Flood coolant option

[truline]

We just installed a TM-1, the salesman said we could add our own flood coolant system, but today come to find out that the outlet that I thought was for the pump on a coolant system is not switchable and is only a convience outlet.

Anyone have any experience putting on a aftermarket flood coolant system on a Haas toolroom mill?

-Jim

[serviceman]

i think it is connector 940 on the bottom right of the io board if you know about mini fit jr connectors you can add a 240vac twist lock connector which is what haas uses and when you use m8 it will turn the outlet on.

[axis]

you could also run a relay of one of the extra m codes. you should have 4 onthat machine

[AMCTony]

You need 2 wires for inside the control cabinent. The part numbers for these are 33-0930F and 32-0942B. You need both and the second one has an outlet that comes with it. I did this for my TM-1 in march and the wiring cost $155.72 with shipping. As far as a pump goes, you have 2 options. The first is to get a 220V graymills pump or equilivent to plug into the outlet. You have 3 Amps to work with on this outlet so do not get a giant 5 horse coolant pump. The graymills pumps are the most straight forward way to go but cost the most. The second option is what I did and it works great. Go to Home Depot and get a medium waterfall pump. Make an adaptor plug that uses 1 leg of the 220 on the machine coolant pump outlet. You now have LOTS of coolant for around $120. Remember that the relay for this system is solid state and will read voltage even when it is off if there is nothing connected to it.

[truline]

Thanks Tony I will look into that route. Do these parts go onto the I/O board at position 940 and then to the power board at the coolant output?

-jim

[Elam Works]

Jim,

You could buy the internal cables from HAAS for the power relay ($69) and power supply ($79) or for $5 in electronic connectors, some wire, and a soldering iron you can make your own.

You will need two Molex “Mini-Fit Jr.” cable connectors, dual row, eight connector, male. If you have a DigiKey catalog, the part number is WM3703-ND (Molex #39-01-2080) for the cable from the power relay board to the main board. You only need two of the pin positions to operate the standard M8 coolant option. As you can see in the attached image, on the power relay board the correct port is P20, also thoughtfully labeled ‘coolant’. It is pretty obvious which two pins are needed, as they are the only ones receiving via the circuit board power from the circuit breaker. I’ll call these positions one and five. The cable is straight through, that is pin one goes to pin one, pin two to pin two, and so on. I checked a few other TM-1s that we had in work (2005 models) and though the plug location, orientation, wire colors, and circuit breakers had minor variations from my 2006 model, the straight through cable wiring held true. The other unused positions are for other coolant options I did not have installed.

If in doubt, a multimeter or a test lamp will show which pin positions are receiving power from the adjacent circuit breaker.

The next picture shows the other end of the cable on the main circuit board. This is port P44, and if I am not mistaken, along the edge of the circuit board but not in view, it is also labeled ‘coolant’. Though the plug is turned sideways, it is still pins one and five in use (relative to the retaining clip.)

Right below it, port P43 is the power supply to the receptacle for the coolant pump. This is the second cable you will need to make. It uses a “Molex Mini-Fit Jr.” single row, four pin, male connector. DigiKey catalog #WM18435-ND (or Molex #39-01-4040.) Pins 1 and 2 are used, or the lower two in this view. If you want to test that the M8 function is switching on the power at these pins, do not make the mistake I did and use a digital multimeter. These diode switched relays tend to leak a few micro-amps, which the digital meters are so sensitive to read as full voltage, all the time. Use an analog meter, or a test led/lamp that has some resistance. This will suck the voltage down to zero when the relay is switched off; and only register voltage when the M8 function or the coolant switch is activated. I am not an electrician, but I was about to loose my mind trying to figure out why the coolant option was live all the time, till the penny dropped… No wonder I hate electronics.

The Molex connectors do not come with the pins; these you buy separate (bag of ten), solder onto the wires, and stuff into the plastic connectors were they latch with a one-way sprag. Make sure you do stuff them into the right sockets, as despite their flimsy appearance, you can not pull them out again. I’ve tried! Part numbers- Digikey WM1913-ND (Molex 44476-3112.) I give the Molex numbers, as DigiKey has a $25 minimum order, and these cable components will cost you all of about $5, so if you have a source nearby for electronic components (like what RadioShack use to be before they primarily focused on consumer electronics) you may be able to get the equivalent connectors by cross-reference. Otherwise you can order a dozen connectors for the DigiKey minimum and sell your own HAAS coolant cables for $10 a pop and every one wins (well, except for Gene!)

Next, you will need to have a receptacle to plug the coolant pump into. I used a twist lock receptacle so that no one would inadvertently mistake it for a 115V circuit, and to prevent the cord from falling out. The later though has not bee an issue. Also the twist-lock receptacle is round, and matches the hole pre-punched in the cabinet. Or almost, as I found it seems to be a bastard size and I had to turn a smidgen off the plastic snout of the receptacle to fit. The receptacle and mating plug I got from the local DIY home center, as used for hooking up portable generators, and was rated for 20A, far more than required to run a coolant pump.

You could hard wire the pump into the power supply, but I thought it would be nice to have a quick way to unplug it in case I wanted to roll the coolant tank away to dump, clean, or service.

As for the coolant pump and tank, I was lucky in that I was given a Graymills coolant pump and tank that had a fried motor capacitor. Four dollars later and a new capacitor, I had a working pump. The tank was too tall to fit under the TM-1, the coolant outlet on these is dreadfully low. Also I wanted a large tank, much larger than the small five gallon unit HAAS had on offer. I figure with an open machine there was going to inevitable be a lot of coolant lost by splashing onto the floor.

So the pictures show the tank I fabricated to fill up all the space between the legs on the left-hand side of the machine. There is a bit that juts forward to collect the coolant from the drain opening in the front trough. I have a removable tray in there with two settlement weirs. The service techs like to level the machine as low down as possible on the jacking screws. But to get enough head to have to settlement basins before overflowing into the main tank, you will want to raise the machine as high as possible on the leveling screws. Doing so, you should be able to get about 9.75” under the drain outlet, if I remember correctly. The pump is at the back, where there is plenty of vertical room.

The next picture shows the basic manifold made from 1” square aluminum bar, drilled from the back, and attached were the silly mandatory chip guard use to be. The bottom is drilled for four ports, though two are only in use (for a bit of high volume molded plastic, Lock-Lines are not cheap!) I had their non-return check valves installed just above the stop cocks (seen here), to prevent drain-back. However these did not work well as the nozzles still dripped and air siphoned back into the line. The check valves were also constantly getting clogged, so I eventually removed them and just learned to live with the momentary delay and surge when the coolant cycles on. (My first brew of water soluble was a potent mixture of several brands of concentrate that probably were never intended to commingle, there key common attribute was they were free donations. It was very effective in loosening the paint inside the freshly fabricated tank, and circulating softened paint chips through the system. Since then I have switched to PicoCool synthetic, which I have been very satisfied with.)

The next modification will be to install a large spin on oil filter from a truck into the pump output, as I still occasionally get some paint chips clogging the valves; particularly at small openings. More problematic was after I machined some plastic (Plexiglas); what a nuisance, that stuff continues to circulate through the system long after the job, and cutting off the flow at the nozzles/valves.

Once you start running coolant, you will find the sheet metal has various well known leak points, and the coolant flowing down between the Y-guide ways splashes over the front trough wall onto the floor. But that is for another post, being slightly outside the scope of this thread on the coolant pump option and more along the lines of coolant containment!

Best regards and good luck.

-Doug

[AMCTony]

Elam,

Nice lookin retrofit!!!

[Gee-C0de]

Just curious if someone may have some insight to a problem with our M8. I bought the above mentioned cables for the coolant using a waterfall style pump. Worked great for a few months and Friday coolant quit working in the middle of a cut. The pump still works when I plug it in to separate outlet. Ive cheecked the breaker and the GFI on the side of the machine. The HAAS tech I spoke with said it could be the i/o board. Is there a relay or fuse I could check before I call out a technician?

Thanks.

[Wizzard of H]

Did you check the breakers at the top right of the cabinet?
The GFI is for low voltage (120VAC) stuff.
The IO board is blamed for a lot of stuff but is not always the problem.
What output from IO is controlling your pump?

[Gee-C0de]

Originally Posted by Wizzard of H Did you check the breakers at the top right of the cabinet? I did. I even swapped the breaker from another machine to see if that was it. The GFI is for low voltage (120VAC) stuff. The IO board is blamed for a lot of stuff but is not always the problem. What output from IO is controlling your pump?

Not sure what you are asking. What ever the factory uses, as I bought the cables from them and just plugged them in.

[Wizzard of H]

I'm sorry.
I guess I don't know what you are doing.
The Haas coolant pumps are all 240 volts.
If you are trying to use the standard circuit to run a 120 volt pump, you must have done some custom wiring.
There is no easy way to make that 240 volts appear as 120 volts.
There is no mid-point neutral.

[Gee-C0de]

Originally Posted by AMCTony The second option is what I did and it works great. Go to Home Depot and get a medium waterfall pump. Make an adaptor plug that uses 1 leg of the 220 on the machine coolant pump outlet. You now have LOTS of coolant for around $120. Remember that the relay for this system is solid state and will read voltage even when it is off if there is nothing connected to it.

This is what I did. I am no electrical expert but it seemed like a good way to go. Do you think it could have caused a problem?