Hi,

I have two machines here- I run a lab where we machine hard ceramics. They have been fitted with liquid cooled high speed spindles (54k rpm). The DM4000 uses the original programming language (SKIP??). The 2800 had been refurbed in 2000 by Dyna and uses their 4M machine control.

The DM4000 has been acting up where the machine will get "stuck in Y axis" when doing lower speed feeding and doing circles. Most of our machining is low speed feed. Say 10mm/sec down to 3mm/sec. Our maint. guy and I have been tearing into the machine and found other issues, like counter weight chains that were stretched to the point of breaking, rotted and broken oil lube line under the Y-axis ball screw cover, and some other things. We haven't been able to fix the "stuck in Y-axis" problem... I'm sure the lack of lubrication because of the broken oil line didn't help. It was probably run 5+ years like that. It has well over 100,000 hours of machine time on the clock.

Is it worth fixing? We were thinking of replacing the stepper motors and possibly the ball screws (tolerance has gotten loose) or maybe even retrofitting the whole thing. The ways are in good shape. Where can I get new steppers (name and model) and screws? Also, does anyone have a clue to the Y axis stuck problem? Is there a company (or individual) that will service these machines? Thanks for any input!