Need Help!- Anyone have any Motionmaster Documentation??

[TAProwler]

OK, so I found this deal that I couldn't afford to pass up. It's a 3 axis 4'x8' Motionmaster SB840 (so I've been told), but it came via a liquidation sale (as is, where is) with no documentation. It has less than 2500 hrs on the Hobbs meter (power on), and is in nearly new condition. It's equipped with a Colombo 10Hp spindle and controlled by a Fagor 8025M system. It also came with a chip vacuum, and a Becker 95 SCFM table vacuum system.

The attached pic is of the "MotionMonster" (my new nickname for it) in my shop and almost back together after it's 700 mile, 13 hr drive - all 5 tons of it!

So, I've started to research this thing and have successfully found the Colombo spindle manual, the Yamasaka VFD manual, the Becker KVT 3.140 manual, and the Fagor 8025 Mill manuals.

The problem is, I have found NO Motionmaster documentation - Nada. I've done Google searches and searched this forum. I know that Motionmaster went out of business sometime in the late 90's or early 2000's. I have found a few older threads that mention some of the former Motionmaster engineers now work at some of the equipment dealers doing repair work for them. I'm going to see if I can possibly get in contact with one of them.

In the meantime, I thought I'd post here and see of there is anyone out there that has any kind of Motionmaster documentation for any Motionmaster machine. I'd really appreciate anything that anyone can offer, an Operator's Manual, electrical schematics, any kind of tech manual, sales brochures - whatever. I'd be willing to pay for any of these documents that you might have available to share.

Thanks for your help.
R/Todd

[A1CNC]

Contact CNC parts they might be able to help.
CNC Parts Dept

Where I used to work we had a motionmaster.

Erik at cnc parts knows these things inside out. In fact I think the people at cnc parts used to work for motionmaster.

The router we had is used in daily production in about the worst conditions you could get and it keeps working.

[TAProwler]

Hey, Thanks for the info A1CNC.
I saw this mentioned in one of the threads that I researched, I'll give them a try tomorrow. I was also able to contact a gent at DMS (which is the company that purchased Motionmaster). He was able to supply me with some information today (it was a good start)! But, more is better - so I'll give the folks at CNC PD a try as well.
I also really appreciate your comments on the Motionmaster systems. Thanks for your help and insight.
R/Todd

[mjhjenks]

Have used MM routers since the late 80's. Have had 3 of them. Good machines. Recently sold our last one as we are scaling back but still would say nothing bad about them. Erik is a great source. He has helped me many times. The single most troublesome part of our router over the years was the controller. (Siemans 810M) If you have that controller then make sure you replace the battery every year.

Good luck.

Matthew

[TAProwler]

Thank you for sharing your MM experience. As I was breaking this thing down to get it loaded on the trailer I was noting the construction, etc. It sure seems like these machines were well built. They are fairly straightforward designs of very heavy duty construction. Mine should run like the "Energizer Bunny" - as I heard one gent say it.

I have the Fagor control system, but from what I understand I might have the same issue with the battery. I haven't gotten this thing powered up yet, so not completely sure what I'm facing yet. Next step might be to find a 220/440 3ph step-up transformer. I'll see what Erik recommends.

Thanks for your post.
R/Todd

[TAProwler]

It's been about a month now and I've made good progress on the MotionMaster.

In the process of trying to find documentation on the machine I typed in www_dot_motionmaster_dot_com and it directed me to the Diversified Machine Systems, Inc. website. So I sent them an email via the "contact us" link and got an email back in a few days. I'm not sure what happened at Motionmaster, but I can tell you that DMS purchased the assests of Motionmaster. When I asked about that with the folks at CNCParts Dept. the response was short and cool. Reading between the lines, not everyone was happy about whatever it was that happened with Motionmaster - but good folks.

Anyway, DMS did provide me with a generic power system schematic and a generic lubrication information & schedule. This is/was very helpful. Turns out that my machine was wired very similarly to the schematic that I was provided and I was able to trace out and verify the power schematic fairly easily.

Here's more info on the various findings/problems:

Fagor 8025M Controller - works fine. The controller is powered with 120Vac. Took a while to wire up an RS232 cable exactly as Fagor recommends. Setting up the USB-to-Serial port on the laptop was the hardest part. Once I found the right driver it worked great. I used this Prolific (PPA) USB-to-Serial cable: from Fry's Electronics. Then I installed the WinDNC program. Managed to download all the programs, tables and parameter settings on the controller that were left from the last owners/operators. Most importantly, I got the Gcode subroutine for the tool change operation. This code will need to be re-written after the X & Y axis swap (discussed below). Glad I was able to salvage this subroutine code!

Logic & Control Wiring - Turns out this is powered by 120Vac into a 24Vdc power supply. All the logic circuits run on the 24Vdc. I ended up tracing wires, one-by-one for 3 days to figure out the entire chain of switches and relays that makes up the E-stop system. In the end, it's a very straightforward, simple, and reliable design - it just took quite a bit of time to "reverse-engineer" the schematic from the actual machine wiring. In the end, there are 13 switches and 5 relays that make up the total E-stop system. I was also able to trace out several of the Fagor control wiring items - particularly the decoded M functions M89, M90, M91 and M92 for the tool change operations.

Servo Controller - My machine has a 6 axis Glentek servo controller board in it that only uses 3 of the axes. The Glentek GA370 system uses 120Vac to power it's 150Vdc (Floating DC voltage - no ground). All of the info on this system was available from Glentek's website. After studying both systems, the Glentek is very similar to (and may even be a direct replacement for) the Baldor UM system. Everything works fine.

Linear Motion Systems - This is a robust system - Big, Heavy, and Solid. After pulling the cover on the table ballscrew it didn't take long to discover that the system was never re-greased from new. It was bone dry. Completely cleaned and re-greased it. Not sure about wear/backlash yet. I'll have to investigate further once I get the entire machine working. The gantry carriage ballscrew/nut were still a little wet with grease, and seems to still be in good shape. Cleaned and re-greased it as well. The Z ballscrew/nut were making a bit of noise and turns out it was messed up. When I pulled the cover there were ball bearings laying all over. After cleaning and researching everything I discovered that the ballnut is an SAE standard 1" ballnut (R1004 specification), but it had only about 1/2 the needed bearing balls in it. It's a two circuit ballnut and each circuit takes about 88 bearing balls. I was only able to find 110 balls. On top of that they are 4mm balls when the spec sheet calls for 5/32" balls!?!? Why? I dunno. Do they build SAE ballnuts with metric sized balls? My suspicion is that when the previous owner/operator wore the Z axis from lack of lube, they tried to take out some of the backlash with 0.0015 oversized balls. Beats me. I repacked the nut with 4mm balls, lubed it and re-covered it. It still makes some noise, but is definitely better than before. I'll run it and see what happens. I'll be doing mostly profile cuts, so some inaccuracy in the Z axis is OK for me, for now.

VFD & Colombo Spindle - Turns out, the only reason the table is/was originally powered with 440Vac was for the VFD/spindle power and the table vacuum motor. The Magnatek/Yaskawa VFD and Colombo spindle are both capable of being wired to 220Vac 3phase. The table vac motor can also be powered with 220Vac 3 phase power. So, I'm currently in the process of buying the parts and putting together a 20HP 220Vac RPC to power the VFD/spindle and the table vacuum.

Table Orientation - once the machine was moving, I figured out that the carriage moving across the gantry was the Y axis with the origin at the right hand end of the table (looking at the pix below). The table moving under the gantry was the X axis with the origin at about the center of the 4 ft dimension. I prefer to have the origin as shown below, so I had to swap the X axis and the Y axis. This went well, once I figured out (remembered) that it's important to ALSO swap the encoder feedbacks on a servo system when you swap the inputs - oops! Then swapped the X & Y axis settings on the Fagor 8025M. Next, I reset the soft table limits and all is well.

Old setup:
_____________________
|................................| ^
|................................| |
|..............................o.| X
|................................| |
|____________________| v
<------ Y -------->
New setup:
_____________________
|................................| ^
|................................| |
|................................| Y
|................................| |
|o___________________| v
<------ X -------->

At this point, I still have to hook up the table vacuum, chip vacuum (which also doubles as the spindle cooling system), and the VFD/spindle power. But, so far - so good. If I can help anyone with any of the info I've learned about Motionmaster, let me know. I'd be happy to help if I can.

R/Todd

[DMSCNCMACHINES]

Although I realize this thread is a year old, I figured I would post this information since it is relevant to the conversation.

The MotionMaster product line has been discontinued, the new product line is the Diversified Machine Systems (DMS) CNC Routers, Machine Centers, & Machine Tools mentioned below.

Feel free to contact DMS at 1-866-255-2947 or via the website at Contact Us | DMS CNC RoutersContact Us | DMS CNC Routers