Mori MV35/40 spindle oil leak

[dll6]

Any idea if MOBIL VELOCITE 3 Spindle Oil is the right stuff?

The manual calls for "super multiway 2" I hope that crosses because I bought 5 gallons last year

 

[Garwood]

It's just circulating oil. It flows around the spindle cartridge to carry heat away to the chiller unit. My MV45 had a gearbox and it's headstock ran on DTE light. DTE light is 32 weight hydraulic fluid. Grab some 32 weight tractor hydraulic from your local farm or auto parts store.

 

[dll6]

Spindle removal

I don't suppose anyone's got a parts breakdown of the spindle for some idea on how it comes out?
I loosened some hardware in the bottom of the spindle to see if the spindle would drop any but I think there's a spanner nut on top, maybe more, before the spindle will come out

 

[Vancbiker]

No drawings here. It’s been 25 plus years since I last touched one of those. You have to remove the drive belts and the giant lockring. A hammer and drift job. The cartridge is held in by the largest bottom flange. There may be some coolant nozzle parts to remove to get to all bolts. The close fit in the head bore, combined with the o-rings, makes it kinda tough to get out. Usually involves prying or jacking to get it moving.

 

[dll6]

No drawings here. It’s been 25 plus years since I last touched one of those. You have to remove the drive belts and the giant lockring. A hammer and drift job. The cartridge is held in by the largest bottom flange. There may be some coolant nozzle parts to remove to get to all bolts. The close fit in the head bore, combined with the o-rings, makes it kinda tough to get out. Usually involves prying or jacking to get it moving.

Thank you
That's what I needed to know

 

[dll6]

I got the spindle out and the top oring was indeed cut. In figuring out the disassembly process I inadvertently tried loosening the nut holding the pull stud thinking the nut was part of the disassembly.
Any idea if loosening the pull stud screwed up anything ... how about the adjustment process for the pull stud

 

[Vancbiker]

If you mean you loosened the nut on the drawbar, then you need to tighten back to the original position or close. Having it loose reduces the retention force of the drawbar because the belleville spring stack will not be preloaded the correct amount.

 

[dll6]

I should be able to get it close .. I should have measured how much thread was exposed before messing with it. If it's not right at least there's not much to disassemble to get back to the nut.
Now I have more cleaning as well as find a couple new orings. I also am going to take some pics and make some notes on this process so the next time I take it apart should go better. In the future I would like to add the ability to rigid tap by synchronizing the Z axis with revolutions of the spindle by way of and encoder on the spindle somewhere.

 

[Vancbiker]

The MX1 never had firmware for rigid tapping. To get rigid tapping would require a control retrofit. You’re better off dumping the machine and buying a newer one with rigid tapping if that’s a real need.

 

[Garwood]

Billions of holes have been tapped on machines without rigid tapping.

IMO, the early spindle drives, while robust, are a bit crude/violent with how they reverse the spindle for tapping. A great way to avoid taxing a 40 year old spindle drive is to threadmill.

 

[dll6]

The MX1 never had firmware for rigid tapping. To get rigid tapping would require a control retrofit. You’re better off dumping the machine and buying a newer one with rigid tapping if that’s a real need.

I bought the machine because I thought it a sturdy design, I always planned to retrofit the control if it turned out to be a good donor, the jury is still out .... This is my first NC machine.
Is there a better design?

 

[Vancbiker]

The machine is solid but IME, retrofits end up being crap. I long ago swore off working on them because they universally were so poorly done. Very few folks have the knowledge and understanding of robust PLC programming to make safe and reliable logic for control of the machine functions like a tool changer or others. Then they are rarely documented well. All of that conspires to make the machine unreliable and difficult to service fir anyone other than the person that did the retrofit.

 

[dll6]

If you mean you loosened the nut on the drawbar, then you need to tighten back to the original position or close. Having it loose reduces the retention force of the drawbar because the belleville spring stack will not be preloaded the correct amount.

..
Turned out there are 2 long set screws that protrude through the drawbar nut into a groove on the drawbar. When I laid the spindle on its side the whole assembly slid out the top, thats when I noticed the set screws.

 

[dll6]

The machine is solid but IME, retrofits end up being crap. I long ago swore off working on them because they universally were so poorly done. Very few folks have the knowledge and understanding of robust PLC programming to make safe and reliable logic for control of the machine functions like a tool changer or others. Then they are rarely documented well. All of that conspires to make the machine unreliable and difficult to service fir anyone other than the person that did the retrofit.

I agree that a good retrofit option is hard to find and even harder to implement. Ive never been accused of being a quick learner, but I am persistent, I rarely give up. Ive not found any retrofit kits I'm happy with. In working with this machine I'm becoming very familiar with its ladder design and am leaning towards retrofitting a newer yasnac or maybe fanuc control to the system. I've no experience with the fanuc controls yet.
In researching rigid tapping I agree its place is in parts with repeated small threaded holes and takes extremely accurate synchronization of the Z axis to the spindle rotation.

 

[Garwood]

I suggest using the machine with the control it has and down the road, when the opportunity presents itself, upgrade to something much better. I have made 10's of thousands of parts on a mill like yours. I made a lot of money with it, learned a lot over the coarse of owning it and a few other older CNC's.

I think the big pitfall of the pro-retrofit crowd is they lack much of an understanding of how a real MTB integrates the machine and control together and why that matters. I certainly had no clue how complex this aspect is until I started to grasp how all the bits work together and honed the skills to troubleshoot and repair my own machines.

I have owned machines from a few big builders that didn't do the best job of control integration. Once you use the machine for awhile these things become apparent. Especially when you own several machines and can compare ones with top notch integration to ones that are so-so.

I sold a late 80's machine a few months ago. Not the guy who bought it, but a different guy was really interested and wanted to buy the machine for the sole purpose of retrofitting it with a Centroid control. He had done a few Centroid retrofits on Knee mills and thought they were the bee's knees. He wanted a "real" CNC and he really thought that stripping off a Fanuc 10M and replacing it with Centroids latest and greatest was an upgrade. He got me curious so I looked up the Centroid specs and it was laughable. The Centroid "kit" he was going to buy for $8k or so offered about 2/3 of the performance Fanuc had in 1987. Pretty pathetic.

 

[dll6]

I've seen those guys posting in their forums too. There the ones I figure I'll get the hand-me-down original Yasnac or Fanuc controls from, for cheap, if I go the upgrade route.

 

[Vancbiker]

......In researching rigid tapping I agree its place is in parts with repeated small threaded holes and takes extremely accurate synchronization of the Z axis to the spindle rotation.

Small taps are fine in non synchronous type machines. Prior to control builders starting to offer synchronous tapping, billions of small tapped holes were made using tension/compression holders or tapping heads like Procunier and Tapmatic.

IMO, the advantages synchronous tapping has......

You don't have to estimate the ending tap depth due to spindle stopping in a non synchronous system.

No need for expensive tension/compression toolholders.

Peck tapping without risk of double starting.

 

[Vancbiker]

I've seen those guys posting in their forums too. There the ones I figure I'll get the hand-me-down original Yasnac or Fanuc controls from, for cheap, if I go the upgrade route.

Be a bit cautious about what you are looking at. Since Yaskawa has been out of the CNC business for a long time now, getting software and possibly hardware for ladder programming may be difficult. The J300 model had onboard ladder edit capability. The I80 may possibly have. None of the MX series had onboard ladder editing. Writing a full ladder at the control is kinda painful. Better to have PC software for the system. Your old drives may not be compatible with anything newer than an MX3.

Fanuc started offering onboard ladder editing with the 15 series. It required an option card. In all the years I have done CNC service, I only ever saw one machine where that was included on a machine. In later controls editing became a firmware option and I've seen several machines equipped with it. There is a PC program called FLADDER that can be used to create and edit and compile ladders for Fanuc starting around the 16/18 series. A bit of googling may turn up a copy to download. May or may not be compatible with a used control as there are different versions. Retrofitting a Fanuc newer that a 15 will require you to get matching drives, motors, and encoders to replace your Yaskawa drives and motors.

In any case, as controls have advanced, so too have drives and encoders. You may lose out on some of the benefits of a new control if still running the old DC drives and motors even if you can get it to work.

 

[dll6]

Vancbiker excellent information, that's not easy information to find and I appreciate that it took you years of working on these machines to accumulate it and are willing to share it ... Thank you again for your time

 

[dll6]

Actually I see there's quite a bit out there on ladder editing. Just needed to know what to look for