Parker ACR EPL and Compax3

If you understand the title of this thread, then post up LOL!

For the last two years, I've been running a machine with an ACR 9040 and two Compax3 drives. Nothing too large, the motors are a NEMA23 and an MPP100. The machine is a flying head wrapper.

The ACR controller will sometimes stop executing, for no apparant reason, when it encounters an axis command. More often the Compax3 drive controlling my wrapping head will fail to execute a "drive on Head" command. When this happens, the machine hangs which of course my operators don't much like. It can sometimes be reset by a simple EStop, sometimes a power cycle is required.

I think that the Compax3 enters a state that is not recognized, let alone resettable, by the ACR. This will happen a few times a week, sometimes a few times a day. There are some other illities as well, the most noticeable a problem running with reverse rotation direction on the Head axis.

I am not so much asking for help as I am wondering how many of these setups Parker has actually sold, and what others have experienced with them. If any of you have set up and run an ACR EPL with Compax3 drives, I'd like to know how well it runs and if you have any issues with it.

BTW, I have another ACR 9040 with an Aries drive, and it does better. The wrapping machine uses Compax3 because the MPP100 motor is too large for an Aries drive. I also have Parker CANOpen IO on both machines, and that works fine. It's just the damm ACR EPL - Compax3... they just don't play well together!

Finally, for anybody who got this far,

ACR 9040 is running ACR9000 1.25
Comm is ACR EPL 1.3.5
Compax3 are C3 2009R08-3_EPL
Program is ACRView 5.5.5

I am considering upgrading them all... if I can get a straight answer out of Parker as to what versions are working with one another for this hardware set. We in fact found some bugs for them in the firmware/OS combinations when we built it two years ago, but that's another story.

Paul T

Did you ever figure this out? I have adopted a machine with the same setup and a lot of the same issues. I'm ready to take a sledgehammer to these drives and ACR.

The Compax3 is an excellent drive. The ACR9000 is a very good controller, but a bit dated. Using the EPL version of these is a bad choice. I avoid EPL at all costs. That being said, once things are up and running, it is usually OK. The problems you see are probably related to how the program is written. What specific problems are you seeing? Go online with the controller and see what line it hangs at(I usually display the current line number on the HMI).

The program never really worked right from the first machine builder who specified the components. They were using the IEC PLC side of the controller to control the drives. We are seeing that sometimes a drive accumulates an offset. There is a number in the Current Position and the Jog Offset part of the Servo Loop Status. The drive behaves great when there is only a number in the Jog Offset. I am not sure how those numbers get populated, but it may be when I am running the drive at higher speeds. Any ideas on this? I've been going back and forth with Parker for about a week to have figured this much out so far. Just no solution...

The Jog Offset will get you in trouble with the ACR. It is the only controller I know of that uses it. A neat feature if you need it, but more often than not it causes problems. I always clear the jog offset before any programmed move. It is normal to a have a value in the Current Position. Is the axis going to the wrong position(perhaps off by the jog offset value)?

It has always seemed odd to me that when the drive works there is only a number in the Jog Offset, and not in the Current Position. I would think it would be the other way around. So how does the Jog Offset get populated, I didn't know I was "using" it. I thought it was just something the controller did. We are trying the ACR_TransferAxisPosition with some success. Parker is agreeing that I need this FB for my absolute servos.

I don't think the servo loop is doing anything with an EPL system. All control loops are closed in the drives, and the ACR just does the motion profiling. The jog offset grows during jog moves. You can look at the EPL parameters to get current positions. I have never done motion with the IEC version. I have only used to do cyclic calculations, so I can't help you with that part.

That's the strange part. I'm not doing any jog moves, and I don't have any Jog FBs. Only absolute moves.

When using the IEC PLC programming in the ACR, the MC_move function blocks uses the jog profiler. The Current position may be getting populated after a ESTOP or some other fault routine. ACR_TransferAxisPosition would be the way to move the offset out of the Current and back to the Jog.