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Compax3

urban900humar@gmail.com
By  6 months ago
Dear Sir/Madam,
I am Urban Humar student from Slovenia. I am studying at the Faculty of mechanical engineering at the University of Ljubljana. 
At the moment I am working on a project for industry in Laboratory for fluid power and controls. For the project we are working with Parker Proportional valve (Parker DF PLUS (D30FPE50UA1HS5339)), which we want to control with Parker controller COMPAX 3 FLUID (C3F001D2F12I32T30M00). We have problems with connecting controller with the program on the computer (compax servomanager). We somehow manage to get some kind of connection with the program (look at the image1) but when we want to download the configuration from PC to controller we get error (look at the image2 and image3). The error says: Cannot Activate Communication Device Identification Error. We also get error if we start Online device identification, it says Cannot Activate Communication.
 
We have tried 3 different kinds of RS232 cables and also we tried to cut off the pin number one on RS232 connector as we find on Parker website as a potential trouble but the error remains. We also tried on different PC-s but the situation was always the same.
We are running out of time with the project so we will really appreciate your quick response.
I believe that together we will successfully solve this problem and finish this project
Thank you.
Kind regards
Urban Humar

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  • 0 , Employee 6 months ago

    Hello Urban.  While that particular version of the Compax3 is not really covered by this forum, I can give you some advice based on my experience with other Compax3 drives.

    First of all, that green bar you see in the lower right just means that Servo Manager was able to open the com port.  It does not mean you have a connection to the drive.

    There are two main reasons users are not able to connect to the Compax3:

    1. The cable being used is not a crossover cable.  I know you tried several cables, but it is entirely possible that all three were straight-through cables.  Most RS232 cables are straight-through cables, especially if they were once used for printers or other equipment requiring a modem.  If you want to order a cable from Parker, you can use model number SSK1/02.  However, you can also look for a "crossover" or "null modem" cable on the internet and get one that works very quickly.
    2. If you are using a USB-RS232 adapter as most people do, it absolutely must have an FTDI chipset.  If it has a Prolific chipset, it will not work.  You can find out what kind of chipset your USB-RS232 converter uses here.

    There are also other things I have seen that will prevent communications:

    • If you have a USB-RS232 converter that comes with its own cable and you are plugging it directly into the Compax3, that will not work.  You will need a device to cross over pins 2 and 3.  My recommendation is to use an RS232 crossover cable.
    • Make sure that you are using the correct com port on your PC -- some PCs ship with multiple com ports.
    • Make sure that at least one of the Compax3's lights is on.  If all the lights are off, you may have a power issue.

    It is also possible that you have a damaged drive.  However, that is very unlikely.  Nearly every time I have seen a communications issue with a Compax3, it was because of one of the things mentioned here (usually items 1 and 2).  I hope this helps get your application back on track.

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