I took delivery of a 1500 MX last week. I’m stuck calibrating the ATC. I keep getting “EtherCAT Drive Error” when trying to manipulate the tool tray to program tools. If anyone else has bumped into this and solved it I’d love to hear it. I verified all connections, and it is a factory assembled machine
Up front, I haven’t used a CNC since high school and that was under direct supervision, but I now own a business that requires threadmilling and facing 3D printed parts.
Welcome to the forum! While you wait to see what folks here know I would definitely call and open a ticket with support. I’m sure they will get you straightened out quickly. An answer here may take a while as there aren’t too many of these in the wild yet.
The error seems a bit generic but one thing to check is the bolt under the ATC carrier plate. In the center from the bottom there is a bolt with a lock washer. At least on my 1500 MX that bolt holds the entire tool tray onto the planetary gear box. The plastic bushings between the gear box and the tray will bind if the bolt is too tight. I thought it was just another loose bolt to tighten on my machine but then the tray won’t rotate and an error will be returned by the servo driver. I don’t know if that is a factor but something easy to check. In my machine that bolt is rather loose to allow the tray to rotate freely. I have been able to tighten it a bit as I’ve loaded more and heavier tools in the ATC. Too loose and the tray will fall off so beware. Hope that helps…
NB: this should be visible on the ATC servo load meter on the console display as large spikes in torque required on tray rotation