James Fillmore
Lifetime Supporting Member
More of a heads up, warning may be a little strong but probably warrented.
Management selected on the recommendation distributor AC Tech 940 servo drives, mainly on cost.
- I wanted Ethernet I/P because I was using CompactLogix, had 3 axis' and needed to change position, accel, decel, velocity often via the HMI. The units were supplired with Ethernet I/P manuals had Preliminary/Beta on the front.
- Installed 3 drives on a simple demo machine. 3 failed within days. Lenze said the p[roblem was grounding resitors in a new safety connector that had burned up. Thier fault. took me a day and a half of wasted time to make sue it wasn't anything I was doing or had done in configuration or programming before calling the local distributor support.
- Wrote a homing routine by calling thier internal home sequence via Ethernet I/P. Drive would lock up tight, stop communicating and require a power down and reboot. AC Tech said they know and I would have to work around that :O
- Also "Homing" and "Home" status bits don't work in the Assembly Word (that is accesable easily instead of using messaging). AC Tech said they know. Use a work around and constantly poll using messaging to another varible and then decode a long integer to get the 2 bits I need.
- "Homed" bit resets occasionally (every 2 or 3 power down/up cycles) on power up even though backup/keep alive power is maintained.
- There is no way to reverse direction on the AC system that would be similar to swapping the motor leads on a DC system. The reason I need this feature is because we are using Exlar actuators - the motor turns backwards to extend the shaft. AC Tech said work around. Said to negate all my motion commands. YUCK. Doable but not clean. Said they would be making a firmware update to "add" this like it shouldn't have been in there from the start.
- The FAULT word maintains the last fault till a new fault is detected. There is know way of clearing the last fault, of know if/when a fault goes away (like low volatge or over current) or to know if another fault of the same kind occured. Instead there are 2 32 bit words that I can pull out some status bits with similar fault status but not all of them. UGH
Many of these "lessons" were at the expense of my time. When I would finally pinpoint the issue they would then admit fault.
Couple other issues, 2nd firmware update and promise of another corrective firmware months after the machine is to ship forced me to finally throw in the towel and go with Kinetix 6000. Already using AB CompactLogix and PanelView Plus.
Management selected on the recommendation distributor AC Tech 940 servo drives, mainly on cost.
- I wanted Ethernet I/P because I was using CompactLogix, had 3 axis' and needed to change position, accel, decel, velocity often via the HMI. The units were supplired with Ethernet I/P manuals had Preliminary/Beta on the front.
- Installed 3 drives on a simple demo machine. 3 failed within days. Lenze said the p[roblem was grounding resitors in a new safety connector that had burned up. Thier fault. took me a day and a half of wasted time to make sue it wasn't anything I was doing or had done in configuration or programming before calling the local distributor support.
- Wrote a homing routine by calling thier internal home sequence via Ethernet I/P. Drive would lock up tight, stop communicating and require a power down and reboot. AC Tech said they know and I would have to work around that :O
- Also "Homing" and "Home" status bits don't work in the Assembly Word (that is accesable easily instead of using messaging). AC Tech said they know. Use a work around and constantly poll using messaging to another varible and then decode a long integer to get the 2 bits I need.
- "Homed" bit resets occasionally (every 2 or 3 power down/up cycles) on power up even though backup/keep alive power is maintained.
- There is no way to reverse direction on the AC system that would be similar to swapping the motor leads on a DC system. The reason I need this feature is because we are using Exlar actuators - the motor turns backwards to extend the shaft. AC Tech said work around. Said to negate all my motion commands. YUCK. Doable but not clean. Said they would be making a firmware update to "add" this like it shouldn't have been in there from the start.
- The FAULT word maintains the last fault till a new fault is detected. There is know way of clearing the last fault, of know if/when a fault goes away (like low volatge or over current) or to know if another fault of the same kind occured. Instead there are 2 32 bit words that I can pull out some status bits with similar fault status but not all of them. UGH
Many of these "lessons" were at the expense of my time. When I would finally pinpoint the issue they would then admit fault.
Couple other issues, 2nd firmware update and promise of another corrective firmware months after the machine is to ship forced me to finally throw in the towel and go with Kinetix 6000. Already using AB CompactLogix and PanelView Plus.
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