[mike^3]

Post 1

Hello ALL! I purchased two Hardinge CHNC II SP lathes. The controls had issues and I decided to totally redue most of the machine, and convert it over to mach 3. New bench, all new electronics, etc. Everyday I will try to post my progress, as of now im on day 7 of the tear down, my only help is my MOM a few hours a day LOVE U MOM! .

So as of today I stripped the entire machine, except the actual turret mechanism (I heard this is hell to put back together)

Heres some pics of before and now:

I can only upload 2 at a time, does anyone know how I can upload more at a time?

P.S. The cleaner looking one, used water based coolant....ewwww look at the turret innards, that's what happens when u use coolant based when your supposed to run these on oil only.

P.S.S. don't hook everything to a hoist and then to one hook! LOL

[mike^3]

Post 2

So yesterday we were still cleaning the turrets up, we noted that the deep innarts were in great shape, so were the sliding surfaces.

On area of dissapointment was the fact that one of the cross slides is missing the stop dog solenoid mechanism, at least I have one of them so I might be able to make the other one. If anyone have any old parts of one of these let me know!

Heres a list of what I need, and would pay you for!
Bellows (accordian material that covers the cross slides)
Back solenoid that actuates the stop dog


More updates tomorrow!

[mike^3]

Hey Marco,

I've been retrofitting cnc machines for about 6 years now. It's not my fulltime job. I am actually working as a Registered Nurse, going to school to become a Nurse Practitioner (Basically a doctor here in the USA). And I am married, no kids though! I only work 3 days a week, long ass days though like 16 hours each .

I hope to make some money, but what else would I be doing? LOL

Ill make a video today, the guys at the grinding shop said they don't allow any kind of video or non-employees in the shop. I understand though, liability reasons.

I got my bearings in! I think Ill try to call up NSK directly and see how much they would sell them to me in the future, I plan to do these in the future .

So what kind of tolerences do you think you will be able to hold when you emco is done?

[zmajmr]

Hey Marco,

I've been retrofitting cnc machines for about 6 years now. It's not my fulltime job. I am actually working as a Registered Nurse, going to school to become a Nurse Practitioner (Basically a doctor here in the USA). And I am married, no kids though! I only work 3 days a week, long ass days though like 16 hours each .

I hope to make some money, but what else would I be doing? LOL

Ill make a video today, the guys at the grinding shop said they don't allow any kind of video or non-employees in the shop. I understand though, liability reasons.

I got my bearings in! I think Ill try to call up NSK directly and see how much they would sell them to me in the future, I plan to do these in the future .

So what kind of tolerences do you think you will be able to hold when you emco is done?

Hi Mike, I would never guess that you have connections with medicine, I had image of you like some kind of machinist, I saw mill in in your garage.
I am graduated electrical engineer, "specialist" for automation , while I am writing this I am laughing to my self because I finished study before 4 years ago almost, and I am "working" as machinist (I have small mill and small lathe) . Anyway I managed to save some money to buy this Emco and new electronics so now I have chance to do something what will have to do with automation, when you write in CV that you can work with machines I guess people think you are crazy, they expect that you need to work with programs . So I become self thought machinist and still having hope to will find job eventually in field of automation.

Man who sold Emco , told me that machine can hold 0.005 mm tolerances with no problems (while he was using it), I read in manual that input accuracy is 0.001 mm which is very very good, I know when I make manually something +/- 0.01 mm is excellent result, dial gauge on my hand operated machine is 0.2 mm and 0.05 mm and finest 0.01 mm, so 0.001 mm with CNC is science fiction for me, 0.005 mm is very very good. I can not wait to see how will machine work after ball screws are cleaned.

Try to google for PLC and PLC modules, digital input, relay output, maybe you find how to manage 40 inputs and outputs.

I decide to use Mach3 because I saw that you do not need to know G code, there are wizards, I watched John Grinsmo videos on youtube and after that I searched some kind of card that uses USB connection because I do not have computer with parallel port. Anyway maybe latter when I learn some G code and other stuff I will try Linux CNC or something else. For now this should be fine just to start moving cross slides and see machine making something.

I thought there will be no problems to record videos because maybe guys in machine shop are pride with their jobs and will gladly show how it is done, I saw 2 or 3 videos on youtube about that.

Nice to meet you Mike, I hope you will make profit on machines.

[mike^3]

UPDATE!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uR4-...ature=youtu.be

Heres an update of painting the base, ill up a video tonight ;D.

Heres the bases coated underneath. In progress painting, a 1inch brush works alot better here because of the narrow deep areas

I used 3 coats white all surface primer (its like liquid, didn't like it much, its too runny), then 2 coats Rustoleum rusty colored primer, with the same rust colored top coat for the underneath.

I will be painting all top pieces in this order:

(3) primer coats with Rustoleum Rusty color, in between each coat I will be wet sanding with 600 grit.
The rustoleum will be mixed 50/50 with mineral spirits for ease of application and quick drying.

I will then be painting (3) top coats of Rustoleum top coat smoke grey.
I will also be sanding between each coat.
I will let sit for 24 hours after the final coat before I handle the pieces.

I will be brushing them, I wanted to spray them but there are too many spots where the paint would run if not super careful, and I still have to wet sand, so might as well brushes it on .

I have some last pieces to clean off.

I just ordered some black manganese Phosphate to coat the original black manganese Phosphate pieces back to original, such as the Z axis ballscrew cover, and all the bolts and screws.

It takes a lot of prep work to make a great manganese Phosphate coating, but it will be great when its done! I will make a video of how I do it, and the results

Thanks everyone!

Mike

[mike^3]

UPDATE!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uR4-...ature=youtu.be

Heres an update of painting the base, ill up a video tonight ;D.

Heres the bases coated underneath. In progress painting, a 1inch brush works alot better here because of the narrow deep areas

I used 3 coats white all surface primer (its like liquid, didn't like it much, its too runny), then 2 coats Rustoleum rusty colored primer, with the same rust colored top coat for the underneath.

I will be painting all top pieces in this order:

(3) primer coats with Rustoleum Rusty color, in between each coat I will be wet sanding with 600 grit.
The rustoleum will be mixed 50/50 with mineral spirits for ease of application and quick drying.

I will then be painting (3) top coats of Rustoleum top coat smoke grey.
I will also be sanding between each coat.
I will let sit for 24 hours after the final coat before I handle the pieces.

I will be brushing them, I wanted to spray them but there are too many spots where the paint would run if not super careful, and I still have to wet sand, so might as well brushes it on .

I have some last pieces to clean off.

I just ordered some black manganese Phosphate to coat the original black manganese Phosphate pieces back to original, such as the Z axis ballscrew cover, and all the bolts and screws.

It takes a lot of prep work to make a great manganese Phosphate coating, but it will be great when its done! I will make a video of how I do it, and the results

Thanks everyone!

Mike

[zmajmr]

UPDATE!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uR4-...ature=youtu.be

Heres an update of painting the base, ill up a video tonight ;D.

Heres the bases coated underneath. In progress painting, a 1inch brush works alot better here because of the narrow deep areas

I used 3 coats white all surface primer (its like liquid, didn't like it much, its too runny), then 2 coats Rustoleum rusty colored primer, with the same rust colored top coat for the underneath.

I will be painting all top pieces in this order:

(3) primer coats with Rustoleum Rusty color, in between each coat I will be wet sanding with 600 grit.
The rustoleum will be mixed 50/50 with mineral spirits for ease of application and quick drying.

I will then be painting (3) top coats of Rustoleum top coat smoke grey.
I will also be sanding between each coat.
I will let sit for 24 hours after the final coat before I handle the pieces.

I will be brushing them, I wanted to spray them but there are too many spots where the paint would run if not super careful, and I still have to wet sand, so might as well brushes it on .

I have some last pieces to clean off.

I just ordered some black manganese Phosphate to coat the original black manganese Phosphate pieces back to original, such as the Z axis ballscrew cover, and all the bolts and screws.

It takes a lot of prep work to make a great manganese Phosphate coating, but it will be great when its done! I will make a video of how I do it, and the results

Thanks everyone!

Mike

Hi Mike , nice update, congrats to your mom , you can not see that every day , mom helps you with machines.

If I were on your place I would just clean pulleys (wd 40 and 1000 grid sand paper is good for removing rust), I taped my spindle when I was trying rust converter (it is some kind of acid) and eventually little of that liquid manged to pass under overlap of protective tape and the spindle was not even submersed in liquid , so I do not know what will happen if you have plan to hot blu your pulleys (as I know you need to submerses parts in hot liquid with salts) so maybe it is risky and you will have more problems then what you will get from esthetic look.

Keep your videos coming. I would like that other helpers to you from forum write their advices maybe I learn something that I do not know.

Do you need to buy VFDs or you have them with machines? I saw some motors in background of you pictures , they look massive.

:cheers:

[mike^3]

Hey Marco,

Not much to update lately, its Christmas today, spending lots of time with the family

So as of now I parkerized a lot of parts, but it turned out rougher than I liked, so I ordered some Brownell's Oxpho Blue which I will be using instead.

I am getting close to finishing haha.

Got a link to your latest vid?

Also thanks again for following

[zmajmr]

Hey Marco,

Not much to update lately, its Christmas today, spending lots of time with the family

So as of now I parkerized a lot of parts, but it turned out rougher than I liked, so I ordered some Brownell's Oxpho Blue which I will be using instead.

I am getting close to finishing haha.

Got a link to your latest vid?

Also thanks again for following

Hi

Happy Christmas, check this out

http://www.cnczone.com/forums/vertic...ml#post1401202

Look the freshest video in thread, it is guy from Germany , look how he mounts bearings.

[mike^3]

Post 2 addon

On another note, I have been working with some programmers and they are helping me a ton with Mach 3.

What I will be doing is replace the faulty turret encoder with a series of switches that interface with Mach 3, this illiminates the need for modios and crazy addons. I will also be able to use the existing airmotor so I will get very fast tool changes.

The trick for the turret is this sequence:

1. Unclamp stop dog
2. Raise turret
3. spin air motor
4. sense a switch when you get to the correct tool.
5. fire the stop dog stopping the turret.
6. deactivate the air motor.
7. drop the turret in place.

[mike^3]

Post 3 End of day 9

We cleaned up the oil air feed reservoir. It was nasty, I noticed that the machine that was used with cutting oil was harder to clean off, but had a better finish then the one with water based coolant. Also the water based coolant one had fungus and bacteria in the reservoir, I about vomited....

Here are some pics of us before and after, alot of these parts had scratches before and surface corrosion. Ill have to soak these later.

*Note the oil system for this machine just uses compressed air in a chamber, and the oil is forced out of the chamber through a pickup tube, it then travels through a system of holes them it goes out to the spindle, air collet closer, slides, turret, etc. I noticed a huge flaw with this. All the lines were just metered outputs with Bijor fittings (a metered output is basically a hole with a fine screen and a checkvalve). The problem with this is that they get clogged very easy. I think I am just going to make my own metered output with small valves to send oil to where it needs to go and adjust the valves as needed to get a good amount of oil regulation. This may become a problem when running the air lines to the turret, because I am more than certain that the air needs to me an air/oil combination. I may be able to get around this by running seperate lines to the turret with its own air filter/oiler. (I will be doing this last)

Enjoy!

More pics tomorrow

[mike^3]

End of day 10

Not much to post today, just cleaned up the actual lathe bodies, I have a ton more cleaning to do. I lifted them and put them on blocks, heres a pic.

Also I purchased some oil based primer, Im going to redo the stock colors (to some extent).

This weekend I will be wiring up and making a wiring diagram for my machine (that should be fun )

pics and info on monday!



P.S. how free should the spindle spin? Easily, or super easy?

Thanks!

[BrassBuilder]

This looks like a pretty cool project. I am following this one.
Mike

[mike^3]

Thanks brass builder! I'm glad I'm helping someone else out . I do have a long way to go, but considering I paid 2100$ for both of these delivered to my door, I got a great deal. I sold all the old electronics for 5k . Ill have to use the 2900 profit to purchase more electronics and building materials like paint and steel for the new enclosure.

I chose nema 34 hybrid servos/steppers for the drives, they are about 450$ per axis. It's the best of both worlds, 8nm of torque till about 300rpm then it drops off to 1.8 nm at 3000 rpm. Not bad considering the original motors only ha 1.8 nm torque throughout the speed curve.

These motors have an encoder also that keeps position just like a servo. Ill be able to achieve the same is not better resolution of 0.0001

Thanks and ill keep everyone posted as much as I can, most likely daily . I hope to get them done by Christmas!

[mike^3]

Dis-assembly update

Here are a few things that I ran into when taking apart the chnc II sp lathes.

The slides themselves moved very nicely in the area that they normally slide on the dovetail. However, when trying to pull them off the slides. They were extremely tight, especially the cross slide. In the manual they specify not to adjust the gib with set screws as this is done at the factory, unfortunanlty I could not remove the cross slide without loosing them. I think its because the probably dial in the lathe cross slide parallelism with it and set it. This should be an easy process to redo.

Also removing the ballscrews require a spanner wrench, which apparently no one has a set ;(. So I will have to make up by drilling out a piece of steel and screwing in 2 grade 8 screws.

Also it helps to take pics, im gonna have an interesting time redoing the air lines. Word of advice, don't cut them....most of them have a small inner line which is the actual air/oil line, the outer line is just to protect it (I assume...)

************Has anyone ever done this conversion before? I saw one gentlemen redo a really old model with a 5c collet closer. These were mid 90's.

Thanks!

M

[mike^3]

So today I have been toying with the idea about replacing the spindle bearings. In one machine the spindle spins very smoothly but is noisy even when I spin it by hand, leading to believe that at 5k rpm they will be hella loud = shot bearings. The other is very stiff and if I spin cw and then ccw there is a free spot of easy movement, then it gets hard to spin = shot bearings. So I will either be sending the head stocks out to be redone or I will do it myself, I Found a rebuild blog of a hardinge service tech explaining how to do it. I have replaced many spindle bearings and understand how to preload them and measure runout and adjust for each. Problem is that I have yet to find anyone with replacement bearings. Even if I were to find a set I would most likely have to get them lapped or ground down to get the proper preload.

So when I take the spindle apart ill make sure to mark where all the current tightness and orientation of all the collars. Not sure if this is going to help much especially if the bearings are shot, shot bearing will change the pre-load because if their shot their distorted and the current position of the lock collars may not be appropriate.

I have yet to find a supplier for the spindle bearings, but have seen on the forums that they are abec 7 bearings, I should still be able to get them from hardinge.

These machines are being restored and updated to reproduce the same if not better tolerances of 0.00005. I will make sure these can hold that, so purchasing the right parts are very important to me, no half ass job here.

Heres some pics so far.

The spindle was fairly easy to take apart (not the bearing section yet).

Diss-assembly

1. 4 screws on the back ring in between the head stock and collet closer.
2. Unscrew ccw (if looking at the collet in the lathe towards the collet closer), the collet will feed out.
3. Pull the whole long assembly out of the ass of the spindle, jiggle it, it will come out as long as the collet it out.
4. remove the 4 or 3 (not sure i for got ) in the black plate and that to will come off.
5. remove the 3 small allen pan head screws around the large ring on the back of the head stock, these screws hold the ring on.
If you have trouble removing the ring, its because its stuck. Tap it with a metal hammer slightly, if still not go reach underneath past the pullies and push. Its what i had to done on one.
6. I took of small hardware here and there.
7. the spindle lock has 2 set screws on the top, only long one, and one short, take both out and then you can remove the spindle lock mechanism.

I have decided on the paint! GUN METAL BLACK/GREY! similar color to the stealth bombers, no sheen, no gloss, just rugged, and easy to keep clean. These machines will be back in a machine shop when done so I want functionality and professionalism when finished. I was considering white, but I dunno, sounds like a ton of cleaning with white paint. Perhaps powder coat the machine ? Someone wanna chime in?

Till next post!

Mike

[mike^3]

Spindle update

So I spoke with hartwig (they own hardinge now I guess), and they advised not changing the spindle bearings in the field. I asked why? They said it takes a lot of specialized tools, its hard, etc. etc. etc. I asked how much for a spindle rebuild for new bearings....their answer..........."Ahh, only $6500.00 each". I laughed and said how much are the bearings? Their answer........ "Those are pricey, 376.00 for the matching set" I said, SOLD. I spoke with a service guy that replaces hardinge spindles and he gave me instructions on how they do it at the factory. Not complicated at all, the only complex part is heating the bearing to about 100F and the slipping it back on the shaft. He did mention the labyrinth seal that may need to be reground, to match the bearings. He said you can get away with this simply by measuring (with mics) the thickness of the inner races from the stock bearings, and then comparing them to the new ones, if they are larger you will have to regrind the labyrinth seal, if they are the the same of smaller, then your OK. The tech asked me why I want to replace them, my answer....."If you were retrofitting these machines to get the back to factory accuracy or better, wouldn't you?". He said, "Of coarse".

I will be taking pics of the spindle bearing replacement on the CHNC II Super Precision, hopefully this will help people out in the future. I will also make a list of steps to change them.

WISH ME LUCK!

[mike^3]

Thanks so much for your posts, I too will have to fabricate some things to remove the spindle and bearings. What kind of lathe was that?

Also that picture with the bearing configuration, which one did you chose? The << or <> >< >>?

If you look at the pics from the head stock, there is a lip on the back, like a recessed ring, I will attempt to use gear-pullers with reversed fingers and push from the back forward, Not sure if it will I will give it a try. At least when it goes back in all I have to do is cut a piece of steel and draw the the spindle back in from the back ;D. I will be taking lots of pics along the way



Mike

[zmajmr]

Thanks so much for your posts, I too will have to fabricate some things to remove the spindle and bearings. What kind of lathe was that?

Also that picture with the bearing configuration, which one did you chose? The << or <> >< >>?

If you look at the pics from the head stock, there is a lip on the back, like a recessed ring, I will attempt to use gear-pullers with reversed fingers and push from the back forward, Not sure if it will I will give it a try. At least when it goes back in all I have to do is cut a piece of steel and draw the the spindle back in from the back ;D. I will be taking lots of pics along the way



Mike

I chose factory configuration << >>, and machine is Emco Turn 220 P, here is link of my thread in progress

http://www.cnczone.com/forums/vertic...urn_220_p.html

And here is link of machine similar to mine where you probably want to use something similar to remove spindle

Emco Compact 6 Retrofit @ DIESELRC.COM

last 3 pictures

Good luck with pulling spindle

[mike^3]

Well for ballscrews you may want to buy some from a china supplier, they are ok for a lathe such as yours, where heavy duty may not be a constant. But yes ballscrews are very important, No use having a nice machine that can't hold 0.001". Your machine should be able to hold that if you put even some cheap ballscrews in. How long it will hold that, I am unsure. Have you looked at NSK ballscrews here in the US? Don't know about shipping but if you found some, see how much shipping would be to you.

As for the grinding process, I will be delivering them to a shop, so I might be able to video them grinding them down and making them look good. Hell I might even get a discount because Ill post the video on youtube , advertisement !.

Youtube Cold bluing and hot bluing, mostly done to guns here in the US. Hot gun bluing is a great search also.

Ill update more pics tomorrow ;D