I have an elite with a water cooled spindle, the water pump is plugged in where the router would be plugged into if I was using one, today the pump wouldn’t automatically turn on I changed the fuses and still nothing, the pump works if I plug it into the outlet, so it’s not the pump any suggestions. I’m assuming they use the 10 amp fuse.
Hey Brian,
by the way, usually it’s not the CNC controller that switches the spindle coolant pump on and off, but the VFD. It’s the VFD that knows whether the spindle runs or not, because it’s the VFD that runs the spindle. That is why VFDs have relay outputs for spindle coolant pumps. See your VFD manual. Most VFDs also allow to let the spindle coolant pump to run a little longer after the spindle was stopped.
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Hi Brian,
I have an Elite Journeyman with a PWN water cooled spindle. I use Carveco Maker for my program development. For the coolant pump I have it plugged into the dust collector port on the power supply. That port will control either a dust collector or coolant pump. The post processor in Carveco places M08 (colant on, or dust collector on) after the spindle start, and M09 at the end of your program to turn off the coolant pump or dust collector. I have a Grizzly dust collector that I turn on with a remote so I don’t use the dust collector port on the power supply. If you don’t use the dust port on the power supply this setup may be an option for you.
I
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Hey Dave,
I would strongly recommend to avoid this because this allows to run the spindle without its coolant running, which may destroy it. As explained above, if you run a spindle, you forcibly run it through its VFD, and every VFD has a relay output for the spindle coolant pump, and this is the correct way to switch the coolant pump on. You lay one wire of the pump’s power line so that it goes through the VFD’s relay output, and you are done. Additionally, the relay output needs to be set to “active if motor runs” inside the VFD. If it is wired this way, the coolant pump will automatically run if the spindle runs (which is triggered with M3 (start spindle) in the g-code program). No need to use an additional command.
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Hi Aiph5u,
Thanks for the info on hooking up the coolant pump to the VFD relay output. At this point I think I’ll use my current setup as it’s working great and I have visual confirmation of fluid flow during my carves so no issues with the pump running. Additionally, on multi-tool carves the pump continues to run even though the spindle has stopped for tool changes which I think is a plus. Maybe in the future if I get into long carves I’ll conside changing to the VFD, but now my carves run less than 2-hours.
Hey Dave,
this is the reason why VFDs allow the cooling pump to run for a defined period of time longer after the spindle has stopped. See something like “relay off delay” setting in the VFD manual 