was the culprit. It appears as though that power surge somehow still damaged our vector drives on both machines, even with them being fused. It is still confusing to us as to how the vector drives on both units were crashing in tandem with each other so frequently, even if they both were damaged. Perhaps even though the machine was still within the correct voltage ranges required, just the occurrence of a slight voltage shift up or down (within the range) was triggering the machine to register the error.

So, I feel this is a rather dull finale to the big debacle. Appears the vector drives were the cause all along, but there was just a slight bit more mystery to it than usual.