Hardinge Conquest 42 OT control

Have two Hardinge Conquest 42, both early 90's vintage. These were very well built and I have had very little trouble with either one.
I have had some turret issues with one. No live tooling. The turret had loosened up and would get "turret unclamp". Turns out it was a small pin you can access through the turret module. I have had a problem with this before on the same machine, maybe 15 years ago. I pulled the pin and replaced it, turret is nice and snug except now for a slight amount of play, but not sure this is transferred somewhere between the gearbox they use or the belt. It was never this good, so I'm comfortable this issue is solved. However, it seems whenever I turret to station 11, the turret turns slightly clockwise to seat. Seems all other stations are a perfect seat. Any ideas? I know you can go into parameters to adjust, but I think that's the turret as a whole, not just one station.

You might try asking on the CNC part of this forum. Mostly manual machines are discussed in this Bridgeport and Hardinge part. If you had asked about Hardinge's Gt or Omniturns I may have been of some help. Never touched a Conquest 42 though.

It could be as simple as a balance issue. Is the turret full of tools or are there some empty stations? As far as I know there is not separate turret angle adjustment for each station like the Okuma turrets.

If you think about it, the drive system for the turret is 20-30 years old. Any unbalance is going to show up when the turret clamps. On a new turret it isn't very obvious due to less backlash in the drive system. As long as the coupler/curvic gears are fully clamping and your bolts are tight you should be good. Daryl

You may be able to adjust the worm tighter in the gearbox, but I am pretty sure that it is all incremental moves between stations - once it's been homed. - to word it another way - I believe - from my experience - that the adj params only play a role when HOMEing the turret, after that - I believe that it just picks up and counts "X" pulses to the next station from wherever the encoder is seated at.

Balance is a big deal. When mine was about shot - I had to bolt a big heavy chunk of steel on one side to make it work.
It sounds like you could balance yours up a bit better and have much life left yet.

Next time - post something like this in the CNC board.


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