[voytek1]

I would like to thank every one who tried to help me to solve the problem and pinpoint to the specific device.
I think I definitely narrowed it down to the Baldor's vector drive.
In my attempt to confirm my conclusion I contacted Baldor and was given a name and address of a company that is an authorized Baldor repair center and deals specifically with their vector drives.
I was hoping to to get a suggestion as to either a board or a component that is failing.
So I removed the drive from my machine, drove 130 miles and left the drive for a bench test.
In about a week I was called and told that they could not test it because Baldor could not supply them with any schematics for this particular drive type.
The guy was trying to be very helpful and devoted at least 1 hour of his time to talk to me, however because a lack of documentation he could not make any definite diagnosis.
So I drove the drive back (130 miles) home and re-installed it on the machine.
I used the machine for last month in it's limited capacity (only on 2500 RPM and without stopping the motor between operations).
I also totally took apart the drive several times looking for something indicating obvious failure of some component but with negative results.
Every day the usability of the drive became more and more limited.
Each time I stopped the machine I had to wait longer and longer for the drive to actually start working and allow me to turn the CNC controller on.
Initially the waiting time was just about 15 minutes or so but then got several hours before I was able to fire up the machine again.
If I pressed the “Start CNC button” while a keypad on the vector drive was not showing anything the spindle load indicator was showing a light bar pulsating from zero load to about 40% every second or so.
As of today the drive refused to start after six hours of waiting so I think I should finally declare it legally dead.
I am ready to replace it with the new H2 type of a drive.
The irony is that I am still not really 100% sure that this is going to solve my problem.
I want to thank again every one and in particular Alex Gitzel who spent a lot of time with me on the phone and Neal as well as Steve (scadvice) whose hints were very helpful in narrowing down possible causes of symptoms of what started as “Rumbling sound from the spindle motor area”.
Because your advices I was able to eliminate the spindle, the motor, the motor control board and other components leaving the vector drive as a final culprit.
Even though I could not get to the single component within the drive I consider it as a great learning experience.
I hope all the 1147 readers of my post also found it interesting and useful.

Thanks

Voytek1

[dksoba]

I would like to thank every one who tried to help me to solve the problem and pinpoint to the specific device.
I think I definitely narrowed it down to the Baldor's vector drive.
In my attempt to confirm my conclusion I contacted Baldor and was given a name and address of a company that is an authorized Baldor repair center and deals specifically with their vector drives.
I was hoping to to get a suggestion as to either a board or a component that is failing.
So I removed the drive from my machine, drove 130 miles and left the drive for a bench test.
In about a week I was called and told that they could not test it because Baldor could not supply them with any schematics for this particular drive type.
The guy was trying to be very helpful and devoted at least 1 hour of his time to talk to me, however because a lack of documentation he could not make any definite diagnosis.
So I drove the drive back (130 miles) home and re-installed it on the machine.
I used the machine for last month in it's limited capacity (only on 2500 RPM and without stopping the motor between operations).
I also totally took apart the drive several times looking for something indicating obvious failure of some component but with negative results.
Every day the usability of the drive became more and more limited.
Each time I stopped the machine I had to wait longer and longer for the drive to actually start working and allow me to turn the CNC controller on.
Initially the waiting time was just about 15 minutes or so but then got several hours before I was able to fire up the machine again.
If I pressed the “Start CNC button” while a keypad on the vector drive was not showing anything the spindle load indicator was showing a light bar pulsating from zero load to about 40% every second or so.
As of today the drive refused to start after six hours of waiting so I think I should finally declare it legally dead.
I am ready to replace it with the new H2 type of a drive.
The irony is that I am still not really 100% sure that this is going to solve my problem.
I want to thank again every one and in particular Alex Gitzel who spent a lot of time with me on the phone and Neal as well as Steve (scadvice) whose hints were very helpful in narrowing down possible causes of symptoms of what started as “Rumbling sound from the spindle motor area”.
Because your advices I was able to eliminate the spindle, the motor, the motor control board and other components leaving the vector drive as a final culprit.
Even though I could not get to the single component within the drive I consider it as a great learning experience.
I hope all the 1147 readers of my post also found it interesting and useful.

Thanks

Voytek1

Did you end up replacing the spindle drive? Did this fix the problem?

[voytek1]

Yes.