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Mori MV65 toolchanger fine tuning?

Garwood

Diamond
Joined
Oct 10, 2009
Location
Oregon
When I got this machine a couple years ago I went through the toolchanger, bored and re-sleeved some holes, replaced most of the camfollowers, greased everything, etc. It's worked great all this time. Recently it's started making a metallic sound as the arm goes up while doing it's rapid side-side wiggle like the tool is hitting the side of the spindle taper, but the only evidence I can find is a small shiny spot where the grabber is just touching one of the drive dogs (re-tuning orient position now).

Yesterday, the arm dropped both tools at once as it was pulling a tool out of the spindle. So today I pulled the enclosure off and poked at everything I can get to and all looks and feels real solid. I pulled the grippers and arm hub apart and all the parts are perfectly clean, straight and well greased as when I last assembled them.

I'm thinking that either there is some kind of lost motion in the upper mechanism that forces the gripper thumbs to lock (can't see that without pulling out 200 pounds of barrel cams and shafts) or the arm has somehow rotated on the shaft.

Anyone have a Mori MV maintenance manual that covers this toolchanger? These barrel cam/hydro-mechanical toolchangers were used starting around 1988 in all the MV40 to MV80 machines.
 
I have some Manual's for my mv40,not sure if its what you need I'll look Monday....If I don't forget:dunce:?
PM me if you don't hear back.
 
So you said you pulled the cap off the bottom of the arm and the spring and the plunger with the taper was all in good shape. IF those plungers do not extend when the arm comes down, there is nothing to keep the tool in the claw. I'm sure you know this, but there is a rod inside the shaft that pushes the tapered plunger down when the arm is all the way up, so that the claw can grab the tool holders. Make sure the rods that go out to the thumbs are moving freely. I'll stare at the parts breakdown and see if I recall anything more. AS you know that toolchanger is a complex bugger. Dan
 
So you said you pulled the cap off the bottom of the arm and the spring and the plunger with the taper was all in good shape. IF those plungers do not extend when the arm comes down, there is nothing to keep the tool in the claw. I'm sure you know this, but there is a rod inside the shaft that pushes the tapered plunger down when the arm is all the way up, so that the claw can grab the tool holders. Make sure the rods that go out to the thumbs are moving freely. I'll stare at the parts breakdown and see if I recall anything more. AS you know that toolchanger is a complex bugger. Dan

Exactly, I have been in here before and all was working real good for a couple years. Now we have big problems again, but this time there's nothing obviously banged up/broken.

I think I'm going to pull the tool arm motor off the top and mill a slot or drill and tap a hole for a small bolt in the top of it's shaft so I can drive it with a hand tool or drill for troubleshooting.
 
I think I'm going to pull the tool arm motor off the top and mill a slot or drill and tap a hole for a small bolt in the top of it's shaft so I can drive it with a hand tool or drill for troubleshooting.

Why?
You should be able to use the control and step through de whole process manually using the jog buttons. So you can pause after every step and check if all is fine..
 
Why?
You should be able to use the control and step through de whole process manually using the jog buttons. So you can pause after every step and check if all is fine..

IME, it still runs too fast to see what is really going on sometimes.

At the factory they have a little handwheel driven gearbox with a "brake" that bolts on in place of the motor. This allows the assembly person to crank the cams to any position they want and lock in place. Very handy for checking the transition point from arm turning to arm lowering. With out the gearing and brake it is hard to hold against gravity when the cam for lowering the arm reaches that point of motion.
 
Garwood- I made up this little gizmo a few years ago when my tool changer humg up and broke the pivot arm that runs off the barrel cam. You guys were very helpful back then and I've not forgotten that. If you want to borrow my handcrank tool, I can send it up to you. It bolts up in place of the motor. You have to slip the pinion off of the motor and put it on the hand crank shaft. It has the ability to lock the shaft so you can adjust and watch the mechanism thru the entire cycle. Let me know. Running it with the motor when adjusting things is just too scarry unless you are 100% certain that nothing is going to hang up or collide. Things happen just way too fast, and there are no shear pins anywhere to keep the darn thing from destroying itself. That pivot arm was $3500 from Mori and I can't imagine what other custom parts cost. I think I can get the fixture in a large rate box or I'll just do UPS. Mine is on an MVJR, but I think the tool changer is the same except for a larger arm, but I'm not certain about that. There is no gearbox in my fixture and the hand crank gets a little hard to turn and will beat you to death if you let go of it at the wrong moment, but it gets the job done. Dan
MV Tool Changer Crank.jpg
 
Hey Dan, that's a nice little tool! It may work on Garwood's machine, but IIRC, the motor is on top of the machine on the larger machines. The attachment used at the factory was similar to what you have done except for a a gear reduction. From old memory and a guess at the sizes of the gears it was probably a 4 or 5 to 1 reduction.

Mori used a few different suppliers for the toolchanger drive motor. One brand had wrench flats on the shaft at the fan end. One could remove the fan shroud and crank the toolchanger around with a crescent wrench. Those were pretty handy. Another brand of motor did not have the flats but used a stamped steel fan. At some risk to ones fingers you could use a couple screwdrivers to rotate the motor. Another brand used a plastic fan with no wrench flats. Only a tool like yours or the factory version solved the need to hand-crank the toolchanger around.
 
Kevin's right, the motor on mine is on the top. Looks quite a bit different from yours Dan.

I am a bit curious if there is a way to step through the motions with the control? It looks like a one shot deal to me. That motor starts and doesn't stop until a microswitch hits a lobe to shut down the motor and inject DC to stop it.
 
Does yours have a spring under the cap that pushes the tapered plunger up when the arm moves down? I've seen that spring break and cause tools to be thrown.

It does have that. That spring looks great, all the mechanism moves smoothly and all is well greased. When I got the machine all that stuff was gunked and rusted terrible and it would still change a tool, but the camfollower that makes the arm rotate was trashed and so was it's bore. That let the arm occasionally park itself under the headstock. Found that out the hard way when the headstock came down, bent the arm to shit and tore the sheetmetal off the side of the headstock.

I've been away a few days camping. Just getting back into this today.
 
Update:

Sometimes vacations don't quite come soon enough.

I went full scatterbrain last week. Skipped right past the obvious orient position out of whack and pulled things apart before digging out the procedure to align the orient position. Just balancing too many things at once I guess. Came back with a fresh mind today. Gave RV11 a quarter turn to line up my paint pen marks still on the spindle from the last toolchanger go-round a couple years ago. A couple of empty toolchanges and, shocker, that metallic noise is gone.

Turns out when the toolchanger grabber arm is not whacking the drive lugs on the spindle nose stuff just works better.

I know these old Fanucs with the magnetic orient position sensor float around with seasonal changes so I will do my best to remember this when I need to turn RV11 a quarter turn counterclockwise in December.

Thanks everyone for your help.
 
......Gave RV11 a quarter turn to line up my paint pen marks still on the spindle from the last toolchanger go-round a couple years ago. A couple of empty toolchanges and, shocker, that metallic noise is gone.

Turns out when the toolchanger grabber arm is not whacking the drive lugs on the spindle nose stuff just works better.

I know these old Fanucs with the magnetic orient position sensor float around with seasonal changes so I will do my best to remember this when I need to turn RV11 a quarter turn counterclockwise in December.....

I have seen a few cases where the magnet inside the little sheetmetal clip on the spindle has broken. This makes a weird pole arrangement and causes irregular orient positioning.
 
Glad to hear it was something simple. Just FYI, my motor had none of the "easy to turn" features so I made up the tool. In my wanderings, I've not run across the spindle orient adjust instructions. Any chance you could copy and e-mail them? Just for "someday"? dmcgearsatyahoodotcom. Mine is a 10M so. . .
 
I have seen a few cases where the magnet inside the little sheetmetal clip on the spindle has broken. This makes a weird pole arrangement and causes irregular orient positioning.

Yep, that was this machine! SSI cranked those little screws in with a 1/2" breaker bar. Twisted the stainless housing up and broke the magnet inside.
 
Glad to hear it was something simple. Just FYI, my motor had none of the "easy to turn" features so I made up the tool. In my wanderings, I've not run across the spindle orient adjust instructions. Any chance you could copy and e-mail them? Just for "someday"? dmcgearsatyahoodotcom. Mine is a 10M so. . .

Dan, no problem! I have the procedure for the older 6M style drives, but the orient board works the same way on the newer. I will send you a PDF.
 
This thing turned into a real shitshow, but I think I finally got it licked.

If anyone has to work on one of these this what I have learned about Mori MV mechanical toolchangers-

The owners before me ran this machine with sloppy camfollowers. Occasionally the arm would get parked under the headstock and the headstock would try to tear it off on it's way down. It's a massive tool arm, but a 3 ton headstock with a 5HP servo driving a 2" ballscrew can do some damage before it stops.

The spring loaded pins inside the tool arm that force the grippers closed have to move freely through their entire stroke which is much more motion than I initially thought. My arm was bent and straightened, but the pin bore inside was kinked even though outside was straight. Occasionally the pin would stick at the kink and that would cause both tools to throw. If the pins don't spring out after grabbing the tool the center cone cannot raise and lock the grippers. I didn't realise this at first. I thought the pins rode on the tapered part of the cone all the time, but they do not. The pins are above the tapered part of the cone when the arm is up.

Next problem was the Z home position was grid shifted down .150" from where it should have been. I long ago set my tool arm to the height of the spindle and somehow it ran for awhile. Then I rethought things. I forced the toolpot down and measured height from the table. I grid shifted Z up until the spindle to table matched the pot down to table exactly.

Then I used a bolt threaded into one of the gears on top the machine to bar the toolchanger manually until the arm was under the pot and spindle. In that position, with pot and spindle at same height, I broke the arm free and reset it so it was aligned in that position.

This is where I kept fucking up. I was adjusting the arm height and setting level with the arm in the parked position. This doesn't work when Z is at the wrong height and it really doesn't work when the tool arm has been bent and straightened a few times. Level doesn't matter in the parked position. It means everything when it's under the pot and spindle.

Hopefully this helps somebody else down the road.
 








 
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