alarm n faults my drive is indicating fault F004

F004 is an Under Voltage fault that occurs when you power off the PowerFlex.

Edit: I have not seen the F004 fault when the PowerFlex was running. It could happen when the incoming voltage drops below the minimum voltage level.
 
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Hi and Welcome to the Forum!

Yes some more details would be helpful please.

However, "if" this happens to be an Allen Bradley PowerFlex drive, then the F004 fault indicates that the drive has lost main input power (UnderVoltage). If this fault is remaining on the drive, then it would suggest that the drive lost power for a brief period of time, but not long enough for the drive to completely power off. Completely powering off automatically resets the fault.

This is quite common where an Emergency Stop circuit has been activated, removing power to the drive, and then reset again quickly before the drive has had time to completely power off. You then have to cycle power to the drive to manually reset the fault.

If not an Emergency Stop activation, then it could also be an intermittent supply fault, or, it may be that you are controlling the drive's supply via a contactor which is switching power off and back on again before the drive can completely power off.

Switching the drive's power supply as a controlling method is not good practice and will shorten the life of the drive. It is usually better to leave the drive powered on at all times and switch the load side.

If the drive is normally always powered on and this is just a nuisance as a result of Emergency Stop activations, then you can use certain parameters to attempt to automatically reset the fault...

You would need to setup parameter [Auto Rstrt Tries] to a value other than "0" and parameter [Auto Rstrt Delay] to "0".

Note: The designated number of these Advanced Parameters varies from one drive series to another.

This will attempt to reset the UnderVoltage fault, but not attempt to restart the drive.

You can alternatively use a programmed digital input on the drive to receive a hardwired fault reset signal. This could be piggy backed on the existing safety reset push button so as to "kill two birds with one stone".

But we are only making educated guesses here until you clarify that you are indeed using a PowerFlex drive and when exactly this fault occurs?

Regards,
George
 
Out of all the hundreds of drives and all the hundreds of fault No's, you give answers to powerflex.

AB is not the only choice out there :)
True, but let's apply some logic to this:

  • For a display to say nothing more than "F004", that means it must be a 4 digit LED 7 segment readout, not a full text capable LCD screen. So that eliminates a lot of relatively newer drives, leaving only low-cost or older drives, of which the PowerFlex 4/40/400 series falls into. But you are right, there are others.
  • Asian low cost drives like older Yaskawa (and all children), Fuji / GE, Toshiba, Teco, Hitachi, Delta etc. use "F" as "Function" numbers, so they use "E" for "Error Codes". Eliminate all of those.
  • Some drives use text-like characters with their LED segmented displays, not Fault Codes, so eliminate them.
  • The only other North American and EU drives I know of that have not been updated for long enough to still use 7 segment 4 digit displays and fault codes boil down to AB PF4/40/400 and 1336, and Siemens Micromaster with older HIMs, or older Siemens Simoreg DC drives.
So it COULD have been a Siemens, in which case F004 means "Inverter Over Temperature" on an MM420/440, or "PTC Trip" on older DC drives. Assuming by the statement "tried all th remedies" that the drive would have been off for long enough to cool down (and/or a PTC to cool down if this is a DC drive), it really only leaves the PowerFlex 4/40/400 series drives that would display F004 and not allow him to reset it, IF the Low Voltage condition is not remedied. If it was an older 1336 drive, F004 meant the same thing.

So an older Allen Bradley drive was a very reasonable assumption here in my opinion.
 
Could mean a phase is also dropping out.
That will usually present as an F003 fault, called "Power Loss", because it is triggered by excess DC bus ripple. The drives will work fine with a single phase input, as long as the load is low enough so that it doesn't create too much DC bus ripple. That's why you de-rate the drive to use it on single phase input.

Side note:
"best49erfan"... me too.
But it sucks to be us today, doesn't it? OMG, that was pathetic...
 
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As I said, it is only "educated" guessing until we know different. I am not just assuming it's a PowerFlex because it's all I know. That was said in jest.

But I'm sensing a tone of "You must think the Automation World revolves around Allen Bradley?" You know, it just might? But that's for another thread.

I've worked with most of the above drives at one time or another in the past. At my current place of work we have AB Bulletin 160, 1336 and PowerFlex 4/40/525/700 drives. We also have Siemens MM440, Sew Movimot, Telemechanique Altivar, ABB, Mitsubishi, Yaskawa, Lenze, Bosch Rexroth, Maxor, and lesser drives.

In my experience with these many types of drives, of which a couple of them do indeed also have a possible F004 fault, the F004 UnderVoltage fault on the PowerFlex drives is by far the most common nuisance fault I have come across, with Emergency Stop circuits being the No.1 culprit. Operators love using E-Stop buttons as regular Stop buttons. It's just been my experience thus far, so I threw it out there as a precursor while we wait.

As a contrary example, I have never experienced an F004 on the SEW drives. It's not that it does not happen unless I say so, but again, from my experience, I have not had one yet and even if it did happen once it would still be negligible compared to the number of times I've come across the equivalent fault on the PowerFlex drives.

So, I am making an educated guess, perhaps also for the fun of it while we wait, based on my to date experience, which would place the PowerFlex drives as odds on favourite to win this race. Of course there are no sure things, so I'm only willing to bet pocket change, as Ron would put it.

Also, someone reading the above might just have learned something they didn't know regarding the PowerFlex F004 fault.

If it's not a PowerFlex, then we can move on. No harm, no foul. I certainly never have a problem with being "wrong", especially if it's somewhat informative along the way.

I do hope you can sleep tonight over this? :p

Regards,
George
 
I frequently see power loss on my drives..
It is because the VFD control circuit is powered from the control wiring and it has a contactor supplying main power.
Contactor not in but the 115V control circuit is still powered.
So..... when the drive control circuit is live, but the contactor is not in yet....I get power loss fault.
 
Also, someone reading the above might just have learned something they didn't know regarding the PowerFlex F004 fault

^ THIS... I already knew the issue (those pesky production workers and their e-stop buttons), was looking for a good solution. We had replaced an overheating GE Fuji drive with a PowerFlex 40, causing the above named issue. In my case upping the retries did not help, and ended up getting a mix of f004 and f033.

A proper elegant solution would be to move the power contactors to the load side instead of the line side, but for me there's too much inter-cabinet wiring to want to switch everything out. I just put the Fuji back in today after replacing the stock fan with something beefier.

So for PowerFlex drives make sure to change this:
---C---[PF]---( )---
---C---[PF]---( )---
---C---[PF]---( )---


to this:
---[PF]---C---( )---
---[PF]---C---( )---
---[PF]---C---( )---

 

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