Re: one more try on the Emco Maier vmc 100 mill questions

Spencer,

First off, does your machine have the M1 control? If so, you clear
error 460 by referencing (homing) the machine. Error 460 is the way
the machine wakes up. But, if you only have one axis card that's not
possible. There should be one card by axis, 3 in your case or
possibly 4, that machine might have supported a 4th axis. Push
the "REF" key, then "Start", see what happens.

Strange the axis cards would be completely missing. Not strange that
they might be burned up. The older revs of those cards were
notorious for that. Getting brand new drive cards could be
expensive. Call Emco service in Columbus,OH, 1-800-832-5991.
Unfortunately, those cards are proprietary because of the closed loop
steppers. Before you call Emco, fire up the machine and jot down the
sequence of lit LEDs on the end of each board. That way they can
immediately diagnose your problem over the phone. Get the machine
serial number, too. If this machine hasn't run for awhile the
battery backup may be dead, so all the machine specific setup info
will be lost. They may have that on file.

Not sure what error 780 is. Maybe something about the cards
missing? Does the machine need air pressure?

I believe the machine should still jog in the one axis for which you
have a drive card (unless that card is bad). I know when I've had a
bad drive the other axes would still jog, but then I still had the
bad card plugged in.

In spite of your apparent problems, the small Emco production
machines are very good with relatively powerful controls. I've had
my lathe, T1 control, (same basic control on mills and lathes) for 15
years. After both drive cards went south in the first 3 years, I
haven't had anything except minor problems. It's still used about 16
hours a week.

Let me know what you find out from Emco. I can help with some things
like the backup battery, they want $600 to exchange that board, but
you can fix it for $5.00.

Doug

--- In CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO@y..., Spencer Chase <spencer@s...> wrote:
> I need to figure out if I have complete and working machine before
I
> contact the seller with the list of shipping damaged, missing and
> misrepresented items on Monday. I would like to make some progress
over the
> weekend. I cannot get by error 460 (reference position not active)
and 780
> (safety lock active) in order to see if there are other errors and
if the
> machine functions in manual mode just to test it. Since I got a
manual for
> a different machine (and only parts of it) I have no idea how to
reset
> these errors.
>
> I also noticed that there is only one axis card in the machine. Is
there
> supposed to be one for each axis or does one card do three axis?
>
> Please reply to me directly if this is not a topic that would be of
> interest to the group.
>
> spencer@s...
>
>
>
> Spencer Chase
> http://www.SpencersErolls.com
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]