Industrial Controls People?
- Thread starter Mike_H
- Start date
OP
It is. I found that site earlier... But trying to get one on order at 430 est on Friday to be delivered early am Monday proved tough.
Thanks for digging for me!
OP
Yeah...That's something I need to address. I'm new to the company and I'm finding a few things that are lacking. One of them is spare parts...We have a BUNCH of spares....but not really the right spares. I have a young buck engineer that is working on our PM program. He's gonna get real familiar with the machine manuals and recommended spares...
I had that site bookmarked for some reason a long time ago. Don't own a CNC machine.. don't use one. Still trying to figure out why I had that bookmarked.
SPECWAR
TJ Enthusiast
OP
Yeah. This whole down machine thing has been a fiasco from the start. The error reported led us toward the e-stop circuit. After speaking with the factory and troubleshooting ourselves, we thought the one of the door safety switches was bad. Bought a new one of those (cuz they don't generally go bad...because, you know, safety). That wasn't it. So, at this point the factory may have well sent us the shruggy shoulder emoji....and we were on our own. We found a whole other control cabinet that didn't have any type of door or anything on it, because I noticed a control cable and wondered where it went. It was the robot (for loading and unloading parts) controller. As soon as we opened its interlocked door and turned power back on...the blown fuse indicator was on.
So, if you're keeping track at home...you'll notice that the error code told me something in the e-stop circuit and really, it was just a bad fuse causing the robotnot to initialize, so I didn't have a robot ready signal...SO freakin frustrating.
A...we didn't know these fuses even existed. All other circuit protection on the machine is by resettable breakers.
B...Didn't know that controller was there.
C...Factory was Zero help and actually set me back two days
D...The machine is German, and the ladder is in German.
E...The fault codes leave LOTS to be desired.
Unfortunately, in the world of CNC multi-axis grinders (which this machine is) they are ALL German or Swiss, so, I might have to get good at interpreting technical German. This isn't the first time I've run into fault codes leading me on wild goose chases on this type of equipment. I'm not a controls engineer either, I've just picked up enough to be dangerous over the years of dealing with down equipment and I'm curious. I learned a WHOLE lot about Fanuc controls and German electrical schematic standards over the last couple days.
SPECWAR
TJ Enthusiast
Ran into similar controls issues in China and Russia. Customer always wanted my tech to attempt to jumper things out to make it run. When I was on site I would never allow it because I knew they would leave it that way just to run production.
Ok fuse story time, my son would say of course you have a story.
So a long time ago we had an auto parts store. One day a kid comes in for a glass fuse.
I tell him it's so much per fuse, or x amount for pack of five. I tell him it's cheaper per fuse if he buys a pack.
He says he needs just one, well a few minutes later he comes back for another one.
Then he comes back to buy a third one I ask what are you doing? He says well as soon as I put it in it blows. I hope to buy a good one.
I had to explain those were good ones, the bad ones would allow the wire to melt.
So a long time ago we had an auto parts store. One day a kid comes in for a glass fuse.
I tell him it's so much per fuse, or x amount for pack of five. I tell him it's cheaper per fuse if he buys a pack.
He says he needs just one, well a few minutes later he comes back for another one.
Then he comes back to buy a third one I ask what are you doing? He says well as soon as I put it in it blows. I hope to buy a good one.
I had to explain those were good ones, the bad ones would allow the wire to melt.
OP
LOL. When I was on the phone, trying to get one of the "super special" fanuc fuses shipped to me Friday afternoon, One of the guys asked me how many I wanted. Similar...I said more than one...who knows what's gonna happen when I actually try to run the machine. That is future Mike's problem!
OP
No, Ewag compact line. Pretty amazing machine, all things considered. Wish I had two or three more of themWait, its a Studer?! Dammit, I have a different cabinet for that
The nitrogen generator went down at our shop, shutting down a million dollar fabrication cell for 3 days. We got the replacement controller board, and the the generator fired right up and we were back in business. I mentioned to the boss that maybe we should get a spare controller board. He said "nah, those hardly ever go out". The board costs $1500. We lost $100K in production.
Don't you just love having a limited world view Boss !The nitrogen generator went down at our shop, shutting down a million dollar fabrication cell for 3 days. We got the replacement controller board, and the the generator fired right up and we were back in business. I mentioned to the boss that maybe we should get a spare controller board. He said "nah, those hardly ever go out". The board costs $1500. We lost $100K in production.
He really should be promoted for saving that $ 1500.00 .
Some people are just educated beyond their intelligence.