Feeler HT-30SY - BMT60 tooling

[darron]

I just bought a 2011 Feeler HT-30SY lathe at auction, and I'm trying to get some info on what to expect from it. Does anybody know much about these machines?

I should've asked before purchase, but I found this auction as it was occurring and I decided to take the chance.

So, the thing has BMT60 tooling. Is this some kind of Mori clone? (Edit: the inside looks fairly similar to a Mori NL2500SY) It's not lightly built (14500 lbs) and the power seems good (30HP main, 15HP sub, 9HP live tooling)... Fanuc 18i-TB control.

We've been really looking forward to a dual spindle, Y axis lathe... I hope we got a decent one. My buddy is concerned it's already had a spindle rebuild (looks on site, 2019), but he assumed they had an accident and thinks it's possibly a good thing.

Here's the spec sheet for it: http://www.griffin.net/FeelerHT-30SY.pdf

 

[darron]

So... my new machine is here! The riggers said it was a bit of a pain to move around inside with an overcomplicated base... specifically they said the base is "just like a Mori Seiki". I really am wondering if it's at least partially a clone of something like a NL2500. The reason I'm so interested in figuring out if that is the case is I'm wanting to add a tool setter and it'd be a lot easier if Mori stuff would work with it. (A dual spindle, Y axis lathe with a bar feeder and a part catcher... without a tool setter? weird. I suppose they weren't planning on switching jobs often)

Here are some pics.

I'm having a little trouble getting electrical done for it... 50kVA and commercial is drawing out crazy prices (like nearly half what I paid for the machine). I think I'll have to source everything, lay it all out nicely for the electrician, and just pay hourly for them to install it all.

It's got a bunch of standard Fanuc manuals, but the Feeler specific stuff is extremely light. It goes into great detail on recovering the turret position if something goes wrong, and probably a quarter of the documentation is all about measuring cycles (for a machine with no tool setter)... but then all the other stuff is barely mentioned.

For one, it keeps talking about C axis orientation but all the code examples use H for spindle position instead of C. The modern datasheet for this machine says it's got 0.001 degree spindle orientation, but this manual seems to imply it's only got a 4096/rev encoder on this one.

I've been working on a Fusion 360 post processor for it, derived from a Jyoti Y axis dual spindle post. That seems to be going well. Even so, I'll have to be crazy careful for a while I'm sure.





(The bar feeder is not quite set up... the base for it is behind the camera)

 

[wmpy]

Looks like you got a good deal on a nice machine. I'm interested to hear how you like it as I've been sort of looking at picking one of these up. I don't have any info on them other than that Methods used to sell them, but recently dropped Feeler. I think they must have been decent quality for Methods to sell them as they are pretty reputable. Good luck and do keep us posted!

 

[darron]

I just talked to Kevin at Methods and I'm impressed so far. Very helpful.

So, is it common in the machine tools industry for companies to be so helpful with secondhand machines? Hardinge was pretty helpful with my VMC II 600 as well. Perhaps I've just been lucky? Heck, even Metrol was great supplying old docs for an old tool setter I'd bought off EBay. Renishaw too.

I've been slow to contact manufacturers because my base assumption is they won't be particularly motivated to help. So far that's been a bad assumption.

 

[wmpy]

It varies wildly. But it's always worth a shot. Sometimes you have to be more persistent.

 

[Johnpperez78]

I use to set up and run that exact same Feeler. Fanuc Manual Guide-i Control. As a matter of fact the company I was working for had purchased that lathe from Methods and had a tech from there fly out here to CA from AZ for a week to train me on it. We had a parts catcher and a Royal Roto-Rack. We ran large production jobs, most of the time 1,000+ parts. The issue we had was after 8 full hours of continuous run time the X axis would slowly deviate up to about .007. So it would run fine all day but when I’d set the APO (Auto Power Off) to run after hours, half of my parts would end scrap. After trouble shooting and having several different techs come out it was determined that something inside of the Tool Turret was bad and would act weird when over worked and got hot. Methods paid to have whatever it was replaced. Another issue I encountered was the sub spindle not indexing and timing itself exactly with the main spindle. So after pickoff, the timing was always off. Another annoying issue. But other jobs I set up where that issue wasn’t encountered, the machine was very good.

 

[TeachMePlease]

Just as an FYI, H is the incremental command for C. So you can G0C0 to go to absolute C0, then H180 to increment 180 degrees.