forum.cncdrive.com

I am retrofitting the control system on my Shizoka B3V Mill using DG4S-08020 servo drives.

The mill has the original Fanuc servo motors, I’m using the warp9 smooth stepper ESS and CNC4PC C62 BOB. I’m using Mach3.

I am ready to tune the drives using the programming stick.

I’m wondering if anybody has any suggestions/precautions or other information relating to doing this task.

Thanks,
Chuck

Could someone please respond.

I would like to get some input/advice before I power up these drives and tried to tune them

If anyone has done this before I would appreciate any kind of a comment.

The comment can be as simple as just follow the instructions. Just looking for some input.

Thanks,
Chuck

It's going to be hard to give advice since you don't have a specific problem. It sounds like you are looking for advise on how to tune a servo system. The instructions for servo configurator are pretty good. There is also a lot of documentation on servo PID tuning out there. Best advise I can give is make sure you have an estop button working and make sure the drives are able to control the servos off of the mill. Easier to deal with if you have a runaway scenario. CNC zone probably has a ton of info on the actual nuts and bolts of PID tuning.

Derek

Thanks Derek,

Really appreciate your input.

I will see you what I can find on CNCzone.

Just a bit gun shy since I smoked some electronics on the last go around With this controls update.

Regards,
Chuck

I finally got around to powering up the Mill and was able to control all three axes through Mach3. Everything worked fine.

I then went to tune the motors and connected the PRG01 tuning board to the X axis DG4S.  I ran the ServoConfigurator3 program; it listed 1 drive w/serial number A4007YZf, which does not match the serial # on my DG4S.  I tried to connect to the drive but it reported "Drive not answering, data not loaded".  No other functions in the config program were active.  After attempting to connect as described above, the green status light on the drive went off.

If I unplug the USB cable and click "Check device list" then the listed serial number goes away. Reconnecting the USB and pressing again makes the same (wrong) serial number appear.

I tried plugging the tuning board into the Y axis drive assuming it would report a different serial number; the serial did not change, it still reported A4007YZf.  Here too after trying to connect the blinking green status led goes off.

At this point I found the drives would no longer respond to Mach3 commands through the C62 board. At power-up, both drives do flash the green status LED, which  goes out again if I try to connect through the tuning board.  I have not tried to connect the tuning board to the Z axis and it still functions OK through Mach3.

I tried to do a firmware upgrade through the tuning board and realized it appears the drive is being seen as a Whale3 model. When I ran the firmware upgrade, it reads "downloading firmware for Whale3 V3.05".    I realize now this is probably the same problem/reason why it is seeing the wrong serial number for the DG4S and likely why it will not connect to do the tuning board.

Why would the tuning board see the wrong model and serial number?

Why would connecting the tuning board cause the drives to go completely inoperative?

Does anyone have any ideas as to what’s going on here?

The drives which work with programming sticks do not show their own serial numbers to the servoconfig3 software, but always the serial number of the programming stick is shown.
Our older drives which has the USB circuit built into the drives showed their own serial numbers.

What you should not do is you should not hot-plug the programming stick. And by that I mean that you should first power the drive down, connect the programming stick and then power the drive up. And when removing the programming stick you should power the drive down, remove the programming stick.
Hot-plugging could cause problems, if you connecting the programming stick when the drive is already powered, firtst because the programming stick can send some random data and second because the pins are small, so it is possible to short them out accidentally which could cause a temporary short circuit which could toggle the power, cause an under voltage lockout etc.
So, it's possible that the PID parameters or the firmware got broken in the drive if the prog-stick got hot plugged, however you can still update both doing a firmware update.

To update the firmware in a case when the firmware or PID datas got broken you should closely follow the instructions in point 3.6.1.1 in the Servoconfig3 manual: http://cncdrive.com/downloads/Servoconf ... al_eng.pdf
The powering sequency described in that point in the manual is important.

It is also possible that the programming stick got broken and the drive can't send data properly if the Servoconfig3 software can't determinate that the drive is a DG4S.
I advice to first read the above mentioned firmware update procedure steps and try to follow them closely to see if it helps and if not then you should get a new programming stick, however I think it is much more likely that it is just broken firmware or PID datas than it is a programming stick issue, because the programming stick using isolation, so it is not easy to damage it, I never seen one damaged.

Thank you so much for the quick and detailed response.

I will follow your directions and Report back
Chuck

I followed the instructions on point3.6.1.1 with no success in getting the proper firmware loaded. The firmware that got loaded was for Whale3. Same as I got when I did it the other way.

I tried to attach a screenshot but could not.
(Basically after I hit “yes” the download started and completed and when it was finished it said it was the Whale3 firmware )

So based on your assessment, it sounds like my programming stick is broken.

Considering you had not seen this before, is there anything else that could be going wrong here that’s giving me this issue?

As I noted in a previous post the XYZ axes operated fine through Mach3.

When I connected the Programming stick to the X axis and then tried to use Mach3 afterwords, I could not get the X axis to respond to any commands through Mach3.

The same thing happened on the Y axis.


I did not use the Programming stick on the Z axis and it still works fine through Mach3

Please let me know what my next steps should be.

Thanks,
Chuck

Here’s a screenshot of what I got when I tried to update the firmware.

Note message down at the bottom

Drive not answering, data not loaded.

This is an update.

Thanks to Arturo at CNC4PC I was able to get the servos tuned, I believe fairly well.

But Compared to another machine that I have of similar size, the servos on the machine I’m working on make a loud humming noise that I don’t hear on the other machine when the servos are sitting idle.

Attached is a screenshot of the settings I’m using on all three axes.

The servos are Funuc 12amp 2.7NM 2000rpm 56V

Can anybody recommend any different settings to illuminate the Hum on the servos when they are setting idle?

Thanks,
Chuck