Unsupported older Haas mill control and battery replacement question

[chip_maker]

I have a 97 VF-2 I bought new.

I have never replaced the mounted battery on the maincon? board. I'm not getting any battery alarms and I do not plan on messing with it until I do, I'm just trying to plan ahead.

It looks like the board has two boards in front of it, and for these old ones you need to solder on the new battery connections and then cut the old battery off of the board.

I've heard the horror stories where someone tries to install the remote battery kit and something goes wrong and the unsupported control is now toast, and the fix is probably more than the machine is worth.

My question is: What exactly goes wrong to make the control toast? Is it just a case of losing everything during the battery install and not having the parameters and everything backed up? or is there more to it?

Thanks in advance!

 

[magno_grail]

I replaced the battery on my '91. I used a power supply to keep the board alive whilst I changed the battery. As far as I know you will loose all the parameters and programs (everything in RAM).

 

[Donkey Hotey]

1. Backup your parameters and settings. Make three copies. Open them on your PC and make sure you can read them.
2. Make sure you have or can get all the unlock codes for your machine options. They are printed in the manual. You cannot read them from the screen. If you don't have them written down somewhere, get them from your HFO before proceeding. Put a copy in a plastic sleeve inside your control cabinet for the future. If you do not have these and the control sneezes, they will be lost and you will not be able to recover them without calling Haas. These include the permanent unlock code, floppy drive, macros and other options.
3. Get a backup battery with the pigtail lead that you can plug into the board. They're cheap from third party sources.
4. Details on battery options here:

Replacing battery in a Haas control?

I appreciate the input, keep in mind, they were only tied together for the replacement process because I wasn't sure whether I'd loose anything while replacing the battery, then the jumper was removed.

www.practicalmachinist.com

I have been involved in three battery replacements now and all three lost some parameters or settings, despite being hooked to a damned external battery. No, I don't know a good reason why. One was a single-board machine and nothing was disassembled. All I did was hook up the new external battery and then clipped the dying ones from the board. It still lost the date and time.

Even if everything is lost, the 'software' is backed up on the board, in an EPROM chip. So despite all the fears that have been beaten into us, it is possible to restore the machine without a visit from Haas, without external computer connections, etc. The only thing being that when it's done being restored, it will need all those parameters and settings to get it back to normal.

And damn if you aren't the impatient one. Haven't swapped the battery since 1997 but, you don't get a response in four hours and posted it two places? Getting nervous, are we?

 

[chip_maker]

damn if you aren't the impatient one. Haven't swapped the battery since 1997 but, you don't get a response in four hours and posted it two places? Getting nervous, are we?

Totally depends on the situation. In this case I'm impatient for the answer, not the actual job

Thank you for the detailed response!

 

[Donkey Hotey]

For reference: my 2004 VF-2 still had 3.0V when I pulled the original batteries six months ago. No clue how long they would have lasted.

We did my friend's 2005 Mini Mill shortly after that. His really left me befuddled. We did that battery, powered the machine back up and everything was absolutely fine. I left, he shut it down and a week or two later, it had lost some of its parameters and settings. That should not be possible but, that's what happened. No idea why.

This video goes through what it looks like if the control completely loses its marbles: