[jaredsparks]

I was able to get the Real Time board out fairly easily. I checked the battery voltage and it was nearly completely dead. I replaced the battery and powered the board up and I now have the BIOS version: American Megatrends BIOS version 1.00.05.BR0 Now all I really need are instructions on how to get this board setup. I assume that I need to flash the BIOS ? I am hoping that most, if not all of my problems are caused by the bad battery. I went ahead and changed the battery on the WS board too. It was low on voltage also (2.65v).

[maver1ck]

The RT Bios files are on their way to you. Hopefully this takes care of everything you need to get your machine running.

[jaredsparks]

I will let you know how things go. Thanks so much for all your help!

[jaredsparks]

So I got the batteries replaced and RT board flashed and I powered the machine up. The control booted up with no errors. I was very happy! I pushed the green button to power on the servos and I get an ALARM 39-6. serverity 10 machine power off. This is the same issue I was having before I let the machine sit a couple years. I guess I need some direction on what to do now.

The alarm reads:

The axis drive ready signal [CR_AXES_RDY] and/or servo ready signal [S_SERVO_RDY] have not been received within the allowed time limit.

Thank you in advance.

[maver1ck]

At least you are back where you started.

Just out of curiousity, have you looked back in the error log to see what type of errors the previous owner was getting? There could be a long history of this alarm. It's not critical to know, but if it is a new alarm, could be as simple as a connector came loose during shipping.

If you got prints with the machine, you should be able to follow the signal pretty easily. +24V signal goes out to the spindle drive, then each of the axis drives and back to an input on the CNC. If the signal is broken anywhere in the chain, the control will see that the servo's are not ready. This alarm is indicating this signal is getting lost somewhere in that chain, you just need to figure out where.

[jaredsparks]

I have not looked at the error log. I've never operated a Acramatic control so I'm not 100% sure where to get at it.
To shine a little more light on the problem, when the green button is pushed, I get a red light fault on the spindle drive after about 10 seconds. The light goes out and the alarm comes up. That doesn't sound good. Any ideas what I my next step should be?

[maver1ck]

The control has a timer which starts when you press the green power on button. Depending on which software version you have, this timer is slightly different, and in the later versions I believe it could be set with the rest of the parameters.

If the control doesn't see the drive ready signals within this timer, the control will automatically cut power to the drives. They way you have described the problem, this is what it sounds like is happening. The control is faulting first, which removes the DC bus from the spindle drive which causes the spindle drive to fault (undervolt) because it doesn't have any voltage.

You need to watch the drives as you power up the machine to see if one of them is faulting first, or if one never gets to the ready state. If you are a one man shop, a video camera on a tripod is better than an assistant (at least you can trust the sequence of events it gives you).

If the spindle drive fault comes on immediately and 10 seconds later the control faults, then you need to look at the spindle drive, but that is not what you have described.

[jaredsparks]

I didn't have a null modem cable nor a laptop with serial ports. My buddy is coming over tomorrow and we'll check it out then. Thanks for your help.

[maver1ck]

It looks like I may have misread your post about the sequence of events at startup. If your spindle drive is faulting immediately when you press the power-on button, your next step is to read the error history out of the spindle drive.

Based on your experience with computers, you should be able to make a null modem cable pretty easily. And you don't need a laptop, one of your desktops will accomplish the same thing as long as you are willing to move it near the machine. Desktops are also more likely to still have a serial port so you won't need to mess around with a USB-serial adapter.

The copy of motionlink I have only works on 32-bit systems, that is why I mentioned needing a 32-bit computer. It is possible there is a later version of motionlink that is compatible with 64-bit systems, but I haven't researched it because what I have works well.