So, what to do? More cleaning whilst I pondered my options...
Given the Radio silence and the deliberate unanswered calls, I didnāt have much confidence . If I were to send both the ccu box that was under guarantee back, along with the Z axis drive,which wasnāt, my gut feeling was I would be told it was the Z drive,irrespective of whether it was or wasnāt. In short, the trust was gone š So, I decided on the phone a friend option....The salesman who used to work for XYZ, but had to give the job up due to serious illness. He suggested I speak to a techie friend of his,who had retired,but was up for a bit of private work once in awhile. Best of all, he was only in Surrey, so I wouldnāt be getting silly bills for travel.
Long and the short of it, he had broken his ankle,so was going nowhere slowly. He did give me a name of an industrial electronics place that apparently had a huge inventory of Siemens stuff ,that they were selling off during these hard times at very reasonable prices. A new Z axis drive ,( with 2 year guarantee),was available for less than a quarter of the normal Ā£1600 price tag I had seen previously. It was a no brainier at that price, even if it didnāt solve the problem,it would be an ace up my sleeve if I sent the old drive and ccu box back to the original company and they tried to pull a fast one on me. I could swallow that price and keep it as a spare if it didnāt solve the problem. Duly paid for, it arrived the next day,( no excuses due to COVID for delivery being late š)
Connected up and it roared back into life
Still not totally out the woods though,as I was soon to discover. The interlock switch on the door has been bodged,so that needs to be replaced. The X axis bearings are also noisy. Given the low run hours and the 7 years of standing idle,I hope this may just be a dry grease issue. Given there are three possible sizes of precision angular contact bearings used on this model, they need to come out anyway to be identified. Also, seeing they are Ā£500 worth of bearings, a regrease wonāt go amiss whilst they are out.
X marks the spot . Not the first person here by the looks of it.
Bearing number obtained for this end
Quick scratch in the junk box yielded a useable jig and a spigot
Couple of strokes with my favourite file
Quick and nasty way to lubricate bearings
Other side had not been apart before. Probably because there is no quick and easy way to get the servo motor out the way
These bearings are mullered. Did clean them out and regrease before reassembling them. Slightly quieter, so they can be used until the new, special order bearings arrive .
Itās been a hectic couple of months. Nothing seemingly going to plan...Just when you think you are getting somewhere,something else goes wrong....š„² Couple of days of this....
Meant it was bitterly cold, this was about 3pm a week after the snow.
But....the show must go on. I had plenty of work to get out. Little mill came into its own, and didnāt let me down.
Who says you cannot turn on a cnc mill? š¤£š¤£ It got me out of trouble whilst waiting for spares to arrive for the lathe.
The long and the short of it was the Brazilian twunt at the factory who built it,didnāt understand what cable ties are for. Thanks to him using a whole bag of cable ties where I would have used 4 or 5, and him using them to garrotte the communications cable, the first time it got really cold and tried to constrict ,it couldnāt. So it snapped the tiny wires inside. New Ā£75 cable to the rescue
Does that mean I shouldnāt take it out the packet?š¤£š¤£ Absolute pig of a job to change the cable
Unfortunately, that wasnāt the end of the damage. . The wires in the cable shorted out, taking out the drive and damaging some electrical interface on the servo motor
More boxes with this logo.....Ā£2500 worth all because of a Ā£2 bag of cable ties installed by an idiot factory worker....
Anyway, that put paid to the taxman getting a birthday present from me š¤£š¤£š¤£
Job got done
Mill performed faultlessly.
Customer got his parts on time, all 100 of them.... Its not the end of the saga though, the lathe still had issues, but of a liquid variety now, not electrickery related......
This should hopefully be one of the last posts on the cnc machines. Both now up and running,so Mazda parts can proceed when I get the time š I eventually found some decent quality ballscrew support bearings for the cnc mill. These are old stock at a reasonable price. They are ultra high precision,normally Ā£180 each. Only cheaper ones to be found were from a loverly Chineseman who imported a whole lot of them from Japan so he could sell them cheap on EBay...yeah right....š
The cnc lathe issues seem to be solved. Right from the offset the hydraulic Chuck has been ultra vicious,and adjusting the pressure down so it doesnāt crimp the part was very hit or miss. The hydraulic tail stock also drove the live center out at a rate most pellet guns would be proud of, again the pressure adjustment had little effect.
Looking at the stack of valves,my gut feeling was somebody has had a good play around with the pressures. Begrudgingly I consulted the book of words... Bearing in mind itās German translated into English vis a Portuguese speaking Brazilian, itās better than Chinglish...And then the penny dropped.....š
Looking at the stack of valves,my gut feeling was somebody has had a good play around with the pressures. Begrudgingly I consulted the book of words... Bearing in mind itās German translated into English vis a Portuguese speaking Brazilian, itās better than Chinglish...And then the penny dropped.....š
Post by 07lilredwagon on Mar 16, 2021 22:26:28 GMT
Im hoping the valves are adjustable....at least you would have that on your side....Im inspired how you somehow got a big job out of the way despite the tom-foolery your machinery was up to.
Im hoping the valves are adjustable....at least you would have that on your side....Im inspired how you somehow got a big job out of the way despite the tom-foolery your machinery was up to.
JP
The valves are adjustable. And herein lies the massive aggravating issue. You can adjust them to your hearts content. They do have an ever so slight effect, but definitely not the effect they should.š
Going back ,right to the beginning then..... When I first got this up and running, there was a reoccurring error code along the lines of ā plate filter blockedā. It was accompanied by a very irritating beeper that would go off. The only way to silence the beeper was to hit reset. All fine and well, but if you do that whilst itās running, it stops the programme too š. I had work to get done. Beeper silenced with insulation tape....Still bloody irritating...so it got temporarily disconnected.
My initial thoughts were what is a plate filter? I surmised that given the fact the translation had been done by somebody who was a speaker of at least two, non native tongue languages,( A Portuguese speaking Brazilian who was fluent to a larger,or lesser degree in German and English....No, not that kind of Brazilian,but the longer it went on, the more appealing the Brazilian description became š¤£š¤£). So, bearing that in mind, I figured one could confuse ā plateā for ā panelā....Ok, getting somewhere...
So a panel filter....Well dip me in chocolate and throw me to the Lesbians,if there isnāt a large panel filter on the electrical enclosure. It did also have a micro switch on a flap at the bottom. Ok, so if this filter is blocked,it canāt pull the flap up,and switch the micro switch. Rather crude I thought. I tried disconnecting it. No change...I tried bridging it... no change...How odd.
So I bumbled on ,highly unimpressed with the hydraulic Chuck that had a tendency to squeeze all the moisture out of any bit of steel you put in it. Rest assured,it always came out with teeth marks in it from the jaws. This was no good. So, I got hold of a manual for the machine and waded through it tediously. In all fairness,itās pretty comprehensive. However, could I find anything about a Chuck? No. Anything about a hydraulic Chuck? No . There was however reference to a ā Hydraulic plateā.....And thatās when it dawned on me.... Plate was supposed to mean Chuck.It had been telling me all along that the hydraulic filter was blocked....š¤£š¤£
So I sucked the oil out the tank
Hmm .A double tide mark in the tank. I had added oil when I had had the oil overheating issues when the oil cooler had turned out to have its fins all clogged up with a dust and oil type of cement.
Oil had been well cooked with a lot of dirt in it. Filter was completely blocked.
It was a pisswilly little filter anyway. Manual recommended cleaning it every 360 hours ....Yeah right,like I have the time and patience for that. The tank is a bugger to get out. Manual also recommended filter change at 2000hrs, which, coincidentally is exactly how many hours this machine now has on it. So a much larger filter was sourced...
Having looked at the hydraulic schematics, it all made sense. The valves regulate from system control pressure. The filter is on the return from the main pressure regulator. So, a blocked filter pushes the system controlpressure through the roof, pretty much rendering the adjusting valves useless, as the pressure is too high to start with, and even with the valves fully open,the pressure is still to high.
All back together. Filled with clean oil. Pressures reset to factory settings.Itās like a totally different machine š. Chuck closes in a slower,more consistent manner. You can now grip tubing without it turning the tube into triangular hollow section. I was also able to get the tail stock to advance in a not so mind your fingers manner, it now advances three times slower than it retracts....Thatās a win in my book šš»
