Hi John,
Congratulations on moving into your own space, I hope to be doing that soon as well.
No, no luck on the ATC, we aren't getting power to the air solenoids that move the tool changer down and forward. The switches on the controller to control the tool changer in manual mode are getting power and working, and all the connections are good and wires test good for connectivity. Also the solenoids and relays are working if you power them. Where the disconnect seems to be is power from the switches goes to the computer in the box that has the tape reader, but doesn't make it back. I still don't really know if its the ATC not standby error preventing movement of the tool changer even in manual mode, and is due to something else, or this disconnect is whats causing it not to work and causing the error.
Thank You! It's been a lot of work. I have a paper with a sequence for power up. Main on, pendant on. Release E-stop, Pendant power on again for servos. MDI - M19 for spindle orient, then home out XYZ. On position page, type:XYZ, then ORIGIN key. Should be able to go to MDI, and type in: T1 M6 (or whatever tool number). I can scan it and email it to you if you'd like. I just replaced my solenoid valves because I had a problem with the seal on my pancake cylinder for tool knockout, and it was leaking air. Even after that, it still wouldn't work. Replaced the pancake cylinder, and worked fine! Take the cover off of the spindle, and make sure the stop on the drawbar is contacting both limit switches. That may be an issue. Do you know if the ATC ever worked? The machine that Daborcito bought, never worked for the guy he got it from. All of this is from working on my 6M machine. I haven't powered up The 11M yet, so I may have issues with that one also. I'm checking my emails to see if I have the file I sent Daborcito for the relays. If I find them, I will send them to you. It might help. ---------------John
Hey John, sorry for the extremely late reply but we finally got the tool changer working yesterday. Long story, tried to make some parts without a tool changer and realized the table was slanted then the machine sat for a while until we finally ripped it all apart and put new turcite on the x and y axes. Got that all back together a couple days ago and it turned out better than we expected so we started looking at the tool changer again. We could have sworn we went through everything and then realized one of the z axis limit switches was stuck down, how dumb is that! We should have know too because the first thing that happened when we powered the machine up was an over travel alarm caused by a sticky x axis limit switch. It was just weird to have a stuck z axis limit switch and no over travel alarm to us I guess.
Glad to hear you have it up and running again!! Good work on finding that stuck switch even without the alarm! They're the worst. Do you have any pics of doing the Turcite? That's pretty interesting.--------------- John
Got a couple, seemed like the main problem was that the last person cut the oil groove all the way through the turcite and it had started to come apart, also it wasn't oiling the front x way very well so there was some accelerated wear there. Disclaimer: I'm no expert this was my first time doing this.
That's ok. I saved them, and turned them right side. That looks great! I really want to do some more work on my machines, but I broke my leg 4 weeks ago, and I'm not allowed to put any weight on it. I fell off a ladder running conduit for the CNC lathe. Good job on your mill! --------------------- John
That sucks, hope it heals up soon. Yeah the turcite wasn't bad, we read a bunch of threads and stuff on it and were trying to find a place to grind the ways and that had a mill with enough travel to fly cut the turcite and cut oil grooves, then we talked to an old machine repair guy we know and he said just slap it under there and lay it on the ways then cut the oil grooves by hand. Thats what we did and it went from having .010" slant over the table to less than .001" which is good enough for us for now. He said he used an air tool and burr to cut the oil grooves, I made a .015" notch in a 1/2" piece of hss lathe tool and used that to cut it by hand, because it was kind of easy to punch through with the air tool after a cup of coffee haha. We did spend a while getting all the oilers free flowing again, the ones on the front x way were especially clogged and from reading some stuff on fadal rebuilding on practical machinist forum it seems like thats a common thing. The nice part is once your leg heals up you and another guy can just lift the table and saddle right off the machine, once you get the oil lines off, the leadscrew free and break the suction to the way with a little help from a 2x4.
Another thing if you gonna do the turcite, I ordered the turcite from mtsandtg.com I think it was $150 for the x and y ways, with the pint kit of waylock, and some of the wayprep stuff. The pint kit was way more than enough to do the job, an the wayprep stuff is soapy water, when It came I didn't even use it and used acetone instead.
A wood chisel works great to remove excess waylock and turcite once its cured. Also on this machine when you set the table on the x ways to cure the waylock, you end up with a little bit of a mirror of the oiling pattern in the turcite, we just sanded it down flush, but using a heavy straight piece of stock might be better.
I was wondering about milling, or grinding it. I worked at a shop many years ago, and they did something on a Bridgeport. Can't remember that far back but, it was short enough for us to grind it. As far as I know, I shouldn't have to do any of that to the 2 mills yet. The 6M is the first one I got, and it seems really good. The 11M I bought last year, I haven't run yet, so I won't know for a bit. I have to get on a ladder to finalize wire, and I'm not in a hurry!! Where are you located? General area is fine. I'm in Northeast Ohio. One of the reasons I was interested in the Turcite was, a guy on ebay had 2 of these mills. He was considering one as scrap because the Z ways were bad. The other was fine, with a Nikken 4th axis on it. $3900 for both, lots of tooling to go with them. I don't have the room, or I would have bought them! Thanks for the info on the Turcite! It may come in handy someday! ------------ John
I called that guy in Michigan about the two for sale, thought about it pretty hard but also didn't have the room at the time, I was especially interested because they both had Yasnac controls like ours. We were working out of some space on the eastern end of long island, which is where I'm from but we just moved into a shop about 30 min south of Rochester, NY. Just unloaded the acromax this morning actually.
Wow! You aren't all that far from me. Maybe sometime in the future, we can visit. I had my brother stop over tonight, and pull the cover off of the phase converter. Hopefully going to power up this week, and verify all the motors spinning the right way. Still have to level them all, and connect the wire and sinker EDM's, but I'm getting excited to have them running! -- John
Yeah that'd be cool. Nice. We just ran all our 3 phase circuits and fired up the Acromax to make some parts, spindle board threw a dc fuse error when shutting the spindle off. Still won't reset, all the fuses are good. This is the same thing that happened to the y axis board so I'm afraid it's toast. You don't still have that guy in michigans number do you? Or know if he still has the machines.
I replied from my phone, so I'll post here for you as well. Sounds like another board. If you can find out which one it is, let me know. I have a spare drive, and it might have what you need. I can probably hook you up and get you going again. The guy in Michigan sold the ones he had. Let me know when you find out what you need ------------------- John
TE, how are you doing on your machine? I'm walking again and finally getting around in the shop! Powered up both mills yesterday and the 6M, that I thought would run, won't light the monitor. The 11M is up and running except I think I have a stuck Z limit switch. Won't home Z, but X and Y ok. It's been sitting............ When the 6M was being moved, the counterweight broke the chain, (yeah, I know, I forgot about it!), and was laying on the deck of the semi trailer after it had fallen on the wires below it. The 11M has a cage for the weight. No cut wires that I can see, hopefully just loose connections. Let me know if you've found out what boards might be bad for your spindle drive. I might have them on my spare. ---------- John
Hey John, sorry for the late reply, good to hear you're walking, did you get the 6M going? I remembered to strap the counterweight when we moved ours but it cut through the strap, didn't look that sharp! But it didn't break the chain just slapped around a little. We replaced the big transistors on the spindle board, it worked, it burned them again, and we replaced them again and changed the spindle deceleration time to be much longer. We have only been running it at 4000 rpm since then to be safe since it blew the transistors both times when decelerating from 6000. But since then we have replaced the 4th axis (originally Y axis) servo pack and its been running good. Really saves time to have the 4th axis going as we were drilling and tapping radial holes in some parts we make with a rotary table. We have been tapping in the machine with some tension compression tap holders we got at an auction.
Hi TE, I got the 6M running, but wouldn't home on the Y. Cleaned the switches, like I did on the 11M, but it wouldn't fire up. Gonna have to do a wire by wire looking for the problem. The 11M was working ok, until I tried to go over 1000 RPM. I got pissed with both of the mills, and cleaned up, and painted the sinker EDM. The wire EDM, and CNC lathe are the next priorities. I'll work on them until I need to buy parts, then go back to the mills. If you are looking for more BT 35 tooling, I have a guy that has quite a bit of it, and his prices are really good! Let me know, and I'll post his number. ----------------- John
I'll let you know if I do, but I think I'm all set for now we picked up 35 tool holders at that auction, should have grabbed the running matsuura next to it for $500 but at the time didn't have the space.
Did you check whether or not the diagnostic for that Y limit switch is changing? I can home my Y and let you know which diagnostic changes from what to what, should tell us whether its not working or stuck down/shorted internally. I'm not sure if it will be the same on the fanuc but maybe.
That's the machine that the chain broke on, and I haven't had it power up all the way to try it again. Need to go wiggle some wires again to try and make it run. Now the 11m is acting up. Control won't fire up! Found one leg from the main switch is reading around 93V, while the other 2 are at 120. Gonna try cleaning switch, and see if that helps. It would be better to run these things 24/7, than to let them sit for a few days it seem! -------------------- John
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