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Deckel FP2 - No power to X/Y/Z axis plus oil leak seepage

Jersey John

Stainless
Joined
May 29, 2015
Location
Beccles / Suffolk, United Kingdom
Hi folk

Seems like my "New" FP2 is haunting me right now :rolleyes5:

It arrive around a month ago and has not done any work until this morning when I started to make some brackets for my newly arrived DRO system.

It had been working fine in the X axis with the powerfeed and manual use of the X and Z handwheels for about an hour then I started to get oil drips from both sides of the main apron around the lower bellows area. This I felt reasonably happy with as the oil galleries had been recently cleaned from grease contamination.

Then being a true Brit I decided to stop for a cup of tea as one bracket was just complete.

Having return to the machine some 45 minutes later I began to setup for another bracket only to find the "X" handwheel locked solid! On closer examination I also saw the "Operators" end lead screw end cap had opened up to around 0.75mm/0.030" which I'd not seen or noticed earlier. Together with this the "X" scale dials have started to seperate.

My first conclusion was that the machine had a new X axis leadscrew nut fitted prior to delivery and something has failed.

On further investigation with power on there was NO POWER to the X, Y or Z feeds???

Now something from the distant past is telling me there is a safety "Shear pin" somewhere and if this fails all power feeds are lost???

I'm also concerned that the operators end "End Cap" has moved??

Nothing has been working at extreme limits of travel (today my maximum X cuts were around 125mm) and last week and prior to today's work I tested all three sets of trip dogs for my own peace of mind (all functioned as they should).

All comments greatly welcomed :) Pictures of today's stopage shown below.

MTIA

John :typing:

FP2-Fault01-01.jpg FP2-Fault01-02.jpg FP2-Fault01-03.jpg FP2-Fault01-04.jpg FP2-Fault01-05.jpg
 
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Any chance you left the machine running while you were off fetching your spot of tea, perhaps with the "X" axis feed inadvertently engaged...?

Symptom looks from here that the power feed ran to the limits and bottomed out forcing extra thrust on the screw causing the end covers and dial to be displaced..
End result would be a sheared drive pin, which would then prohibit the other axis from being powered.....

Look to be sure the machine is fitted with rigid (not movable) end of travel trips on all three axis.
Generally these are trip stops that are pined to the axis so they can't be moved. These are a safety to prevent over travel of a slide by the power feed.
We see them missing on some machines and it can lead to problems.

Shear pin is located inside the non operators door. Open the door (unscrew the black knob) lower left is the coolant pump (chain driven). Somewhat below and behind the pump is a shaft.
With what looks like a collar. That collar has a hole through and a spring clip over one of the holes (the smaller hole) the shear pin lives in that hole in the collar.
Push back the spring clip and work the shear pin out , pushing it towards the large hole...Note the shaft and collar are likely no longer aligned so getting the broken pin out will require a bit of work.

Pins should be made from mild steel...with a small head at one end. pin is fitted in the small hole on the collar, and retained with the clip. Length should allow only single shear. Large hole is to aide in removing
broken pin.

Think there are some postings here with actual dimensions of the pins (search) Also given in the manuals...
Cheers Ross
 
Hi Ross

Thanks for the detailed reply ...

Firstly, the machine was shut down and mains power isolated before I left the workshop.

If I'd left it running the table would have been fully left or right but it wasn't. It was in the centre where I'd left it.

The travel trip dogs are all the pinned type and had a functional check last week.

The "Shear pin" was bugging my memory so I've just checked it and sure enough it had failed and has now been replaced.

I now have power smoothly to the Y and Z axis but the X axis is very hard to engage/dis-engage and the handwheel will only turn about half a revolution with TWO hands around the wheel?

Still can't help thinking about excessive oil being dumped overboard ...

Now wondering if a Jib had tightened itself?? can it?? the reason I mention that was that when I received the machine the Y jib was not even secured.

Thoughts, comments and fixes sincerely welcome.

MTIA

John :typing:
 
but the X axis is very hard to engage/dis-engage and the handwheel will only turn about half a revolution with TWO hands around the wheel?

I can think of two possibilities.

Either the X-axis feed is not disengaging properly, so when you try to turn the hand wheel you are turning all of the power feed gearing as well. This might explain how you broke the shear pin. Put the feed gearing speed into the neutral position to see if this makes a difference.

Alternatively one of the X-axis gibs is stuck. From the picture of the end caps I suspect the latter. When you turn the handwheel this puts a lot of force on the cast-iron end cap on one end or the other of the X table. Be careful not to crack one of these end caps by turning the X too hard. Pull off the bellows on both sides, and look from underneath as you turn the X handwheel back and forth to load it in each direction. Is the X axis leadscrew turning OK, but you can see the cast iron end caps bending while the table is fixed? Try loosening the X axis gibs to eliminate that possibility.
 
in the picture one of the X gibs seems to have added brass or bronze strip on it, so seems one of the slide surfaces, maybe if that was part of some repair, maybe something is wrong with the oil passages on those surfaces
 
Seems like my "New" FP2 is haunting me right now.

A simple idea: have you got the X-axis locked with the locking lever? Maybe you brushed up against it as you went off for your cuppa. This could explain the broken shear pin, the hard-to-turn handwheel, and the gap in the end caps!
 
I can think of two possibilities.

Either the X-axis feed is not disengaging properly, so when you try to turn the hand wheel you are turning all of the power feed gearing as well. This might explain how you broke the shear pin. Put the feed gearing speed into the neutral position to see if this makes a difference.

Alternatively one of the X-axis gibs is stuck. From the picture of the end caps I suspect the latter. When you turn the handwheel this puts a lot of force on the cast-iron end cap on one end or the other of the X table. Be careful not to crack one of these end caps by turning the X too hard. Pull off the bellows on both sides, and look from underneath as you turn the X handwheel back and forth to load it in each direction. Is the X axis leadscrew turning OK, but you can see the cast iron end caps bending while the table is fixed? Try loosening the X axis gibs to eliminate that possibility.

Morning Bruce - thanks for your comments.

The gearbox is definately dis-engaged which a guess just leaves the gibs!

I'll have a go this morning. Spooky really as I'd just ordered three replacement Gib Screws from FS yesterday having seen the state of the "Y" axis one that was not even screwed in when I received the machine.

The X & Z's were my next mission, clearly sooner than I wanted.

ANY tips from folk for stuck gibs???

MTIA

John :typing:
 
ANY tips from folk for stuck gibs?

(1) Keep calm.

(2) Put CCW screwdriver pressure on the gib screw, and at the same time have a helper "rock" the X-axis handwheel back and forth. Idea is to have the table move the gib and the screw follows.

Hopefully you won't have to go through the drama that Dennis endured to get the gib strip out of his FP2 X table.
 
There is something bronze looking in the lower gib as jz79 pointed out, could you take a better picture of that?

I am wondering what allowed the side cap to move at all, it should be bolted down pretty tight, I tapped mine into place with a rubber mallet to make sure it was seated properly.

Can we be sure it's only the lower gib thats the culprit too I wonder, can the upper gib be loosened, to rule it out.

Get some penetrating oil while you're at it.
 
OK folks ...

"X" axis FREE :D

I loosened the bottom gib screw first as it was the easiest one to get at - that took 2 seconds, it was only attached by 1-2 threads and it's shoulder was having no effect un the gib strip slot!

The top was more difficult simply because of getting an allen key in positively. As by Bruce I got my wife to turn the X handwheel back and forth and I loosened the screw bringing the gib out with it (again the screw did not have too many threads holding it!)

Returning to the bottom gib I placed a large and long flat bladed screwdriver into the gib slot and put a block of wood between the back of the blade and machine side and with minimum effort the lower gib slid out.

All in all, just 10 minutes work and much relief.

Now BOTH gibs and the back face of the X casting all have a "Brass/Bronze" lining and certainly the bottom gib has been scrapped ... see the pictures.

FP2-Fault01-07.jpg FP2-Fault01-08.jpg FP2-Fault01-09.jpg

I guess because of the "extra" thickness the gib screws will not go deeper into the castings and the top and bottom gib locking screws were having no effect because the screw was not in deep enough.

I will now have to make some form of new gib screws that are longer and having a bigger diameter collar.

Now I'm wondering just what was done to the machine in 1986 when it went to a German reconditioning company - was it that knackered after 10 years of use?? :confused::rolleyes5:

John :typing:
 
There is something bronze looking in the lower gib as jz79 pointed out, could you take a better picture of that?

I am wondering what allowed the side cap to move at all, it should be bolted down pretty tight, I tapped mine into place with a rubber mallet to make sure it was seated properly.

Can we be sure it's only the lower gib thats the culprit too I wonder, can the upper gib be loosened, to rule it out.

Get some penetrating oil while you're at it.


Hi Dennis - Thank you for your imputs - always appreciated!

See my pictures and notes above.

John :typing:
 
I've seen repairs where the wear on the slide ways was too much for the gibs to compensate, and then a strip of sheet stock was added to the back of the gib (glued) to build up required thickness for it to work again, but haven't seen it done like this - on the wear surface, maybe the idea was that the bronze against cast iron would result in less abrasion and wear, who knows...

On some heavy duty USSR lathes there were bronze strips used as sacrificial wear surfaces on the saddles, but there the other surface was cast iron which was ground smooth

one thing that seems odd was that there was still grease in the oil passages, a likely scenario could be - grease instead of oil > large amount of wear which prompted the need to build up surfaces by using brass/bronze which we see now, but after that I would suspect the operators would have learned not to use grease, but you did find grease in oil passages again, so that is a bit of a mystery to me

I would remove the gibs and pump a lot oil into the zerks to see where it comes out, just to make sure that no oil passages are accidentally blocked when the repair was done
 
I thought Deckel went with steel gibs because when you have a soft and harder material gliding against each other, the softer material becomes the part who lasts longer, so they could control wear to occur mor ein the gibs than in the table. Presumably it's easier to rescrape a gib than the table, or buy a new gib.

I wonder if that effect is now lost with bronze inserts, assuming it matters much.

I think you really need to clean out the gib housings at any rate, the smallest dirt or burr will have an effect on the seating of the gib I found. And if they can move when the table moves they can get stuck. I am guessing something like might have happened here.
 
John, I am glad you got them out without much drama. I would be grateful if you could post a nice high-res picture of both gib strips in full, cleaned up and laying on a table, so we can see how the bronze was attached and scraped and what the surfaces look like.

These days when Franz Singer & Co rebuilds machines, they mill the gibs thinner, then glue Turcite or similar material onto them. I think the bronze strips on these gibs is similar. If it works, no reason to change it.
 
John, I am glad you got them out without much drama. I would be grateful if you could post a nice high-res picture of both gib strips in full, cleaned up and laying on a table, so we can see how the bronze was attached and scraped and what the surfaces look like.

These days when Franz Singer & Co rebuilds machines, they mill the gibs thinner, then glue Turcite or similar material onto them. I think the bronze strips on these gibs is similar. If it works, no reason to change it.

Hi Bruce once I get the gibs fully out I'll get them photographed and posted. Tonight I've discovered the "Y" axis gib is also laminated!
I don't have any real concerns about the gibs and at this time don't see the need to change them.

Thank you very much for all you observations, recommendations and comments - much appreciated! :)

John :typing::cheers:
 








 
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