[Thomas Zamirski]

Photos from Day 3. Took off the x-axis way cover and discovered a heap of swarf sitting on the servo motor. These chips got in everywhere! They'll find any nook and cranny and just pile up inside. The photo is after I removed most of the chips away. I started to explore the pallet changer and just felt overwhelmed with the amount of cleaning needed to be done. As they say... one step at a time. In another photo you can see some good progress on the base of the tool magazine coming along quite nicely. I used purple power to clean all the dried up coolant. It does a good job at cutting right through that gunk.

[Thomas Zamirski]

Photos of Day 4. I took off the main enclosure panel from the machine. I had to move the pallet changer away from the machine in order to remove the main panel. I used a car jack and placed it up against the base of the machine and pushed the pallet changer away. Then added some wood blocks and placed the car jack back in place and repeated the process until the changer was far enough out of the way for us to get the enclosure off. With all the panels off and out of the way you can begin to appreciate the solidness of this machine. Box ways on the z-axis and linear guide rails on the x and y axes. The one thing that I can already tell will be annoy is that I won't be able to have anything overhanging off of the table otherwise it will crash into one of the columns. It seems like it has happened before as there were a couple of dents on the main enclosure panel right in the line of fire.

[Thomas Zamirski]

Day 5 photos. More cleaning progress. Some detailed photos of the tool changer magazine components being cleaned. I decided to buy new bearings for the sprockets and the Geneva cam driver shaft because they had a rough grinding feeling when they were spun and that's not ideal. Although there is nothing "high speed" about the tool changer I felt it was a good idea to replace the bearings just for peace of mind. Plus they were dirt cheap on ebay so it worked out alright. Again purple power making it easy. Just wear gloves cause it'll make your hands really rough and dry especially during the winter time.

[Thomas Zamirski]

Day 6 photos. Nothing really interesting here. Just more cleaning. Started to clean the bundle of wires and hoses. I took apart the tool measure arm. I wish I snapped a photo but my hands were covered in grease and I hate having to go wash my hands every few minutes just to take photos but the inside of the tool measure arm was the most disgusting mass of crap I ever seen. It looked like a translucent yellow cottage cheese. It didn't smell good either. I guess the seal around the plunger wasn't a seal anymore and let coolant seep in. Once all the parts were cleaned up I took a close look at the seal. Seems like over the years the rubber material expanded and didn't form a seal on the plunger anymore. The seal is very similar to the ones used on SMC pneumatic cylinders so I look around on the web for replacement seals for a pneumatic cylinder with a rod diameter the same as the plunger on the measure arm. Ended up paying 5 bucks off ebay. God knows how much Mazak would have charged for a simple part like that.

The interesting thing here is that the measure probe uses proximity sensors. I didn't know proximity sensors were very repeatable but I guess they are. There's two sensors inside the arm and my guess (after watching: this video) is that the top sensor, when triggered, tells the control that a tool is touching the probe and to advance further at a slower speed. The controller then continues feeding the z-axis at a slow rate until the bottom sensor triggers. At this point the z-axis has probably over shot a tiny bit so it backs off at a very slow rate until the bottom sensor turns off and the control records the measurement at that instant. That's at least my guess on how it works or at least how I would implement it. Whether or not I use this for my retrofit I'm not sure but I would love to hear what you guys think.

[Thomas Zamirski]

Day 7 photos. Here I reassembled the tool changer magazine. Things are looking a lot cleaner. I probably should have repainted the forks but I was eager to test the machine and see if it was functional so I just reassembled it completely. I will probably take the forks off and repaint them when I get to painting the enclosure panels.

Some things to note about the tool changer magazine for retrofit informational purposes is that it utilizes a number of different sensors. It uses 5 proximity sensors, 4 of them to determine which tool position the magazine is currently in using binary logic, and 1 proximity sensor on the Geneva cam driver to see when the magazine is in position. It also utilizes an optical sensor which shots a beam of light at a reflector (not currently mounted) and checks to see if any tools are in the fork so that the controller knows whether it can place the tool it currently has in its spindle away into the magazine. Luckily this setup requires just simple logic to implement so it shouldn't be to difficult to retrofit into the new controller.

[greggv]

It certainly doesn't look too complicated to lengthen that chain, and add some more tool clamps and have a 25 or 30 tool changer You'ld have to figure out how to count them, tho. I'd use an encoder.

[petruscad]

Thomas, can you measure the basic dimensions of the sleeve into which the collet fingers go? I just need the two external diameters and the lengths of the two cylinders. I'm going to make the sleeve and I want it to fit precisely. Thanks.

[Thomas Zamirski]

Thomas, can you measure the basic dimensions of the sleeve into which the collet fingers go? I just need the two external diameters and the lengths of the two cylinders. I'm going to make the sleeve and I want it to fit precisely. Thanks.

Sure. I'll measure them tomorrow when I'm in the shop.

-Tom

[petruscad]

Thomas, there are tapped holes for four M6 bolts at the very top of the spindle shaft, what are they for? I though that there's where the pull flange bolts on for the differential drawbar but now since you're saying its not differential I wonder what goes there...

[Thomas Zamirski]

Those holes are used for coupling the two spindle shafts together. if you scroll up to post #39, looking at the 3rd image you'll see the hex screws that hold the two shafts together. Torque is delivered through the keys but these screws just simply hold everything in place.