Turret won't clamp

[protrxrptr17]

I have an Ikegai FT20-U. The turret will unlock and start turning, btu it won't lock down where it's supposed to. Sometimes it'll just keep going around, and other times it will slow down like it's going to lock down but it'll just slowly go past the tool. I have only had this machine a few days, and it seemed like it locked down slow all along, but this is my first turning center so I don't really know if it was working properly or not. The manual says to check the adjustment of the proximity switch. I didn't really have much time to look around for the switch, the manual doesn't show where the switch is located either. Can anybody tell me where to fine it? Could it be the encoder? How do you check it?

[cncatj]

sound to me you have a bad turret encoder it must be located inside
the turret case you can check by lokking at the diagnostics page (i'm not familiar with Ikegai)

[protrxrptr17]

Yeah, I think it's the encoder. I kept messing with it this morning and got it to work a little bit. Seems like tool 3 is gives the most trouble. How do you check it? The manual is no help. I found the proximity switch, and it was out of adjustment and the ring was loose, but that really didn't help the problem. It just magically started working.

[Al_The_Man]

What controller do you have on it, I believe some were fitted with Fanuc, if so you can see the proximity input on the diagnostic screen, the bit will change from 0 to 1 when sensed.
Some turrets are proximity for every position, some also have a slow down and in position prox, others have a multi position rotary reed switch, it looks like an encoder.
Al

[protrxrptr17]

It's a Fanuc 6T-B. It Has a separate encoder and a proximity switch. The encoder is a Sumtak IP type. It works much better (when it does work) after I adjusted the proximity switch. Like I said, #3 gives most of the problems now. it'l slow down and almost lock in, then it'll unlock and go all the way back around to the previous station and lock down. seems to work better if you go from #2 to #3. If you go from say # 9 to #3 it'll mess up almost every time.

[Ozemale6t9]

How is your turret balance? I have seen this problem a lot when customers put all the boring bar brackets or heavy tools one after the other to save indexing time. It creates too much of an imbalance and the turret cant stop in the correct position, but rotating in the opposit direction fixes the problem because the motor is working against the load.

regards, Oz

[protrxrptr17]

There may be something to that. I used it again today in the manual mode and it acted up a few times. I moved soem of the tools around, but there are several tools right in a row. There was also one big live tool on there when it really started messing up. I took it off this morning. I'll only be using about 4 or 5 tools, so I'll space them out evenly and take off every thing that I'm not using. Maybe that's all that's wrong.