New toy/project, vintage goodness...

[faujijatt]

Good luck with the board man! Really cool to see vintage stuff like this.

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[ForcedFirebird]

This is awesome. Now wanna machine me a billet valve cover for m10 haha

Not out of the realm of possibility ;)

Good luck with the board man! Really cool to see vintage stuff like this.

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Thanks!

[ThatOneEuroE30]

Not out of the realm of possibility ;)



Thanks!

Haha one day when I'm feeling too rich for my self.

[ForcedFirebird]

Well, after lots of learning, talking with lots of people and companies, we ended up getting the blue prints for the spindle drive. After diagnosing it properly we found a bad transformer inside. It's a 0,200,230v primary and 10,19,24,75v secondaries, and retail for about $1200 if you can even find one. Called a few suppliers and they wouldn't sell me the transformer, but would refurbish the unit for the tune of $2500-5000.

After many searches, found a place in Germany that has 2 NOS units for 599 Euro plus 95 Euro shipping. Yes, the whole unit including that transformer, the PCB we were diagnosing and all. Crazy the prices for these old DC powered machines. If the motors were AC, I could have bought a spindle drive for about $500 used, they are readily available.

So, in about 2 weeks we should be able to start making chips!

This was the offending transformer...

http://www.plccenter.com/en-US/Buy/FANUC/A44L00010080?reload=1

And what they sell the spindle drive for...

http://www.plccenter.com/en-US/Buy/FANUC/A06B6041H103

There's a few used on eBay, but they are still in the $2-2500 range.

[ForcedFirebird]

This machine is a much bigger project than I ever expected! A 1.3 year endeavor, it's still slowly getting restored, but holy cow are some of these 36yr old parts hard to find. :(

Spindle drive has been restored, along with power supply, but I have a communication error between the mother board and spindle drive now. Even got an o-scope to help diagnose things (plus spent dumb money on a 30+yr old service/repair manual for the FANUC Robotics), yet still down to one small issue.

Only if this spindle would turn! As the old saying goes "If the spindle ain't turnin' you ain't earnin'!"

[lambo]

holy cow are some of these 36yr old parts hard to find. :(

if only you had a mill to create the parts you need heh

[ForcedFirebird]

Hard parts aren't the issue. The machine will hold .0002 (2/10ths) all day, problem is electronics :(

Robotics in the late 70's and early 80's were so cutting edge, there' no replacement parts. A comparable machine you would buy today compared to then would be into 7 figures new o.0

[ForcedFirebird]

...and we have a Bridgeport. I wish it were that simple.

This has DC driven motors. AC and brushless are cheaper to control, but this is a real tank compared to machines that are just a few years newer. Not only is it DC, it has square ways instead of dovetail, and it's all cast iron, not sheet-metal shell with iron ways. For comparison a 1993 machine weighs 8k lbs, this one is 11k.

[ForcedFirebird]

Forgot about this thread. Purchased 2 damaged boards, used the 3 to make 2 good ones, then realized after probing with an o-scope that it's not the board at all (now have spares at least). Turns out I have a "machine not ready" as if the loop for the emergency stop button is pressed, max travel limit switch, or the like. Sucks because every direction of travel, tool magazine movement, magazine rotation etc has 3 switches. One to tell the NC, "you're close to the end", one to say "this is as far as you should go" and finally a "hey you over traveled!".

Grrrr

[AndrewBird]

Sounds like quite the headache!

[Andre3127]

I'm into vintage machinery, but I don't have any CNC's yet. Maybe after college.

I currently have a 1948 Bridgeport mill, DoAll DH612 surface grinder, South Bend 13" lathe, Hardinge Cataract (1907-1931) turret lathe, Craftsman 109, and a wood shop at my disposal. Looking for a small shaper as well.

Instagram shop page: @andre_shop3127

[dcig]

Forgot about this thread. Purchased 2 damaged boards, used the 3 to make 2 good ones, then realized after probing with an o-scope that it's not the board at all (now have spares at least). Turns out I have a "machine not ready" as if the loop for the emergency stop button is pressed, max travel limit switch, or the like. Sucks because every direction of travel, tool magazine movement, magazine rotation etc has 3 switches. One to tell the NC, "you're close to the end", one to say "this is as far as you should go" and finally a "hey you over traveled!".

Grrrr

You could have another safety override switch somewhere. Or you may need to do a restart procedure.

On one of the older Makinos I used (those ran Fanuc drivers as well) whenever I would crash the spindle (yea believe me you will crash often) had a pressure switch that the spindle carriage/assembly rested on. And that whole thing moved along the linear guides. IMO on CNC machines I always start at the simplest solution first unless you witnessed what happened.

Here's a pic to reference what I mentioned above. See the spindle, then the motor and fan (the red part) is all one 'assembly/unit etc'. If you can make it out there's 4 allen bolts, 2 on each side. Those would need to be loosened to drop the spindle assembly onto these 2 pressure switches. Once that happen it close a switch which in turn 'released' the machine if you will.


Idk if your machine has something similar but it may because it's an older machine, they used really simple mechanical ways as safety features on these machines.

Another thing to note, is to replace the battery on the CNC machine. Yes cnc's have batteries almost if not all should have them. On the newer Makino I worked on (The shop I was at was a design prototyping shop for consumer products. We had 2 makinos, the SNC64 and MAX65 and then a DatronM8 - Which is by far the coolest machine on the planet other than a mazak or DMG Mori)

Anywho, think of the battery as the the backup power source that protects the vital information in order for the machine to run and read and execute commands. The local memory on cnc's rely on that battery. Well again I'm not familiar with your machine but the MAX65 had two batteries, and when one went bad the machine would not run and throw error codes similar to safety or limit switches being activated. Technically it gave us two or three error codes depending on what happened. One for the battery and one for XYZ Axis 'over limit' (or something of the like) Sometimes even a low oil pressure code.

Point being, if you say your boards are good. Your grounds are good, and oil pressure/air pressure in the machine is good then I would argue the problem lies in a battery or another mechanical switch somewhere. Shit could even be a ground, I have witnessed that before. Think simple, this machine is old and alot of things are mechanical and just over time no matter how good you take care of something a mechanical object will not last forever. A contact could be weak resulting in a simple 'Machine Not Ready'.

Sorry that was a lot but just trying to give some advice based on experience and maybe it'll jog your memory or come up with an idea on fixing the issue. Either way, let me know I'm happy to help out as much as I can.

Can you get me a model # and other info? My cousin owns a 30,000 sqft machine shop (all turning though) but he knows Kitamura's and maybe has a contact who knows this machine.

[ForcedFirebird]

I've been programing this machine for ages, and even help the PO with his newer MyCenter 2 (his is enclosed), but the replacement is a 1991 using FANUC System Om which is brushless AC (mine is 24v DC). Know all about crashes, over travel etc lol. Its a DC machine using FANUC System 6Mb. The machine maker is a Kitamura MyCenter 2, build date 1981.

Since my friend has owned it (he bought it in 07 or 08) it has had the spindle motor rewound, new old stock x servo, y has been rewound, all the spindle bearings have been replaced, all new air solenoid, and I found a new old stock spindle drive that was installed. It has 19kb of bubble memory, and punch tape encoder (that was removed yes ago). It has drip feed capability and does rigid tapping

I cut my teeth on this thing, self taught in MasterCam, older versions of SolidWorks, and over the years have become fairly fluent in g-code.

Since it's old, there's not much for OBD. I have gone through the parameters, reset the internal clock etc. I have found there's a mr1 fault on a channel using an o-scope. (Machine ready handshake between the NC and servo sides)

[mrsleeve]

I so want a old Mill and Lathe so I can then FIX ANYTHING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


If you have a lathe and mill and a little power, you can rebuild the world

[ThatOneEuroE30]

I so want a old Mill and Lathe so I can then FIX ANYTHING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


If you have a lathe and mill and a little power, you can rebuild the world

Guy in the shop across from me is a machinery maintenance man. His shop is full of mills and lathes that he’s bought to fix and sell. I want one so bad