Strange Presetter problem QT20

'98 Mazak QT20, T plus control.

This machine has been drop dead reliable until yesterday. I get a call over and one of my guys tells me the lathe won't move in X. Hmmm, hes learning 3 totally different machines at once, so its usually wrong mode or something. Nope, tooleye extended and the machine will only jog Z+.

Presetter won't retract, power down/power up. Everything works, anyways, when you hit the presetter(any direction), the LED on top goes off and it registers the offset, but when you move off the presetter, the LED doesn't come back on, and it will only allow you to jog in one axis away from the presetter. Power down/power up, LED comes back on and everything works.

So the machine doens't realize that there is no tool contacting the presetter, the buttons are popping back out and the offsets are registering just as accurately as they always have.

I don't think the presetter is the problem, though I've been wrong many many times. Relay? busted wire? Fuse? I haven't pulled out any schematics and I called Mazak on their lunch break and never got a call back. Its not that big of an inconvenience right now, but when the machine goes back to running 3 or 4 different jobs a day its going to be frustrating.

i would still guess tool eye
don't think there are any relays in circuit
could be broken wire going back to control
but i would think that would not clear out at power down.
one of buttons probly looks as though it is clearing but it's really not

Thanx Wippin Boy. I talked to Mazak Tech today, and the first thing the tech said was tool eye. Then I explained my logic that its registering the offset and then the problem goes away at power off. He seemed a bit stumped, then we talked about it some more and since you're right there are no relays, he suggested a bad connection. I haven't explored it yet.

I'm a bit hesitant at ripping off the tooleye, to get to the connection that the tech said was in the arm. Will the tooleye go back on sqaure to the axis? or is that going to be a giant pain in the ass? Recalibrating it is no big deal. I just hate chasing wires.

In case anyone ever has this problem, I'm going to post the final solution. After looking at the schematic of the tool eye, I determined it was the tooleye, apparently the transistor fried in it. I tried taking it apart just for fun and found that it was full of coolant.

Checked on the net and found one (omron df5) for $1312 dollars. Got one from Mazak for $386 and it was on my door step in 18 hours.