Air system help needed

[Mr. Technical]

I just got a Haas VF0-E mill that was the 'parts queen' at it's previous home, so I've got my work cut out for me trying to determine what used to be where, and what's not working as it should.

My current issue is that most of the air lines and components at the rear of the mill have been robbed, and the manual doesn't seem to have information on what should be there. I've heard that the type of air system will depend on whether I have an air/oil cooled spindle or a grease packed one. At this point, I don't know which kind I have.

Does anyone have any guidance or pictures of what the system, with an emphasis on the back 'apron', looks like? I'm dying to get this thing fully functional, and I can't do that with the 120 Low Air Pressure alarm always up. Thanks for any help!

Ian

[Matt@RFR]

Being a VF-0 dates it, but you should still post the year of the machine and I'm sure some guys will be able to help you.

Have you called Haas directly? If not, why?

[Mr. Technical]

Matt, you're right- the year might help. It's a '91 machine machine I think. I have contacted Haas about this, and they were very helpful, but they wanted me to determine what type of spindle this mill has and take it from there. I'm unable to get to the mill to find out for a couple of days, so I thought I'd see what knowledge could be found here. Thanks,

Ian

[Haas__man]

Unfortunately I think your only hope is for HAAS to come up with ssomething - did they give you any guidance on how to tell if your spindle is grease packed or oil lubricated?
Your machine is a very early model so not many people will be able to tell for certain.
You could post some photos of the rear of your machine so we have an idea whats missing maybe - and a photo of your spindle may help a little.
On an oil lubricated spindle this is what you should have:
you should have an oil feed from the lubrication pump
it will go into a bunch of three or four brass fittings including a couple of check valves(they have arrows stamped on to show direction of flow)
connected to this check valve assembly is a small regulator which mixes compressed air and the lube oil.
The small regulator should be located behind the main air regulator.

If both regulators have been removed - and presuming it is an oil lubricated spindle, then you should now have a lube pipe that is no longer connected. You could try priming the lube system by pulling up the plunger on the tank. Do this a few times until you have pressire on the lube gauge and see if you have any lube oil leaking from anywhere. If there are no leaks and no lube pipes that are not connected then I would suggest that you probably have a grease packed spindle.

Hope this helps

[Mr. Technical]

I was afraid of that. If I understood the tech correctly, I need to pull the TRP and look down the bore it occupied. If I see a copper tube, it's an oil cooled spindle. Obviously, if I see grease, it's a grease packed spindle. Do you know of another way to determine which kind of spindle instead of pulling the Tool Release Piston? That feels like opening a can of worms to me, what with checking the release and clamped positions, etc, when I put thinks back together. If that's what it takes, fine, but I'd prefer not to.

I'll post some pictures the next time I can swing by the shop and snap some. To give you an idea, the whole 'air service apron' under the control cabinet is bare, except for a little round component from Bijur (must be the air luber) and a small pressure gage (maybe 1.5 inches in diameter to the far right).

Other than that, there appear to be mounting holes for two components. I imagine that one was the air pressure regulator, and maybe the other was a lube pump/tank?

There are several different diameter (approximately 1/8" to 5/16") plastic air lines running around and through the area, but which have no place to connect to.

Thanks for your help.

Anyone have a picture of their air service apron handy?

Ian

[Haas__man]

Sounds like you are missing three units. The main air regulator, the spindle air regulator and the Lube tank.
Does everything else work ok on the machine?
You wrote that you couldn't do much because you were getting a low air pressure alarm. You can get around this alarm:
Press setting/graph button.
Press number 7
press cursor down
press cursor to the right
press write/enter (this will turn off parameter lock)
press parameter/dgns
press numbers 76 'low air delay'
press 9999999
press enter
press setting graph
press cursor to the right
press write/enter

you should now be able to power up the machine.
Obviously the tool changer will not work because you cannot unclamp the spindle without air connected.
Also do not run the spindle for very long - i would suggest running it at 100RPM for 10-20 seconds just to make sure it runs ok. Any longer than this and you could damage the spindle.
This will also allow you to move the X Y and Z axes to make sure they are ok.

If you take photo's of parts of the rear of your machine and post them, I should probably be able to point out what each part does and maybe we can figure out where the pipes go.

Also I don't think that you will be able to see anything if you remove the TRP. All you will see is the spindle and belts. You will also see a copper or nylon pipe - but you would see that whether it is oil lubricated or grease packed. To be honest I'm not sure how you would tell. The oil lubricated spindle has a pipe that runs up from the back of the machine which carries an air/oil mix at 17psi (the spindle regulator is set at 17psi). The grease packed spindle still has a pipe running from the back of the machine up to the spindle, but it just carries compressed air at 5psi for cooling(again regulator set at 5psi)
I'm very suprised that HAAS cannot tell you what type of spindle you have.

Hope this helps

[Mr. Technical]

Haas__Man

Sorry for the slow reply. I've been out of town for a couple of days. I stopped and took some pictures of the mill, but they're all too large to post up here. If you PM me, I can reply with the pictures.

Thanks for the information on how to override the low air pressure alarm, it worked great. I wasn't able to run the spindle as I'd hoped, but that's related to an IO Board problem. One thing at a time. Thanks for taking the time to help a new guy!


BTW the wires that I mentioned earlier, I now believe to be part of the coolant system, which is of course missing components too. Does that change which type of spindle you think I may have?

Ian

[Mr. Technical]

Here are the pics of the back of my mill. As I mentioned above, I'm almost sure that the plug that you can see dangling at the RH side of pic 1 is related to the coolant pump system. You may also be able to see a fitting dangling from an air line at the bottom center of pic 1. Don't know where that goes. Pic 2 is just a slightly different angle in case it helps. The 3rd picture is of what I assume to be the Bijur oiler. Now, what's wrong with these pictures?

[Haas__man]

OK,
Hopefully you can see the attatched edited photo?

1 This is where your main air regulator should be - there should then be a smaller regulator for spindle lube/cooling on the back of this panel (behind main air regulator).
2 This is a 115v power plug that sends power to the lube tank assembly(which is missing)
3 This is probably a 1/4 nylon pipe that feeds air/oil up to the spindle. It should be attatched to the smaller spindle regulator that I mentioned in #1
4 This is a lubrication fitting - it should very probably atatch to a bunch of brass fittings (which we call the spindle lubricator or spindle lube restrictor) - this is then attatched to the small regulator mentioned in #1
5 This is a lubrication filter. The copper pipe (#8)you see going through the sheet metal work should plug into a pressure switch - the pressure switch should have two yellow wires plugged into it.
6 This is the lube tank that is missing. The blue box is roughly the size of the unit that is missing.
7 This pipe? I'm thinking it is currently not plugged into anything? It should plug into the lube tank. The oil pressure would come from the tank, into this pipe, then through the filter unit, then through the pressure switch, then to a manifold that splits the lube lines three ways, one goes to the spindle regulator (mentioned in#1), a second goes up to the Z axis to lubricate the ballscrew and linear bearings, and the third goes first to the y axis and then to the x axis.
9 This pressure gauge would show lubrication pressure.

Hopw this helps

[Mr. Technical]

That certainly does help, but now I want to take a nap. Looks like I'm missing quite a bit. We'll see what it costs to replace it and take things from there.

Thanks a lot for the detailed breakdown and the diagram. I've talked with Haas again, and they're working on getting me some prices for the components that you mentioned, as well as the price for the entire panel as a single piece. That number will probably ruin my day, but we'll see. Hopefully, I'll be able to find out which components are proprietary and which can be substituted with less expensive commonly available components. That would be nice anyway. I'll post again once I have some more info. Thanks again!

Ian

[Mr. Technical]

Haas Man,

Any chance you have the Bijur's model number for the lube tank/pump? The Haas PN was 36-3090B but that was superseded by PN 93-1195.

For that matter, any of the manufacturers part numbers would help. I'm trying to get a handle on what all of this will cost me, and I don't mind buying used to keep the cost down since the local HFO will already be getting a lot of my money. Thanks!

Ian

[Haas__man]

I will have a look tomorrow and see what part numbers I can get for you. You will probably find though that it will be cheaper to buy these parts from your HFO. Usually they get big discounts because they buy in bulk. I've heard with lots of parts - ballscrews, lube units - that it is actually more expensive to buy direct from the manufacturer for one part - than it is to buy that same part from HFO. As I said though, I'll try to get you some Manufacturers parts numbers tomorrow.