rymac63

Powerflex 4m all lights on, LCD showing 8888

13 posts in this topic

Hey guys, I was wondering if anyone could help me understand what is wrong with this VFD. It was working perfectly fine and then all of the sudden all lights turned on and the LCD display reads "8888." It is non responsive, power cycled it for 5 min, tried resetting as you would normally with faults, no dice. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

VFD1.jpg

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A quick glance at the book didn't reveal anything. My gut says you have a brick and need to replace the drive. Check the obvious things (like all three phases of incoming power, loose internal connections, etc) first, but I think this drive is done.

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@ElectronGuru Yeah, I did all that and my suspicion was the same. Drive is likely toast. I just wanted to see if anyone's ran across this before. Relatively new drive. Seems as though a control board is out or something. Normally when I see a VFD fail, it goes out in a blaze of glory, with all the smoke and soot as proof, lol.

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It does sound as though a control or power board has died. When a control board goes out they're not usually as dramatic as the power parts, like the IGBTs or incoming power diodes.

If it's relatively new, hopefully you can get it warrantied and maybe a failure analysis to find out why it died.

 

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RA's knowledgebase is coming up empty too. If the HIM were removable, I'd suggest swapping it with another drive but I'm pretty sure it's built in on the PF4. I'm leaning towards "brick" as well but your local distributor may have a support channel to offer you more assistance. You could try flashing the firmware if that's an option, just to see if it helps.

ETA:
I'd try my local distributor and/or contacting Rockwell before flashing the firmware. They may be able to do some diagnostics to find a root cause that wiping the firmware could cover up. Especially if there's a chance that you could still have warranty coverage on it.

Edited by Joe E.

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Turning on all the segments of an LED display is a normal part of low level self-diagnostics for any embedded system with that type of a display, so the main control board probably isn't getting past the power-on self-test stage.   It likely won't communicate with anything or even flash lights for diagnostic codes.

It can't hurt to try to flash the firmware with a 22-SCM or 1203-USB, in case it's only the display subsection that has failed.   But I think this is just a glowing brick at this point.

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It was sometime around 2010 but we had a whole skid of Powerflex 4 VFD that failed within the first month of operation on a line conversion.  Turns out it was a component failure in the drive that left it totally useless except for the bright light display.  Similar to yours.

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@BobLfoot OUCH! I bet the distributor and Allen Bradley both hated hearing that!

These days, anything 30HP or less I'd grab a PF525. It's a newer (current) generation drive and was designed to be a drop-in replacement for the Bulletin 160s, PF4s, and PF40s. 

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@ElectronGuru Rockwell was quite supportive sending in a complete replacement skid after unit #6 failed.

 

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Thanks for all the replies guys, this forum is awesome. I'll be sending this unit in to Rockwell and will respond with the info I get back. Changing drives would be quite the undertaking. We have 200-250 4m drives currently that have worked pretty good for the last 7-8 years I've been with the company. However, with the ever increasing prices of the 4m's, I will pass the info along in regards to the 525's, I appreciate that. 

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In the 5-series there are the 523, 525, and 527 drives. The differences are mostly in embedded communications and safety options, but I believe they are all limited to a max of 30HP. Wouldn't hurt to get a price quote and do some comparing to see if it's worth the while to change over as your current drives age out and fail. 

Looking forward to hearing what failed on your 4M, and hopefully they'll be able to tell you why it failed, as well. 

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@ElectronGuru Appreciate the follow up, I'm hoping to know the exact cause as well. I know we are looking to go ethernet in the future as our primary form of comms, so this may work out even better. 

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rymac63, it may pay to talk to your distributor as there maybe an adapter plate that lets you keep the power wiring in at the top and out at the bottom.

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