What's new

Need PDQ M5 Troubleshooting help

GoBuckeyes

Self-Serve and Automatics
Joined
Aug 30, 2007
Messages
1,055
Reaction score
323
Points
83
Location
Cleveland
We're having an issue with one of our M5's that has us scratching our heads a bit.

The machine so far has done one of two things....

Car pulls in , During First Presoak pass the trolley goes across the front of the car and slams into the bridge stops. Then then the arch rotates the WRONG WAY and goes out of service. The emailed fault says "Abort Wash (Package x, Cycle 1) Bridge Movement Timeout" or "M5 Closed Bridge Lost Position".

The other scenario is the car pulls in, the trolley applies presoak across the front of the car and slams into the bridge stops. The trolley reverses and goes back across the front of the car to the home position and resets itself. (auto reset was enabled) It then washes another car without incident. The car after that it again ran into the stops etc. The emailed fault is the same as above. "Abort Wash (package x, cycle 1) Bridge Movement Timeout"

In the first scenario we couldn't understand why the arch would run into the stops to begin with then rotate the arch the wrong direction? It faulted out this way the first several times. Moving the arch and trolley manually worked as expected. When moving the trolley to the left it stops at the flags and doesn't run into the stops? When rotating the arch, it rotates the correct direction unless purposefully rotated backwards. We could not duplicate any wrong movement.

So far what we have done is re-set and re-load the Bridge Node. That didn't fix it.

After talking to PDQ Tech, he surmised that the TB3 outputs to the speed controller/vfd are sticking in the bridge node. We swapped the bridge node with the power node which doesn't use the TB3 outputs, re-set and re-programmed the nodes. That didn't fix it.

Tomorrow we are going to replace the High Flex Ethernet cable that connects the Bridge Node to the Bay Enclosure and see if that helps. I would think that there would be somekind of communication watchdog that would be throwing up errors if the network cable is compromised though. Does anyone know if there is some type of Log file we could look at?

I have ordered a new VFD, however I don't believe that is going to be the issue. We won't have that until next week. If swapping the ethernet cable doesn't solve it, we were thinking of swapping VFD's between the bays but really would prefer not to do that.

Anyone else have any insight or suggestions?

Can someone tell me how to put the M5 in test mode like on a 4000, where you can load and run a dry wash? That would be helpful tomorrow.


Thanks.
 

GoBuckeyes

Self-Serve and Automatics
Joined
Aug 30, 2007
Messages
1,055
Reaction score
323
Points
83
Location
Cleveland
I ended up pulling out my .pdf Manual for the machine and did find the Test Mode Sequences to run a dry wash etc.

I still need suggestions regarding the intermittent trouble though.
 

APW

Well-known member
Joined
Jun 9, 2013
Messages
863
Reaction score
381
Points
63
Location
South
Awhile back my M5 would go across the front of the car and then rotate backwards coming around and smacking the side of the car. It ended up being a bad spot on the prox cable that goes to the cam. No problems after I replaced the cable.
 

GoBuckeyes

Self-Serve and Automatics
Joined
Aug 30, 2007
Messages
1,055
Reaction score
323
Points
83
Location
Cleveland
Awhile back my M5 would go across the front of the car and then rotate backwards coming around and smacking the side of the car. It ended up being a bad spot on the prox cable that goes to the cam. No problems after I replaced the cable.
Thanks APW. We're definitely going to be going over all the cables today. What I don't understand is why if you had a bad arch rotate prox cable it would cause your arch to rotate backwards rather than simply over-rotate? To rotate the wrong way would mean the VFD was getting a reverse rather than forward direction input would it not?
 

APW

Well-known member
Joined
Jun 9, 2013
Messages
863
Reaction score
381
Points
63
Location
South
Not sure why it would do it. My cable looked almost burnt or melted in the spot that was bad.
 
Top