aarongough
Stainless
- Joined
- Oct 27, 2014
- Location
- Toronto, Canada
I tripped over this morning while putting on underwear... I should have taken that as a warning and stayed home...
Backstory: I came in this morning with the first item on my to-do list being to take the head cover off my VMC and check the spindle drive belt. It was making a 'ticking' noise and I wanted to make sure nothing was damaged. Turns out the belt was rubbing on the flange of the pulley. I re-aligned it, put the head cover back on and thought I was good to go.
Unfortunately while putting the head cover back on I must have bumped the Z axis alignment flag that's on the right hand side of the head. The bolt must have been loose and the flag turned in such a way that it collided with the way cover on the first tool change, resulting in what you see above. I just bought that way cover as a replacement for the original which was worn... Haven't run the machine for more than a couple of weeks with the new cover
Luckily I was able to fix it fairly cleanly and quickly. I took the bolt out of the 'ear' holding the side of the way cover in place and drilled a few holes through it. Shoved the cover back into alignment and held it there while I threw a couple of plug welds through the ear and into the cover. Got the alignment flag bent back into shape, was tightening it back up when I slipped and dropped a wrench down in behind the Z way cover.
I was honestly pretty tempted to just leave the wrench there and buy a new one. Taking the Z way cover completely off really sucks as a one man job. In the end I was able to just take the bottom off and grab the wrench with a magnetic grabber.
I'm back up and running, and it definitely could have been worse, but it feels like a stupid waste of a morning!
Anybody else got a good 'today must be one of those days' story? I'll get the popcorn and try not to break anything else for the rest of the day
-A
Backstory: I came in this morning with the first item on my to-do list being to take the head cover off my VMC and check the spindle drive belt. It was making a 'ticking' noise and I wanted to make sure nothing was damaged. Turns out the belt was rubbing on the flange of the pulley. I re-aligned it, put the head cover back on and thought I was good to go.
Unfortunately while putting the head cover back on I must have bumped the Z axis alignment flag that's on the right hand side of the head. The bolt must have been loose and the flag turned in such a way that it collided with the way cover on the first tool change, resulting in what you see above. I just bought that way cover as a replacement for the original which was worn... Haven't run the machine for more than a couple of weeks with the new cover
Luckily I was able to fix it fairly cleanly and quickly. I took the bolt out of the 'ear' holding the side of the way cover in place and drilled a few holes through it. Shoved the cover back into alignment and held it there while I threw a couple of plug welds through the ear and into the cover. Got the alignment flag bent back into shape, was tightening it back up when I slipped and dropped a wrench down in behind the Z way cover.
I was honestly pretty tempted to just leave the wrench there and buy a new one. Taking the Z way cover completely off really sucks as a one man job. In the end I was able to just take the bottom off and grab the wrench with a magnetic grabber.
I'm back up and running, and it definitely could have been worse, but it feels like a stupid waste of a morning!
Anybody else got a good 'today must be one of those days' story? I'll get the popcorn and try not to break anything else for the rest of the day
-A