View Single Post
  #5   Ban this user!
Old 08-30-2007, 10:45 PM
Geof Geof is online now
 
Join Date: Jul 2005
Location: Canada
Posts: 11,558
Geof will become famous soon enough

It is possible you have seen mention in some of my posts about our shop-made barfeeds (shop-made sounds much more professional than home-made )

We have three units that are hydraulic powered; actually the working fluid is the coolant with one unit using compressed air over coolant and two using electric driven hydraulic pumps that are supplied from the machine coolant pump through a filter. The bar that is being fed acts as the hydraulic piston inside a long carrier tube that is the cylinder. Different bar sizes are accomodated by different sizes of liner bushings inside the carrier tube and the liner at the chuck end is just made a close fit on the bar and has an O-ring seal between it and the cylinder. The hydraulic pump has sufficient flow that the leakage between the bar and liner is overcome and pressure builds up to advance the bar when the chuck is opened; it is the cross section of the bar that the pressure is working on, there is not any piston head. For example a 1/4" dia bar has a cross section of about 0.05 in^2 and at a fluid pressure of 400 psi is advanced with a force of 20 lbs.

The carrier tube is about 7 feet long with chuck end screwed into a flange which mounts inside the chuck; most power chucks have a liner piece that fastens in the front of the chuck to stop chips getting into the works, we just made the carrier mounting flange to take its place. The opposite end of the carrier tube is mounted in a pillow block with a second pillow block close to the end of the spindle; actually it is close to the actuator for the hydraulic chuck and because this actuator moves in and out to open the chuck nothing can be attached to it. Hence the pillow blocks for the carrier tube. The pillow blocks are mounted on a large frame attached to the machine and are adjustable so the carrier tube can be kept concentric and parallel to the spindle within about 0.005" over its length. The 7 feet long accommodates a 6 feet long bar; most bar stock comes in 10 or 12 feet lengths so they are simply cut in half. A 12 feet long bar feed takes up too much floor space.

The fluid supply to the carrier/cylinder is through a rotating seal at the far end. On the air powered unit which feeds an air operated chuck a simple lip seal is used because the chuck has to be stopped and the barfeed is only under pressure when it is stationary. The other two units both feed hydraulic chucks which can be opened while running so they have face seals that can take several hundred psi while running at over 1000 rpm. All three barfeeds can run at a speed of 4000 rpm and the full hydraulic units feed at 1000 rpm.

I do not have much in the way of drawings for these units; they were built directly out of my head with a few rough sketches. I have attached a couple of photographs showing the end support where the rotating seal is. If you cannot build a good enough image in your mind from my description I can make a few sketches but I have the feeling this is serious overkill for what you want. Have you ever seen any pictures of what was used on manual machines for barfeeding? This could be more along thre line of what you need.
Attached Thumbnails
Click image for larger version

Name:	Barfeed1.JPG‎
Views:	299
Size:	117.4 KB
ID:	42902   Click image for larger version

Name:	Barfeed2.JPG‎
Views:	279
Size:	118.3 KB
ID:	42903  
__________________
An open mind is a virtue...so long as all the common sense has not leaked out.
Reply With Quote

Sponsored Links
 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295 296 297 298 299 300 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 308 309 310 311 312 313 314 315 316 317 318 319 320 321 322 323 324 325 326 327 328 329 330 331 332 333 334 335 336 337 338 339 340 341 342 343 344 345 346 347 348 349 350 351 352 353 354 355 356 357 358 359 360 361