FP2 high gear tight and power feed issue

[v22]

I have two strange issues with my newly acquired FP2. When I turn the dial to put the FP2 into high gear the pulley is tight and hard to turn via the rear aluminum wheel. It feels like what I would expect from low gear, but yet this is high gear. When I started it in this gear using my 3kw VFD I got some belt slip (albeit the belt was fairly loose). It seems to spool up slowly in high gear and slows quickly when power is removed. Low gear is much lighter and easier to turn and spools immediately albeit to its slower speed. Is there something I should be checking?

I have also noticed that my power feeds are not working as expected. The power feeds work fine with the rapids lever engaged (releasing has a distinct "notch" feel half way as the rapids lever swings back). Without the rapids lever engaged the leadscrew(s) turn a little and then stop when the feed is engaged. I have not removed the feed shear pin (to inspect) as I have to make a punch the correct size. The shear pin does however look intact. The feed shaft (where the shear pin is) spins until the feed level is engaged. Then turns a little and stops.

After 150hrs+ cleaning I was really hoping it would be smooth sailing when I powered it up.. Any ideas where I should start looking to troubleshoot these issues?

 

[AlfaGTA]

If the tightness is being felt only in the top gear setting then i suspect something is messed up in the gearbox...
Need to take it apart and investigate...should not feel tight as you describe. Suspect a thrust washer , gear hub ot shift fork not free to turn as it should.

As to the feed...two things.
First off is the main motor running in the proper direction? Feed will only run if the motor is running forward.

Second: You have been into the rapid lever and connecting link...perhaps the length of that link is not correct.
Feed on your machine has three positions....pushing the rapid lever hard to the left will engage the rapid clutch pack and
"Overrun" the feed and give you rapid.
Between rapid engagement and normal feed engagement (lever relaxed) is an area where the feed will be in neutral....You can use this to stop the feed without having to
move the axis feed lever....its an area of the lever movement that takes a bit of feel to get used to using.
If the lever is released fully and allowed to move fully to the right , a dog clutch will engage and the feeds will start....This normally takes a bit of machine motor rotation to allow the dogs to
engage.

Perhaps you fitted the rapid operating link to the lever when the dogs were not engaged (just sitting on top of each other) and now the position of the lever and link won't allow things to fully reach
full engagement ...just a thought.

Shear pin of course is your first look. Times there is enough friction at the end of the sheared pin to create the illusion of things working normally, till a load makes things slip. On rapid, shafts are moving fast so
some slip may not be noticed....

Cheers Ross

 

[v22]

If the tightness is being felt only in the top gear setting then i suspect something is messed up in the gearbox...
Need to take it apart and investigate...should not feel tight as you describe. Suspect a thrust washer , gear hub ot shift fork not free to turn as it should.

Thanks for the help Ross. I drained the gearbox and feedbox and pulled the plates off them to inspect. All the gears look to be in good condition. Poking around I could not see anything obvious, such as anything loose. It all looked fine. The gears slide and mesh nicely.

It makes me wonder if this is just how the machine is designed. The resistance is felt more at 2,000 rpm vs 315 rpm on the same high gear. Switching to the low speed gear such as 50 rpm, I feel much less resistance than at 2,000 rpm. I expected this to be the opposite. I expected that at higher rpm the pulley would be easier to turn than at 50 rpm?

The reason for the clarification is that everything in the gearbox and feedbox looks to be in good condition to my untrained eye.

I checked the gear hubs. They look good (see below). The shift forks look fine. I have not tried to manipulate them whilst off the machine as I want to avoid messing anything up. But they all spin freely, including the gear hubs

I am not sure where the thrust washers are - so I have not checked these?

As to the feed...two things.
First off is the main motor running in the proper direction? Feed will only run if the motor is running forward.

I performed some substantial tests today. First I tried reverse and no difference. I then decided to try all the feeds and see if anything worked. I found that all the feeds worked except: 1.6 on the low speed feed (blue), and 13, 6.5 and 3 on the high feed pulley (black).

Looking in the feed gearbox, there are no obvious problems. It makes me wonder why these feeds would not be working?

Second: You have been into the rapid lever and connecting link...perhaps the length of that link is not correct.
Feed on your machine has three positions....pushing the rapid lever hard to the left will engage the rapid clutch pack and
"Overrun" the feed and give you rapid.
Between rapid engagement and normal feed engagement (lever relaxed) is an area where the feed will be in neutral....You can use this to stop the feed without having to
move the axis feed lever....its an area of the lever movement that takes a bit of feel to get used to using.
If the lever is released fully and allowed to move fully to the right , a dog clutch will engage and the feeds will start....This normally takes a bit of machine motor rotation to allow the dogs to
engage.

Perhaps you fitted the rapid operating link to the lever when the dogs were not engaged (just sitting on top of each other) and now the position of the lever and link won't allow things to fully reach
full engagement ...just a thought.

Thanks for mentioning this clutch. I could not see any photos online so I was not sure what I was in for. What a fascinating piece of work it is! The unfortunate news is that the dog clutch is engaging fine. I see what you mean about the "half-way point" and it disengaging. It is a very cool piece of work.

Shear pin of course is your first look. Times there is enough friction at the end of the sheared pin to create the illusion of things working normally, till a load makes things slip. On rapid, shafts are moving fast so
some slip may not be noticed....

This should be the easy thing ? Of course to add insult to injury I have a seized shear pin. No amount of coaxing would move the darn thing. I even turned up a punch, which promptly bent. I could not grab it despite trying at least 10 different pairs and types of pliers. In my fury, I got the Kemppi TIG and attempted to weld the pin to a piece of mild steel with a 2mm hole and some decent chamfers. Of course it did not weld - I wonder it if is cast? I gave it a decent whack of amps, filled the chamfered hole nicely. I did not want to heat the shaft much for fear of warping. TIG always seems like a bad idea in these situations but I was at my wits end. Maybe I should have tried silicon bronze instead of ER70s.

There must be some trick to this?

 

[v22]

Some more photos to show the really neat clutch setup (you can see the dog teeth in action) in the Deckel FP2:

 

[v22]

Feed and speed levers..

 

[AlfaGTA]

It makes me wonder if this is just how the machine is designed. The resistance is felt more at 2,000 rpm vs 315 rpm on the same high gear. Switching to the low speed gear such as 50 rpm, I feel much less resistance than at 2,000 rpm. I expected this to be the opposite. I expected that at higher rpm the pulley would be easier to turn than at 50 rpm.

Think you have this reversed.....Input effort when increasing the final speed goes up.....Mechanical advantage thing...trade speed for resistance...just like a pulley set...if the final speed goes up (moves faster ) then
the input effort is high.
If the final speed is low (step down) then you have to move the input further/faster requiring less effort...

Perhaps your gearbox is fine....sounds like everything looks good...That is good news, gear problems = $$$$


A word of caution...Be careful of the shift handle /shift fork arrangement. There is a bit of a complex timing relationship between the gears , cams and shift forks....If you take any of this apart be very sure you
understand how everything relates....Getting everything back in the proper time so that the shifting works as it should takes a bit of doing.
There is a timing hole (6 o-clock in the 1st photo of the inside of the cover) there is a matching hole in the cam plate...but i don't remember how this relates to the other parts on that assembly....
Might be easy to figure....


AS to why the low feeds do not work..not sure, but as a test, set the feed box cover back on and select the feed in question with the dial (fitted for testing)
Without moving anything, remove the feed cover , pulling straight off and note the gear positions..make sure everything is engaging as it should....

Check all the problem gear ratios to be sure something is not out of position. If its just those ratios, problem must reside in the box..should be able to trace the power in to final...If everything
is meshed and coupled with no broken parts then it has to work....


The feed shear pin if made proper, has a head on one side. Perhaps someone has fitted something other than a mild steel pin...
Some make the mistake of fitting the pin with the head in the larger hole...the pin head goes opposite the large hole, with the head retained via the little spring clip...

Cheers Ross

 

[ballen]

I'm confused about the same point as Ross. When the machine is in high gear (say, 2000 rpm) it should be easy to turn the spindle, and hard to turn the rear aluminum wheel. In low gear (say 120 rpm) it should be hard to turn the spindle, and easy to turn the rear aluminum wheel. It sounds like this is what you are seeing. So it seems like the only problem is lack of feed in the low feed speeds. Could it be that when you reassembled the feed gearbox, you didn't get the timing of the forks and other bits correct?

Cheers,
Bruce

 

[v22]

Ross and Bruce,

I think you are both right regarding the gearbox. When in higher gear the aluminum pulley is harder to turn. Armed with a printout of your comments above I reassembled by lining up the forks, struggling, resetting, fatiguing and doing it all over about 4 times until I got it right. All the gears engage nice and smoothly which is a relief. It sure took a fair amount of messing around to get it all back together. The weight is noticable on ones 4th attempt at holding in place whilst carefully linking up the forks. All in all only really about 20minutes at the most to reassemble.

I then paid some more attention to the feedbox. I checked all the gearing and it all looked fine. On that basis, I decided to reassemble. I was going to change the feed position and disassemble in an attempt to troubleshoot further. When I originally disassembled I noticed that one of the shift fork boots was off one of the forks (see photo below - it is under the clutch). I put this down to the fact I had to jiggle and wiggle to get it out and it likely slipped off doing this. That said, I had heard a slight knock from time to time. Anyway, reassembling and struggling more (the feedbox cover is heavier!) I tested the feeds. To my surprise they were all working (have not tested under power yet). I thought about it and I think the previous person maintaining the machine (in a factory) must have disassembled and knocked the boot off the fork. Because it felt like it shifted fine, and most of the feeds worked, it might have gone unnoticed.

I have seen a few questionable things like the shift fork "boot" with his machine. Such as the chewed rapids shaft. Instead of replacing it they just kept repositioning the lever into a progressively more awkward position!! Despite the fact they had a fully stocked toolroom (at least 100 machines) - multiple Deckel's, Schaublin, Graziano's, Takisawa's, a ton of surface and cylindrical grinders, big Cincinnati's, multiple CNC's including Mazak's, big Horizontal borer (and the like) and 2 complete metrology labs. Basically every machine tool known to man!

Anyway, I cannot claim a great victory yet. I have not run the machine under power as I had to drop the oil from the respective boxes. I am waiting on some new Shell Tellus 46 to arrive. I was intending to do an oil change and this forced the issue. I am happy that I cleaned it out whilst I was at it.

Thanks Ross and Bruce for your assistance - it is much appreciated. I will report back with some more photos. I did take some of the reassembly. With the time I saved getting it back together I started to clean the table. Methylated Spirits does wonders to clean off that skanky green paint and bring back through the Deckel Maus(?) grey..

 

[AlfaGTA]

Cool, Sounds like good news to me.
Cheers Ross

 

[AlfaGTA]

Ross and Bruce,



I have seen a few questionable things like the shift fork "boot" with his machine. Such as the chewed rapids shaft. Instead of replacing it they just kept repositioning the lever into a progressively more awkward position!! Despite the fact they had a fully stocked toolroom (at least 100 machines) - multiple Deckel's, Schaublin, Graziano's, Takisawa's, a ton of surface and cylindrical grinders, big Cincinnati's, multiple CNC's including Mazak's, big Horizontal borer (and the like) and 2 complete metrology labs. Basically every machine tool known to man!

Just because a firm had a wealth of hardware does not mean they had staff that paid attention or cared about doing a proper repair...Mucking about with a mundane manual FP2 and making good repairs
most likely would have cut into the repair staff's "Tea Time"!

For lots of folks its just a paycheck and that involves having to work on another "stupid chunk of iron"......

Cheers Ross

 

[Fredo67]

Good day to everybody

This is just to thank all of you with all the info you provide and which help me a lot in fixing my FP2 gearbox. Just a little tip that can help; I had to handle the heavy cover so many times so I screw a little wood support in place (see photo).
Have a good day

 

[AlfaGTA]

Nice solution....
Hope all is well.
Cheers Ross