Northwood computer issues

[Rick George]

We will be replacing our hard drive for the second time in 9 months tomorrow on our Northwood fab center computer. Has anyone else had similar issues? We have spent the last 3 days testing different things per Northwoods suggesting while trying to limp along and still get work done. It's been frustrating to say the least and really hurting our schedule as we are very busy right now. Northwood says we aren't doing anything wrong to cause this issue, but I don't think we should be having these issues. Any suggestions or ideas so we don't have to deal with this again anytime soon?

[clhilde]

Get the intermac running

[Ken Lago]

In the 5 years I've had mine all issues have been resolved with some phone calls, so the answer is no.
Is it the computer on the machine?

[Todd Luster]

That sucks. Sorry to hear it.
We've not had any issues with ours either.
A servo amp is all I think we have had and it was under wArranty with Fanuc luckily.

[Rick George]

Ken- yes the computer at the machine.

It sounds like every machine is set up differently because every tech that we talk to or that comes here says that they have never seen the machine and computers set up the way we are????? Not sure if this has something to do with why we having issues or not???

Our laptop is in a seperate office and that is where we do our programming and they say that we are the only ones set up like that???? I thought everyone programmed on a seperate computer in an office and not at the machine computer??? Am I going crazy here??? Northwood is the one who set us up this way so it gets confusing as everytime we talk to a tech they say "Oh I haven't seen it set up that way?" Well they set it up??

[Ken Lago]

Who the hell are those techs? everybody have the laptop in a separate office to do the programming in, even at Northwood in Luisville they have like that

[ronald hannah]

Rick,

We have always had good luck with John Dickens. 980 322-7404

[Jqualey4130]

Check the Actual Voltage going to your machine. Spikes or Drops in voltage is usually the culprit when you start frying things in your cabinet.

[Matt Lansing]

When you buy a new hard drive for any computer always buy two. Once you get the information set up take the hard drive and have it ghosted (copied) with a knowledgable computer guy/company. If it fails again you will have an exact copy you can swap in and keep running. Also need to save your tool offset files regularly to your server so you have them as well.

If the hard drive is failing then you can point to a bad power supply or possibly a bad motherboard (where the hard drive controller is located). Unless they are Western Digital drives. Those are generally junk no matter what.

A lot of times, even with a failed hard drive, the information can be pulled off if it. Get the numbers from it and look online for the exact same unit. Have a computer service guy/company copy the information from the damaged unit to the new one. Plug it in and it should fire right up. You can only do this if the hard drives are identical as the programs are written to the drive pretty specifically.

[Ken Lago]

Rick,

We have always had good luck with John Dickens. 980 322-7404

Same here. John and Anthony are the best in my book. Although Anthony knows a lot more about the fabcenter.

[Dan R.]

I belieev when John Dickens farts it is in G-code! That guy knows his stuff.

[Rick George]

This keeps getting better...

Beside the new hard drive, they said we need a new network card so Northwood overnighted these parts to us. They sent us the wrong network card!!!! The third time this year they have sent us the wrong part Couple things: Why do you make the same model machines differently? AND IF YOU DO, why don't you ask for pictures, part numbers, something so that you know what part to send???????

Northwood's plan was to have us put in the new hard drive and network card and then they would connect remotely to set up the new hard drive for us. Problem is, we have the wrong network card and apparently to change the one we have it requires a Fanuc Tech to come to our shop to do this. Don't know how long this will take to get a tech here............

In the meantime, our fabcenter is down again! We are trying to put the old hard drive back in to try to limp along again until we get answers out of Fanuc and Northwood.

Thanks for all the help! It amazes me that two of you guys have given us reasons on why this could be happening due to bad power and yet Northwood keeps telling us we are doing nothing wrong and have no possible solutions as to why we are having problems

BTW... our tech for our area is supposed to be Pete ?? out of Michigan and when we called him he said we needed to talk to Northwood about computer issues and so we have been dealing with Brian in the office there.

[Matt Lansing]

Ah got it. I forgot that it was the Fanuc computer you were having trouble with. Those components are server grade parts and supposed to be quite robust.

If you can see the part numbers on the pieces then you can try contacting these guys.

Zach Davis
Parts Provider
1.404.542.0622
1.770.966.8935 (fax)
z_davis@bellsouth.net or sales@parts-provider.com
www.parts-provider.com or www.fanucstock.com

They are a Fanuc parts reseller and a good source for Fanuc stuff when you need it quickly. We have bought a circuit board, display screen, and other stuff as needed and they have been great to work with.

[badboat]

The only drive problem we had was the cd at time of install. Local computer store part solved that. What is is doing that makes you have to replace it?

[Curtis R. Marburger]

just an idea to fix graphic cards and mother boards and such bake them in oven

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q89gvSr0SxY

i don't understand why there is not redundancy built into the computers , I have a dual hard drive set up in one of my pc's i built . i would not want to be shut down over computer issues , No excuse for that is this age of technology

[Nick]

Rick, I doubt NW would help you with this, but Cold Spring figured out a way to have a laptop that is identical to the computer at the machine so that if a machine computer ever goes down, this laptop can literally run the numeric controls and everything just as the OMC computer with about 15 minutes of connection time. I have always been interested in having this as a backup. I do not believe it is limited to OMAG because Jerry said cold spring has an individual laptop that is a ghost like Matt said for all their CNC machines. Theirs is a case of preparation, but maybe you could do something like that as an upgrade. If you think about it the machine computer is not so large and awesome as much as it just has he numeric control crap on it. I also for some reason think companies don't like you doing this hence why NW may not help, but clearly there are people who can make that happen.

Also, I wouldn't rule out bad power, BUT wouldn't you think other things would be effected as well? I dunno, same part seems like something more concentrated around that part to me.

[DavidL]

I would agree with a power surge / spike. We had our drive get corrupted on the intermac when i was in Florida. We had a whole house surge protector on the building that took the initial lightning hit but the second hit fried the machine (within a few minutes). So even though N'wood is telling you that you arent doing anything wrong, you may want to check your incoming feed to verify that it is steady and correct.

This has got to be frustrating the hell out of you, hope it gets up soon.

[Dan R.]

Bad power is a fact of life in Illinois. My shop is within 30 miles of 3 nuke plants and we battle poor power a couple of time a year. Some times to the point of shutting down for a half day. It happens mostly in the summer when demand is high.


Nick's story of Cold Spring and the extra computer makes sense.

[Rick George]

The bad power idea will be getting checked out, but not sure what they will be able to do about it. We do get surges as we had a major surge that blew 3 fuses and our inverter last October the day before the Megaworkshop.

One of our bigger problems is that none of us here are computer gurus so we struggle thru these situations. We are actually having a Func tech come here Monday or Tues at latest to go thru the machine to check it out. I agree with Nick that the same part having issues may be something else so I am curious as to what this guy has to say. I wish I could just order parts like you Matt and feel comfortable enough to work on the systems, but we just don't, so I will have to pay someone

I do like these backup ideas and I plan on asking the Fanuc tech and addressing this after we get everything back to normal. We do have the fabcenter running again, but with the same issues of blue screens popping up with different code errors which prevents us from being able to program while machine running and other issues that require us to work thru the errors and get the machine back running... just slows our production way down, but at least not at a complete stop.

[Todd Luster]

You just reminded me I did get a blue screen one morning.
I freaked out, called Anthony, he said not good, unplug the ribbon connection from the cd floppy and restart it.
Call me if that don't fix it. It did, I had actually forgot about that.

[Rick George]

An Update:
Per Northwood's advice, we had a Fanuc tech come in here to look at the machine as Northwood felt the issue was with bad Fanuc parts and that a Fanuc tech could make the wrong network card work with our system.

So last Monday the Fanuc tech got here and brought every part they make for our machine with them except the motherboard. The Fanuc tech one by one took out our existing part, tested it, replaced with new part and tested to see if made a difference and if not moved onto the next part. Systematically, the tech eliminated one part at time this way until he got thru his entire box of parts Monday afternoon after 5 hours of testing (and us not able to run our fabcenter with any production) and decided to bring a new motherboard with him on Tuesday to try the same way.

On Tuesday, the Fanuc tech shows up (out of Chicago, so 3 hr round trip each day) with two new motherboards and procedes to test them. After 4 hours of testing, he figures out that both motherboards he brought are bad and he will return on Wednesday with new one. In the meantime, we were out of production another 4 hours Tuesday!

On Wednesday morning we are still limping along with fabcenter to try to get as much done as possible and Northwood is still blaming Fanuc parts. The Fanuc tech gets here late morning and tests new motherboard and no change to our "blue screen" issues therefore proving that NO Fanuc parts were the cause of our issues! Our tech asks permission to do more testing on his own for a couple hours to see if he can figure out where issue is. He decided to install the new hard drive and said there may be some Microsoft issues so he updated some Microsoft drivers and it finally got rid of our "blue screen" issues! After about 5 more hours on Wednesday with no production.

The Fanuc tech gave me an invoice for his time, but no parts as there wasn't any needed, and didn't charge me anything for his Tuesday time as they said that was their fault and we shouldn't have to pay for that. Fanuc was great to work with and very helpful and honest! Their time still cost me over $2k to show that their parts were not the blame!!!!

Northwood still had to load all info on the new hard drive so we could run parts and use the fabcenter. This process still took hours of time as they lost codes to our overhead laser and had to get that worked out over Thursday and Friday on and off the phone many times. Finally on Friday afternoon, after 2 weeks of having "blue screen" issues majorly slow down our production, we were back to "normal"! Except for all the overtime now trying to get caught back up.

I am not bashing Northwood here as I don't know that the resolution would have been any better with another company, but just giving some facts about our situation and if you are considering a cnc/ fabcenter type purchase you should be aware of what you are getting into. I called Northwood today to discuss this whole thing with them and the response I got from the tech was "Well, the machine is fixed now isn't it, so what's the problem?" I guess I don't have a problem anymore as I currently have a running machine and a lighter pocketbook! Until next time...

[Matt Lansing]

So it ended up being a Windows problem?

Damned Microsoft!

[Curtis R. Marburger]

pain in the wallet yes , but to me 2 grand is bargain for all they had to do to fix it

[clhilde]

"Well, the machine is fixed now isn't it, so what's the problem?"

I know how my response to that would have went.

[DavidL]

Wow, down that long and get a response like that? The next phone call would be above whoever that was. Likely directly to whoever is in charge (President).