DIYengineer VF1/VF2 clean and repair

Rigger just left. 4 mills, 2 need little repair, the other two are parts machines thrown in to sweeten the deal. Lots of spare parts. This will keep me busy for a long while.

Lots of spare parts. Hope to meet some new friends also, on here.

on the control cabinet - they cut the cables.. thats so sad.

Ya, I'm not sure what they were thinking either.

So exciting, im jeolous! Cant wait to see the progress.

Well, the other end of the servo cables were probably junk anyway right? Sounds good anyway. They must have had a bunch of these, how many total were there?
Happy thanksgiving!

Forgot to give me a couple coolant tanks and pumps.

Thanks kapster. Obviously not as easy as buying a turn key machine, if I could afford it, I certainly would have taken that path. I won't let that deter me though from chasing my dreams. A little elbow grease, blood, sweat, tears, and beers will hopefully pay off.

Those are a good starting point for sure. Beats going into a bunch of debt right away. I think id like to find something like that when i have a place for it.

I have a brand new vf2ss at work. I think id be just as excited, if not more so to have those show up at home.

I want to get into product development. Mostly low rate and one off items until I find something I want to run with and than need the reliability to meet rates.

I'm off to pickup cleaning supplies. I figure rubber dish cleaning gloves should hold up better to abrasion/cut than thin latex. At work we clean our fixture tables with mr clean pine floor cleaner, hot water, and a mop (huge machines). Hot water does wonders to dissolve the "muck". Anyone else have any good tricks? Where do they sell bulk rags uptown?

This will be great. You are on the way to 12 hours days but lots of fun and excitement. I will be watching, by the way they will be 12 to 18 hour days and not hard to do when you are doing it for yourself.

Good luck and great success.

Ron

Cleaned up the outsides pretty well. Two bottles of purple power later.. Seems as if they lowered the z axis down on the wood but did it incorrectly on the spindle bearings. Hope that didnt kill them. The other machine z is lowered on no wood, as the top cable chain is maxed out. Seems both units have new oilers.

Also looks like they did a axis mod and ran the cable out the back instead of under the table. That's on the vf1.

I recommend a couple of plastic putty knives and grout cleaning brush along with a Costco bale of paper towels. I never thought of using "pine sol" type cleaner, going to try that.

For limit switches and connectors I used denatured alcohol, works well, harmless to plastic and dries fast.

Yea not the best way to set the spindle..
Check in the side of the column for a block holding up the counter weight, as simple as a 2x4 across.

Please keep posting and ask away!

No block holding the counterweight.

Definitely looks like you got a job ahead of you, but great you could score the parts machines as well.

As others have said, keep posting progress reports. It's always fun to see the resurection of the old machines.

Well the plan so far is to pickup a second pallet jack to place them in a small cell, 2nd cleaning, roughly level them, put power and air to them, setup a dedicated CAD/CAM workstation, power them up and see what happens. Already have a twin cylinder air compressor, dryer, and 120 gallons of storage. I have to get a larger phase converter though, the 10HP american rotary won't cut the mustard. I'm thinking a 25HP should work a lot better, and give a little head room for later expansion to a machine with a bit larger spindle. Friday I am making a single trip to the previous owners to pickup the coolant sumps, and pumps they forget to get onto the semi truck when they delivered it. Once I have everything setup, well see what alarms I get, what things do when commanded (or don't do), sounds, vibrations, etc. From there I will make the call to tinker with it, if its something easy, or debate if I should just take a micro loan and have the haas tech come get them rolling. I'd like to do as much as possible, I have a ton of tools, a gantry crane for lifting, forklift, and i'm pretty mechanically/electrically inclined, and where i fall short, i don't mind doing the work researching, or attempting to find the right people to ask a few questions to.

I'm going to a ask a second time for validation of the previous issues to make sure i'm not side tracked at all. As far as I have been told the VF2 "needs a spindle" (not sure if its actually the spindle bearings shot, or the gear box which i think that model has). The seller did include a spare for the VF2, but I haven't verified its condition although they suggested it was good. The VF1 either needs a servo, wiring, or a card, or a combination of the bunch on a single axis. it appears a new cable was purchased and routed in a different fashion other than OEM, and sounds like that didn't help the problem.

More fun to come, now just have to pinch pennies to keep the project rolling. I'll update this weekend when I dig into some of the scrap mills and start to clean them up and see what is usable and what is not.

diyengineer253 said:

I'm going to a ask a second time for validation of the previous issues to make sure i'm not side tracked at all. As far as I have been told the VF2 "needs a spindle" (not sure if its actually the spindle bearings shot, or the gear box which i think that model has). The seller did include a spare for the VF2, but I haven't verified its condition although they suggested it was good. The VF1 either needs a servo, wiring, or a card, or a combination of the bunch on a single axis. it appears a new cable was purchased and routed in a different fashion other than OEM, and sounds like that didn't help the problem.

More fun to come, now just have to pinch pennies to keep the project rolling. I'll update this weekend when I dig into some of the scrap mills and start to clean them up and see what is usable and what is not.

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Whenever I am troubleshooting spindle/gearbox noise, I run with the spindle belts on to (1) hear the noise for myself, (2) try to get an audible location. Then I will disconnect the drive belt(s). Spin the spindle by hand and feel for smoothness. Next, command the same RPM(s) that you ran with belts on and see if noise is still present. By checking without the spindle belt(s) on you should most likely be able to determine which one has the issue.

When powering these machines up for the first time, be sure to set the internal transformer to the right voltage range. Once on, I would let the machine sit there for several minutes without doing anything just so you can look around and observe the machine for any problems such as overheating or (hate to say it) smoke. Double check any connector or nut/bolt/screw you can find, these machines have obviously been neglected for a while and you have no idea what anyone has done or tried to do to them.

Good luck!

Fire away with the questions!

I think I would also take an air hose to the electrical cabinet and make sure you don't have any dust bunny's hiding. This will surely short out a board when powered up. Also, unplug and reset all of the connectors to the boards prior to power on, loose connections will give you issues as well.

So I actually have 3 sumps and 3 pumps now. First two 1/4hp pumps work well, the 3rd I'm unsure of its operation and its 1/8hp. Not sure if I'll need that much coolant, but good to have the options. Needs some cleaning. What type of filters do these use?