Member postings for mgnbuk

Siemens controller....................However they are a very good and robust system.

Awful things. If you think Linux CNC is a bear to get up and running, you would be in for an unpleasant suprise if you tried one of Erlangen's "finest". On the one I am lumbered with, it's a bit of a lottery when you press the start button as to whether or not it will deign to start - or keep going if it does start. "Very good and robust" it is not !

Did you find the link to the Chinese turning control manual you mentioned earlier, John ? I would be interested to have a look. Do you have details of the shortcomings of the Chinese USBCNC boards mentioned a few posts up ?

I have one on order (a whole £17 delivered - what have I done ) to try with the demo software. Apart from the Planet CNC denigrating of them, I couldn't find anything specific elseware. For a mill this seems a reasonable solution - at least it supports tool radius comp - even if turning isn't fully supported yet.

John,

Looking through the posted documentation link, it is apparent that the "drive" connections are just step & direction outputs to external drives, not an internal limited current output direct to a motor.

It looks promising, but is very obviously in the early stages of development as many "features" (like more than 3 axis functionality) are "to follow" - which may or may not happen any time soon. A 4 axis unit lists at $Australian 717, or about £425 according to XE.com - add in postage, customs, Vat etc. & it will be a bit pricy when it gets here.

Can't say I am a fan of calling Cycles "Wizards" - why not just make them as Fanuc-compatible G-code cycles ? And why use M28 for "Return to home position" rather than the usual G28 ?

Something to keep an eye on to see how it develops, rather than a "must have" for me as it stands.

it looks bit too robust

Can you have "too robust" on a shaper ?

Nigel B

Thanks Murray,

I have the machine schematics & all the normally supplied A2100 "user" manuals, but could do with the OEM manuals. I have a contact who used to work for Cincinnati in Birmingham who is looking into this & the manuals appear to be available as hard copies in the States (though I have not enquired about costs) if I get that desperate. Cincinnati sold off their in-house controls division and, after a couple of owners, it ended up finally being bought by Siemens - who shut it down.

It may end up easier to swap the installation onto another machine with a Heidenhain control, but the Sabre doesn't get much use as it is (all bar one other milling machines in the works has a Heidenhain control & the operators prefer using those) and the intention was to dedicate the Sabre to one customer's requirements. I have designed & had made a trunnion table to fit the Jones & Shipman rotary - with a vice mounted on this, 3 sides of a part can be presented to spindle & 5 sides machined to minimise setups. One of the other machines has an identical J&S table and, as luck would have it, identical Tee slot dimensions & spacing. The easy way out is to fit my trunnion table onto the other machine & swap the existing servo motor onto it, but that will leave the Sabre disappearing under an ever deeper coating of graphite dust !

Nigel

Thanks John,

It would be interesting to have a look. I have an ex-industrial non-ATC Denford Triac carcass in storage that will require some form of control. It was originally driven by a Fanuc 0M-A with some German make I was unfamiliar with brushless drives.My former employer purchased the machine for the control & drives to sell as spares & I did a deal on the carcass. I bought steppers & drives from Arc at one of the Harrogate shows & imported a CNC4PC C11G parallel port interface card intending to use Mach 3 & then the project stalled. Looking at the project again now I am tending more towards a stand-alone USB motion control interface - I have GRBL V0.9 up & running on an Arduino Uno but would ultimately like to add a 4th axis. GRBL development seems to have stalled & it didn't appear last time I looked that adding 4th axis capability would be along any time soon (if at all). I also have a Chester Mini lathe to convert to CNC - ballscrews, steppers, drives & breakout board all to hand - Round Tuit gone AWOL !

On the subject of manuals - you don't have access to a Cincinnati A2100 Installation & Setup manual do you ? Trying to add a 4th axis to a Sabre 750 at work at the moment & it isn't playing nicely - getting info on a 20 year old, low volume, in-house manufactured, PC-based control is not straightforward.

Edit for spelling

Edited By Nigel B on 30/09/2016 16:10:04

Fanuc are the largest manufacturer of CNC controls in the world and, of the worldwide population of CNC machine tools in industry, the last figure I saw suggested was that Fanuc controls were fitted to over 60%.

As so many operators are familiar with programming, setting & operating Fanuc controls, it makes sense for smaller manufactures to aim for "Fanuc compatibilty" to gain acceptance. The video link of the Chinese turning control shows a marked similarity in display & keyboard layout to a Fanuc, so it may well have similar methods of setting & operation too - I had a look on the Newkye website but couldn't find manuals to download to have a look.

Fanuc equipment is very reliable, but rather pricey if you want to buy "one off" packages - I used to work retrofitting CNC systems & we were paying twice as much as Bridgeport (for example) for a Fanuc control + drives package. Difference was we bought maybe 3 or 4 systems a year & Bridgeport bought 30 or 40 a month.

lathes don't do direct drive

Not correct.

Most drive manufacturers produce "kit" motors for direct integration into machine tool spindle arrangments. These comprise a stator unit with the windingsto fit into the headstock casting & a hollow rotor that is pressed or shrunk onto the machine spindle. The stator units can be liquid or forced air cooled. Characteristics are the same as self-contained asynchronous AC motors - constant torque up to base speed (usually around 1500 rpm) and constant power up to maximum (6000 rpm upwards). The associated drives usually have the ability to run 2 sets of parameters (switchable via an input) so that a constant torque C axis positioning mode can be selected in addition to normal spindle operation

First one I recall reading about in the brochures was a liquid cooled Indramat system around 1985. Assembled a couple of Italian (IIRC) motors at the last employer for a customer who wanted to use them as a contra-rotating mini submarine drive. We subbed out the fitting of the shrink-on rotor to a motor rebuild shop & they got the first one stuck half way on - needed a new spindle and rotor, as bothe were damaged beyond use getting them apart again. We subsequently used BOC Cryospeed to cool the spindle in liquid nitrogen for the sucessfull assemblies.

My current employer bought a Gildemeister CTX400 slant bed CNC lathe incomplete from an auction for very little. I noticed the sale & suggested getting the machine for control & drive spares for other machines, as the complete headstock was missing. My MD did a bit of digging & found that the built-in motor headstock had been sent away for refurbing & the company went bust before it was returned - the refurb company were happy to sell us the missing bits (refurbished) for the original refurb cost. Amazingly all the parts were present (to the last small guard & screw) and the machine worked fine when reassembled. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately !) during conversation with DMG about the machine it was suggested that the forced air cooled spindle didn't play nicely with graphite & all we machine is graphite - so the machine was sold on without ever turning a part for us.

Advantages to using a built-in motor include lower rotating masses for faster acceleration & deceleration and easier (i.e cheaper) headstock machining (no gears, drive pulleys and belts, lubrication systems etc).

While driect drive headstocks have yet to appear on hobby lathes, it is probably only a matter of time before they do.

Nigel B

I suspect the only way of obtaining a small 3 square scraper may be to make one.

Like this one ?

**LINK**

The cutting edge is approx. 50mm long & approx. 8mm along the edge of the triangle. I have one & it holds an edge well.

Cromwell Tools do a similar sized scraper for about twice as much (plus Vat) - bought one at work this week.

HTH

Nigel B

Normal method of connecting these is to crimp ring terminals to both motor & supply wires and nut & bolt them together, using both flat & spring washers. Then insulate with PVC boots held on with cable ties, or wrap with self amalgamating tape followed by PVC tape. An alternative is to twist motor & supply wires together & then apply an insulated closed-end splice crimp over the twisted ends.

I see this method of termination frequently on Korean, Taiwanese & Japanese CNC machine tools. I first came across the method while production wiring large lathes at Broadbent Machine Tools - but only on machines destined for the US. IIRC I was told at the time that it was a requirement of the American Electrical Standards that this method of termination was to be used, rather than the stud type terminal blocks European manufacturers normally fit.

Nigel B

This is not necessarily a diaphragm compressor - a lot of these small airbrush compressors use wobbling pistons, with the inlet valve in the piston crown & the inlet air drawn through the motor housing, cooling the windings - hence no visible inlet port in the head.

**LINK**

Most likely culprits would be a stuck / failed valve, excessively worn / failed piston seal or worn/damaged bore.

My airbrush compressor is similar to this, but is mounted on a 3 litre receiver - the pholograph seems to show the basic compressor sat on a chair.

Nigel B.

As you say, 20mm wide seem to be available.

My previous employer conveted a number of Binns & Berry lathes to CNC operation for a drive belt manufacturer - some were "belt builders" that had a carousel of rolls of the ditterent materials that make up the belt behind the lathe & a closed loop tensioner that wound on the cord, effectively using a screwcutting cycle to set the cord pitch. The "belt" was a tube about 2 metres long, built up on a mandrel inside out - the first bits to go on were the tapes that carried the makers name, part number etc, then the backing layer , a layer of raw rubber, then the cord & another raw rubber layer to enpsulate the cord. I can't recall if this rubber composite tube was then slide off the mandrel to go into a mould to produce the tooth form & cure the rubber, or if the whole mandrel with rubber sleeve on went away. These particular belt forms were for stretchable poly vee belts for tumble dryers & plain raw edge vee belts.

After these "raw" belts had been vulcanised, they were mounted on another converted machine on a mandrel. On the cross slide was a short stroke pneumaticaly operated top slide that had Stanley knife blade in a holder (sharp side uppermost). The cross slide was incremented to get the belt width & the knife blade cycled in & out to cut the desired width of belt from the tube. To get vee belts there were two slides set at the vee angle that cycled together.

If your lathe will swing a mandrel sized to have the 20mm wide belt a firm push fit (wood or MDF would do - though be wary of MDF dust when turning the mandrel), you could mount a Stanley knife blade in the tool post & trim the belt to width. As I recall, there was no lubricant used on the machines I worked on.

HTH

Nigel B

Is it only me that often turns things exactly 0.5mm wrong when using a metric micrometer. Pestilential things, use a digi caliper to get near then switch to the mike if that sort of accuracy is needed.

Nope, happens to me too & I have taken to checking the mike with a digital caliper to make sure I'm not 0.5mm out. Frequently get asked by operators at work to check a Metric mike reading for this - they also have digital calipers & don't think to use these as a quick check on the mike for confirmation.

Don't seem to have the same problem with Imperial mikes & have a poundshop large button calculator double-sided taped to a cabinet above the lathe for instant conversions when the 0-1" is to hand & Metric dimension required. The Polish 0-1" mike was a subscription "gift" with ME or MEW quite a few years ago - pity such useful "gifts" are not offered these days. I have Metric mikes to 100mm & Imperial to 6", so can measure most things I can fit in the lathe. These are not "officially" calibrated & most are used (some of the Metric are "new old stock" DDR made, with standards) but a check with a slips set from work suggest they are all pretty close - though should an accurate measurement be called for I would be wanting to check more carefully. Like others above have said, most times use a digital caliper (Aldi / Lidl) while roughing out & mike to finish.

I try to get within +/- 0.01mm on diameters at home (Super 7 with mainly HSS tooling) whether the part really needs to be that accurate or not - more to try to get into an "acccurate" habit so that there is (maybe) more chance of getting an accurate part first time when it does matter. Same goes for surface finish - practice getting it good so that good is the norm. Frequently don't succeed on either count but, hopefully, regular practice will make for more reliable results !

Milling / shaping probably get within +/- 0.03mm - I seem to be able to get reliably closer than this a work on an XYZ turret mill with DRO & new cutters, so probably a combination of less rigid machinery, no DROs & less use of new cutters at home gives the worse result (FB2 clone mill & Boxford shaper).

Have not yet tried the Ingar RT612 surface grinder in anger, but used the same make/model at the last employment & could get as close to a desired size as I could measure - just took time & elbow grease !

I think Ajax went to semco and merged

Not sure what you mean by this ?

I can't recall now whether Ajax Bredbury ceased trading voluntarily or went into administration. The name & trademarks etc. were taken over by a company in the Midlands (IIRC), who the moved further South.

In the mid '80s my previous employer produced the CNC version of the Ajax knee mill. Before Spain joined the EEC, there were prohibitive import duties on "complete" CNC machine tools, so Ajax (and others) brought in the machine carcasses without the electrics / electronics - the spindle motor & coolant pump were the only electrical bits supplied, and empty electrical cabinets. These carcasses were shipped to Halifax, where we built the electrical panels, fitted the servomotors & Heidenhain control & wired the lot up. I guess we did between 40 and 50 altogether - the Ajax lorry brought 2 fresh carcasses & took 2 completed machines away every couple of weeks. Again at a guess, it was probably Spain's admittance to the EEC that removed the tariffs & made it more economical to bring the machines completely fitted out by Lagun, as the work stopped quite suddenly. Some years later we did something similar in the early days of XYZ Machine Tools on their Taiwanese knee mills.

We also used to buy Lagun 50 taper double angle milling heads through Ajax to retrofit to Butler Elgamill travelling column milling machines. At the time a new Lagun head with hydraulic drawbar cost around £6 - 7,000 - Asquith Butler wanted around £18,000 to rebuild a manual Butler head. There is one of the rebuilt Elgamills with a Lagun head on Ebay at the moment.

The last time I went to their premises was to measure up a CNC lathe to put together a proposal to build & integrate an automatic loading system to a CNC lathe. There was a skip in the yard being filled with new taper turning attachments from the stores. The larger Ajax branded manual lathes came from Bulgaria and the standard fitment included the taper turning attachment. These were removed in the UK & sold as an extra - it didn't look like many buyers paid extra for one ! The loader proposal came to nothing & I don't think it was long after that visit that they ceased trading.

Absolutely nothing to do with Condor machines, just jogged some memories !

Nigel B

Other suppliers of bottled LPG are available - before I fitted a refillable bottle to my motorhome I used to get Flogas bottled propane from a local plant hire shop - half the price of Calor, no rental agreement & no need to take an empty bottle in to take a full bottle out.

May be an option worth investigating in your locality ?

Nigel B

to me it looks like a Ajax

When Ajax were based in Bredbury near Stockport their turret mills were made by the Spanish manufacturer Lagun. Not sure where the current - Southern based - Ajax machines originate.

Nigel B

**LINK**

I have used this product for many years for cleaning motorcycle castings - sand and die cast, Other suppliers are available - I got my last lot from Millers Oils trade counter in Brighouse.

It is economical to use, as the supplied concentrate is heavily diluted before application. I use a trigger action spray bottle to apply the product & agitate with a stiff plastic brush or Scotchbrite pad, keeping the surface wet with the product. Use rubber gloves ! When the oxidation is dissolved, rinse off with clean water & apply a water displacer to protect from further corrosion. Doesn't remove or damage the parent metal, but it does dull previously polished surfaces.

For badly corroded motorcycle parts I degrease first, then use Alubrite, then glass bead blast in a desk-top blast cabinet that my 2 Hp compressor is barely up to running. It is possible to get BMW sand cast parts to look "as new" like this, but I have found that castings that have been badly corroded & cleaned up start to corrode again more easily than castings that were not allowed to get into such a state in the first place.

Nigel B

It unusual to find lathes where the saddle rests on 2 V's

The Southbend & clones / derivatives (Boxford, Denford etc.) use a "3 vee + flat" design, with the saddle running on the outer vees & the tailstock / headstock on the inner vee + flat.

On the pre-gearhead Boxford (and presumably the others) the whole "formation" was gang milled at one setup on a duplex head horizontal mill.

Nigel B

The turcite I know of is glued on in strips, it then has to be scraped down to fit. Moglice is an Epoxy composite that is spread on then you use the bed as a pattern. For one job it would probably be less expensive to buy Moglice

I have had the misfortune to come into contact with Moglice in the past, both on fresh installations on new build machines & during rebuilds. Compared to Turcite it is a most unfriendly material to work with, being very abrasive to scrape (the MTB I worked for who designed a vertical milling machine around injecting the stuff always ended up scraping it - mainly to match in the patched blow holes & bits that came away stuck to the release compound). The main problem with it is it's lack of long-term adhesion to the parent metal - I have come across this on mass produced machines (Deckel milling machine - possibly injected) & short run machines (Crawford Swift lathe - trowel applied), where it looked on first inspection to be in good condition, but a bit of tapping with a blunt instrument (file handle) showed large areas that were no longer bonded. Where it is attached properly you get a nice "ting" sound, like tapping directly onto the parent casting, where it is loose it gives a dull "thock" - the loosening appeared to start near the oil holes & radiated outwards as the oil got between the Moglice & the casting (something that doesn't seem to happen with Turcite).

I have seen this stuff stripped off a casting with a wall paper stripper - which is probably why most MTBs use Turcite or a similar tape glued on & not Moglice. This not to say that Turcite (or simliar) tapes cannot come adrift but such occurrences were rare and, given that this is the predominant system, as a percentage of installations quite low. Whereas pretty well 100% of Moglice (or similar) installations I came into contact with had some kind of problem - either during installation or during refurbishment. This could be initial adherence, where the stuff would steadfastly refuse to stick to thoroughly degreased, rough planed surfaces, but would stick tenaciously to the carefully applied release agent on the ground way. Or coming loose in service, as described above. Or, on the one occasion I can recall where the Moglice was still servicable during a rebuild, the abrasive nature of the cured material caused a lot of problems - we ended up buying two boxes of Sandvik carbide scraper inserts (20 inserts). One pass over the face blunted the scraper edge, 4 edges per blade - we usually had one box of inserts away to be diamond lapped while the fitter worked through the other box, with a box going to & from the grinder every couple of days for nigh on a fortnight ! In hindsight it would probably have been cheaper to have stripped the Moglice off & replaced it with a tape system, where 1 scraper insert would have completed the job.

IIRC the minium working thickness for Turcite is 0.5mm, so by the time the bed & saddle have been cleaned up, chances are that little extra will have to be machined off the saddle to get the Turcite in.. It is easy to machine and to scrape, works well with marginal lubrication (IIRC Moglice doesn't) wears well & is kind to the slides. It can also absorb debris to a limited extent (Moglice scores). Given a choice, I would choose Turcite, Guidecoat or Rulon (the latter two used by my previous employer) in preference to Moglice - TBH I would probably prefer metal to metal to Moglice ! As the Turcite strip can be bought in different widths & thicknesses, the cost is not likely to be major part of the overall quote. IIRC the glue could cost almost as much as the tape for smaller jobs when I had to order it, though a specialist would most likely have part-used tins to hand.

(properly, not turciting about etc) Adding Turcite is an enhancement, not a "bodge" as implied here ! That it should return the apron mounting face to close to it's original position relative to the bed is making life a lot easier at rebuild time.

I am a bit suprised that the contractor you have approached is not regrinding the cross slide & ways as well as the saddle & bed - the guys I used to use would have done. Ask him to grind the tops of the "vees" at the same time if he had not intended to to do so - somewhere to sit the level without having to use parallels off the flats & that will not wear in operation for subsequent checks.

I doubt that your headstock will need much work, but you will need a test bar to check the alignment when you come to rebuild the machine. I would also strongly suggest buying or borrowing a precision level & not relying upon the much quoted "Rollie's Dad's Method" (whoever Rollie's Dad was).

Not intending any antagonism towards John McN here - just that my industrial experience of Moglice & the like has been uniformally negative.

Nigel B

Might this be a basic longitudinal feed mechanism ?

The Elf being a plain lathe there is no gearing between the spindle drive & the leadscrew - the "added" bit on the input shaft looks eccentric, so could this cause an oscillation at the leadscrew handle end to give a shaper-like cyclic "nudge" to the leadscrew ?

Nigel B

With the @ sign so from zero you could enter @ 0,3 and that will give you a length of 3 along the X axis.

That would give a vertical line in the Y axis on my setup of Draftsight ?

@ "horizontal line length", "vertical line length" where positive dimensions go "left to right" or "bottom to top" & negative dimensions go "right to left" and "top to bottom" from the start point.

Also useful is the "length of line at an angle" feature :

@"length of line" < "angle" where the "angle" coordinate system related to a clock face is 0 degrees at 3 o'clock, 90 degrees at 12 o'clock, 180 degrees at 9 o'clock & 270 degrees at 6 o'clock. i.e @10<45 draws a line 10 units long at 45 degrees to the start point .

Can't help with the grid bit, as I don't (& have not had cause) to use it - I draw "full size" components that "float" within the workspace, rather than being tied to an absolute start point. Can't say if that is right or wrong, but it was that way my former colleagues worked when I first started out with Autocad LT & it has not been a problem for me to work that way since. Draftsight functions in a very similar way to Autocad LT, though I find it has a tendancy to random crashes - regular "saves" are very much the order of the day !

HTH

Nigel B