Precautions needed while moving CNC Machines

[cwww]

Is there any precautions needed to be taken note of while moving relatively big machines (like Fadal 4020) from a factory to another?

Any experience of yours?

[cadman]

Hire a machinery moving service. They know what they are doing and are insured. If you attempt to do it yourself you may damage your machine, and I have seen machines fall off of fork lifts. Ugly. Out here there are several companies and Dunkel Brothers is the biggest.
Good luck.

[bob1371]

Change all batteries before power down. Make some strong axis tiedowns to bolt the axis in place. Some just do the Z axis. I do them all. If possible I try to make at least a 1/8" steel cover for the control panel and then add lots of padding. (of first three machines I ever saw moved from one factory to another, two ended up with broken screens.) After all this, make a logical decision on whether you have the proper equipment to move this yourself. If not then thats what the professionals are for.

Bob

[Victor Martin]

Sounds complex.I also saw machines fall.

[Walt@SGS.Inc]

Make a bracket to accept two bolts. Somewhere on the spindle housing and
on the tablethere should be threaded holes. make a bracket so you can bolt
the two together. You will really be bolting XY & Z together. Make sure they
are not jammed against the end of travel, then after they are secured somewhere
near the center of travel, loosen the ball nut retaining screws. This way, no
shock will be put on the balls in the ball nuts. At least, that is what we used
to do before we shipped new machines from the factory.
Good luck on your move.
Regards Walt...

[garagefela]

One of the precautions I can suggest is not to hesitate to queery ANY person about EXACTLY what they are doing at that moment in time.

I worked for a large engineering firm that was having one of it's large mills moved. The machine name escapes me but the table was around 5 meters long and around 1 meter wide.

The table (X axis) used to slide along a bed making the machine quite big. The Y axis was actually part of the Z axis which was attatched to a column, ie the table did not move in and out for Y axis. A Y axis slide did.
A universal head was attatched to the unit, just like a Huron and a Butler Elga mill if anyone knows.

The Z axis column was bolted to the side of the bed which X axis slid along and one of the "pro" guys from the machinery removal company was told to go and take the bolts out of the column in readiness for it to be moved as a seperate unit. Unfortunatly no one told this poor guy not to take all the bolts out as it was not supported. CRASH was the next thing anyone heard, the whole damn column with Z and Y stll attatched smashed into the table.

Would have hated to have been leaning on the table having a chat at the time.
Don't hesitate to ask ANYONE what they are doing with your machine. Could not give a stuff if it's the biggest boss of the biggest removal company in the world, queery thier actions. Maybe you can see something they can't.

They also deserve to be alive to go home to the family at the end of the day.
And you deserve not to have your machine stuffed

Cheers all, M

[ViperTX]

yeah.....don't let fall on your toes.....

[unterhaus]

One of the major regrets I have in my life was from when we were moving a machine. We hired a professional crew, and they had a fancy dolly that could take the weight of this machine, it had some wheels that would fold back so they could pick the machine up off the ground and roll on 4 wheels. I had never seen them use the dolly before, but they were pros, so when one of the guys flipped out the wheels and it didn't look right, I didn't say anything. Needless to say, when the machine fell on the guy, I wished I had said something. Nothing fatal as far as I know, but he did end up in the hospital.

Next time something like that happened and I asked what a guy what he was doing, he quit on the spot. We had to go kiss his butt for an hour before he would come back.

[ViperTX]

Well common sense is sometimes lacking ......