Disable that stupid door lock?

[Isak Andersson]

I gotta say. Whoever designed the door on the Mazak QT Machines was clearly a big fan of swiss chees. Holes absolutely everywhere! Makes it almost impossible to close the door sometimes because of chips clogging everything. Not to mention the door switch gets completely mangled because of this.

So I finally had it. I'm disabling this damn switch one way or another. So this is the question. What's the simplest way to do this? Put something in the switch? Parameters?

 

[RoundHouse M&F]

If its like a 93 sqt18ms or a 96 qt30 with the roller arms, there should be 4-5 wires under the cover and you should only have to bridge 2 together to close the loop. I found which two they were and spliced a extra wire on each one (outside of the switch under the pannel), and then ran them to a key switch on the control. This let me turn it on and off so i could run full auto with an open door when setting up the first part or when cutting plastic and set it back when turning over to an operator.

 

[Isak Andersson]

there should be 4-5 wires under the cover and you should only have to bridge 2 together to close the loop.

Aha, so it has to close the loop. Figured it was something like that. If I could just figure out how to get to the wires...

 

[Scruffy887]

There is a male "key" that slips into the switch, bolted to the door. Remove that key and put it in the switch. You may need to relocate the switch to do this. I had to disable the switches on my VTC30 because it was too sensitive. For that I used a piece of wire to hold the roller. Think I did something sim on VTC300.
The new smooth machines are a bit different. Have not even tried on the lathe. The VTC200 has the switches at doors bottom and the "key" is attached to the door. I kinda like using it that way. But setup is a major PITA because the axis move so freekin slow with the door open. I took a piece of aluminum foil and stuck my fat hand in to where the key was and made an impression. Then cut a key with the laser. Got it perfect on second try. Put a long red lanyard on each and drape them over the door sill during setup, and some jig making parts.
I find it odd that the new smooth lathe and mill have different interlock parameters. The mill requires you to lock the door via panel button before doing any automatic function, part making or just a tool change. If you don't lock the door then the machine will do nothing, not even an error message. Also need to unlock the door when cycle is complete.
Lathe locks the door when CYCLE START is pushed. Door unlocks when cycle is complete.

 

[Isak Andersson]

So I figured it out. It's actually a lot simpler than I thought. All I needed to do was remove the plastic cap on the switch. This causes the button to be released which tells the control that the door is closed. There's no circuit that needs to be closed. That's how it is on a QT Nexus 250-II MS from 2011, at least.