pcnc440's after near 3 yrs

[joeavaerage]

Hi,
there is a company next door whom sell engineering products, abrasives etc. Thought I'd knock on the door and ask if they have soluble oil...and they do....quite some
variety as well. Mostly Quaker Houghton brand, which is in Victoria Australia.

I just bought 20l of Cindol 305, and paid $275NZD (including local sales tax) or $160USD, which is very well priced. Perhaps not surprisingly this particular product is their strongest
selling water soluble oil. There is another product which looked good (Hocut 795MP), it is bio-stable but without biocides, downside is it costs nearly double. Couldn't afford it at the moment.

I will be able to report in a few months time whether it lives up to its reputation.

Craig

[metalmayhem]

I used the Houghton hocut 795b till the locals didn't want to carry it anymore . I don't think anyone in Canada carries it anymore , at least not that I found in my countless searches . They make good coolant but the hocut was 400 a bucket the last time i bought it . They more or less priced themselves out of the market here . I really liked that coolant though and was willing to pay the extra

[joeavaerage]

Hi,

I used the Houghton hocut 795b till the locals didn't want to carry it anymore .

I really liked that coolant though and was willing to pay the extra

That is a good recommendation.

Well, I have no problem getting it, they have 5L, 20L and 200L in stock right now, literally no more than 30m from where I sit. They have six different Hocut formulations and one
Cindol formulation, all stocked locally.
The price is $470NZD (including sales tax) or $273USD for 20L of the Hocut 795MP formulation. I think we are in a good situation here for Houghton, given the free trade across the Tasman.
It not a brand name I've heard of before, I am encouraged that others, like you, have.

Craig

[metalmayhem]

the hocut795b is aerospace approved by a lot of the large outfits or so they say . As i mentioned previously I had staining problems even with cimcool which I've always swore by . The hocut resolved that issue immediately and it was a bummer when I couldn't get it any more . It worked out in the end anyhow because the castrol hysol is much cheaper and it's great coolant to

[joeavaerage]

Hi,
another local supplier sells Cimcool 20L, and at the moment on special at $269NZD (inc tax) ($155USD), but was unsure about it.
Yet another supplier stocks CastrolHysol 20L but its pricey at $548NZD (inc tax) ($318USD). This supplier has good stuff, drills, taps , dies, endmills etc, but tends to be on the pricy side.
A third supplier has Ricol Ultracut 20L for $555NZD (inc tax) ($322USD).

Will be interesting to see how Houghton Cindol works out, it is certainly good value for money.....assuming it check all the other boxes.

Craig

[joeavaerage]

Hi,
just done a 40 minute tool path in 316 stainless. The lubricity of the coolant seems OK, certainly on a par with other brands and formulations of coolant I've used.

The huge extra volume of the low pressure stream allows the chips to flush down into the filter while the high pressure stream has plenty of volume and most importantly,
is consistent. Nothing worse than having a coolant interruption while a job is running, especially in stainless: coolant interruptions wrecks tools like they are going out of fashion!.

The extra volume has shown up three leaks, or rather weeps, in my coolant tray that I hadn't ever seen before but overall while not quite leak free a big step in the right direction by
comparison to the much smaller coolant system I have used to date.

The three phase coolant pump motor is not fitted with a fan, but after 40 minutes running it needs it....so I'll have to make and fit a small fan. Other than that I'm very happy with the new
setup. It was supposed to relieve a lot of the leakages/blockages/flow inconsistences that have plagued me for some months....in fact ever since I got a new spindle and started
producing a load more chips. Seems to have addressed those in good fashion.

Craig

[metalmayhem]

glad it worked out

[joeavaerage]

Hi,
been using the new coolant setup quite a bit now. Have fitted an air circulation impellor and shroud to the wee three phase motor, and can now run the pump for hours
at a time without the motor even looking like getting hot.

Still relying on just the two pump outputs,if you recall one high volume (60l/min approx) low velocity, and one lower flow (10l/min approx) at higher velocity ( 1m/s approx out of a 3/8" tube). To be honest the smaller of the two
flows is more than enough to flood the job, I don't really need and extra in-line filter and/or high pressure gear pumps. I may get around to it at some stage, but at the moment everything is OK.
I can now top up the coolant tank in twenty liter lots without flooding the whole joint! I can tell you that it is still possible to block up a filter and have a cock-up (10l of coolant on the floor to prove it), but you have
to try hard.

I have largely achieved what I set out to do, very satisfied. Cost just a little over $1000NZD, so its just as bloody well too.

Craig

[metalmayhem]

I'm glad it worked out . For small mills it doesn't take any crazy volume of coolant to do a decent job . I got away with using 12v bilge pumps for over 14yrs . They'd eventually burn out , but at $20 each they were easy to replace .

At this point I've got one machine down . If I'm lucky it'll be a loose connection but I have my doubts and I think that one of the limit inputs on the mx3660 is blown . The mill is stuck on the x y switch activated alarm . If I override the switches then it behaves as it should. The switches are working fine , they just aren't communicating with the pc . I've been through this before which is why I'm leaning to it being a blown input again .
Leadshine sells parts if an axis board gets blown but it's stupid that they don't sell the main control board for those drivers . If they did then I could repair a whole lot of mx3660's .

[joeavaerage]

Hi,
from what I can see the MX3660 is a one port (parallel port) breakout board and three stepper drivers. Is that correct?

If the stepper drivers are separate then why not just supply your own breakout board and be done with it?

Craig

[metalmayhem]

I've been considering dropping in a separate bob and I have the pdf for the drivers here somewhere which shows the pinouts .
What holds me back is that once I start to butcher something original then there is no stopping me from there . I'd like the mills to retain some of their value because I'm not going to want them forever .
I have a spare driver on hand so once I have the mill opened up then I'll know for sure if it's the driver . If it is the driver input then I may just have the 2 switches share with the z input for the time being .
I don't mind replacing a driver ever once in a blue moon . I never power down the mills and it's a price i pay for not doing so . I haven't had many just up and blow on me , except for the last time which was costly . That was due to factory loose connections on the power supply and it cost me a good number of drivers in one week .
I've replaced a lot of drivers on my torus pro because of never powering it down as well , except they usually burn up at the connectors , and they are single drives

I still think it would be nice if leadshine sold the main board . All my online searches have found nothing and if they do then no one has cared to get back to me about it when I've asked

[joeavaerage]

Hi,
do you have a spare MX3660? Not the stepper driver boards but the breakout board?

Electronics is my thing, so its not impossible I could fix the old one, but more likely make a new one but identical size,shape and connectors of the original that would allow you to put
it back in the same housing, including fitting the stepper drivers.

I have made my own breakout board for my Ethernet SmoothStepper motion controller. It as three ports, so 51 IO's rather than 17 of the MX3660, so I can't see an MX3660 being more complicated.

Craig

[metalmayhem]

I have spares kicking around . A hiccup with adding another breakout board is that the drivers are pinned to the breakout board , it all snaps nice and neatly together . I have plenty of breakout boards that I've collected over the years but It's just going to get messy .
The key thing is I bought the 440's because I was tired of pieced together mills . A new driver every few years is the cost of doing business and it's something I can handle

[joeavaerage]

Hi,
how are the pins of the driver 'snapped' together? What I was thinking was to make a replica of the board so that the drivers could 'snap' in the same.

Craig

[metalmayhem]

https://www.leadshine.com/legacys/SDM660.html this is what i am talking about . 3 of these drivers are placed side by side . the control/breakout board has a bunch of pins that fit into the drivers , mre or less stapping it all together .
The complete unit is 300 , it is much easier and probably cheaper to replace the whole unit vs the time involved with making a new board . For what I bill my machines that is recovered in an hour , it's not worth the trouble

[metalmayhem]

Turns out to be a bad connection right at the drive . I think I may not have pushed the connector fully in because when I pulled on wires while looking for one that may be loose it popped off . It's been a while since I've changed the wiring for those switches so it's been a problem waiting to happen for some time now . It's my fault this time and at least it was simple

I have the machines all set up nice so moving the mill to access the panel was not something I was wanting to do . I have plywood mounted behind those machines now and accessing the panel didn't cross my mind at the time for some silly reason . An easy resolve was to cutout a square from the plywood to access the panel . A few screws hold it back in place . I'll have 3 more cutouts to do but I'll worry about that when the time comes when they are needed

[robert3]

looks like your off to a good start . I highly recommend getting thin rubber to cover and protect your y bellows , you'll thank yourself later .

Thanks for the tip, I'll take a look at this!

I've got my machine starting to make cuts now, a few days back I just did a little facing on aluminum with the conversational programming, no coolant and the spindle still set to low.

Today I ran an actual program I generated in fusion on aluminum, with the spindle switched over to high and the coolant setup. The part turned out pretty well, I need a lot of work on the coolant and enclosure front though! I'll have to read through forum posts to see what others are doing with their enclosure, biggest issue I have is that any coolant that hits the doors ends up on the floor. I'm getting leaks in a couple other places as well but the door is the worst.

I was on the fence about buying the tormach coolant system at all or just setting up my own and... I'd say I'm still on the fence. I'm not sure where they intend the coolant tank to go, I'd guess behind the machine, but I've got mine up against a wall so I don't want to do that. Right now I've got it inside the cabinet under the mill, with enough extra length on the hoses that I can pull the whole thing out to service it. Probably the first thing is to get the leaks fixed, once I don't have coolant going everywhere the tank setup may not seem too bad.

[joeavaerage]

Hi,
it comes to us all eventually, but coolant is an ongoing problem.

Most of us naively thought we could get away without coolant, maybe an air blast instead. Then we tried serious milling of aluminum, plastics and steel and realized that
coolant is REQUIRED, whether we like it or not.

Then the problems start, coolant leaks, insufficient containment, blocking filters and therefore overflows, insufficient volume coolant tank. All of these things had seemed unnecessary at the start
and consequently none had been allowed for in the original machine design, and therefore many of our solutions attempt to 'make the best of what we have' rather than being pre-planned.
Well, at least that is my situation, my machine is own designed and built. Although this is my second machine and the lower coolant tray and machine cabinet were allowed for originally which
was not the case in my first machine.

It is only in recent times (six weeks operation) that I've got around to designing/building/operating a 200l coolant tank and purpose designed/built three phase pump.

In your case the machine is designed by Tormach, and to give them their due, if you buy all the Tormach accessories then you'd have a fair coolant solution. Alternately you can go the metalmayhem
route and design/build/develop your own. As metalmayhem uses his machines for business daily I think you can rely on his design as being cost effective and operationally practical.

Mopping up coolant leaks becomes very tiresome very quickly.

Craig

[robert3]

I should have been more clear, I did actually buy the Tormach enclosure and coolant system. I was on the fence about the Tormach coolant system because it seemed pretty basic for the price, and it seemed like I might need to make some modifications to it anyway.

I've had a chance to clean up the machine a bit and look at the issues, I think I may be able to fix the biggest ones pretty quickly. If it works out I'll post what I did for others that might run into the issues in the future.

Aside from the leaks it did cut nicely!

[metalmayhem]

Thanks for the tip, I'll take a look at this!

I've got my machine starting to make cuts now, a few days back I just did a little facing on aluminum with the conversational programming, no coolant and the spindle still set to low.

.

I often run my 2" face mills coolant free , otherwise there is a lot of mist created with the spray hitting the tool .The inserts are quite sharp and they provide a good surface finish without the coolant .
I always keep my mills on the high belt and run the 2" at 6000 rpm . I'm not sure where the optimal torque curve falls for the spindle motor but it handles a 50% step over at 20ipm well so thats what I run the face cuts at . I've run them at 50 ipm but on heavier face passes they've stalled so I play it safe at the lower feed