Oiler Frequency

Hope everyone is well

Quick intro: New member, been dragged kicking and screaming from my manual mill and lathe into the world of CNC at work. Very small company so very limited pool of experience with things like this.

Machine is a Victor V-70 mill, with Fanuc oi-MB control. Has a cold start problem so we generally leave it switched on. Typical cycle times are in excess of 24hrs for the large batches of ceramic parts we make.

So to the point, is there a way to reduce the frequency the machine oils itself? It seems to give itself one shot every 15 mins or so. So if we set a batch running when we finish on Friday lunchtime the cycle will end Saturday lunchtime, and the idle machine will sit and drink all its oil over the weekend.

It would be great if someone could point me to the relevant parameters to change it. Either reduce the frequency, or stop it oiling completely when its idle.

Thanks in advance

Only fill with enough oil for the length of the job.

II have a late 90's YCI Supermax (Fanuc OMC) that has a way oiler tied to whether the spindle is on or off. This is selected by the setting of a Keep Relay. Meaning it's a MTB thing. You'd have to dig into your Manufacturers manuals to see if you're lucky enough to have such a feature on your machine.

I suppose there may be a 24v signal that changes state with the spindle that you could tap into to control the oiler through an added relay. Something home grown like that should be easy enough.

My two way-oiled lathes run the pump at 15 minute and 30 minute intervals as far as I can tell, never bothered to time it but they seem to be around that. I know in one there is a small board in the electrical cabinet where the interval is controlled and can be adjusted, it's possible yours is controlled this way so I'd have a look at that.

If it is controlled by it's own timer board then the above comment of just fill with enough oil to get through the job seems the most obvious, shouldn't be too difficult to work out how much it uses per hour if you run it to low lube alarm point, fill with a measured amount and time until you get the alarm again and go from there.

Look at the oiler itself. IF it is a pump then it gets complicated. If it is a Bijur with clockworks, you can pretty easily program it to run when the spindle is on, as mentioned.

Thought for a second. If it is a pump, it has a relay. Instead of having that relay powered by enabled power as it is now, steal the power from the spindle[if it is a 3 phase spindle] so that as a consequence it may call for lube every 15 minutes, it only gets it if the spindle is running.

Basically the same both ways, get into the wiring diagram and use the spindle to enable the power to the lube motor

oil is the slippery juice that stops your ways destroying themselves, oil is very cheap compared to repairing damaged ways. I agree with the others above, only fill it up enough to finish the parts, or tie it into when the spindle is on, don't reduce the frequency.

simple, tie into the power supply, put a manual timer, set it on the weekend when you have a project, have timer turn off hour or so after known stop time.
then during the week you can manually just have it on all the time if needed.
or live with the oil consumption. $5 in oil is better then thousands in a wrecked machine.

or find a macro to use when spindle is running.