[manta]

I just recently picked up a Conquest 700, from a knife making company which had bought the machine new. i bought it knowing it has an issue with the ATC, and the price reflected that.

The issue as they described it is that after a tool change the arm would return home then as soon as it returned home it would kick out a few degrees and alarm out.

I haven't taken delivery of the machine yet, I am just try to get a head start on finding the problem

hopefully find someone that knows these machines that might be able to point me in the right way
would also like to hear any other thoughts on this machine from people that have experience with them good or bad

issue 2
this mill had tool and part probing as a factory option, i was told that they tried to add a probe a few years back and could not get it to work, is there a way to add it?

hardine in general doesn't have a big presents in my area, so the techs while very capable where not familiar with these mills

Thanks
Chris

[Lewertek]

Hi, I worked for Hardinge service. The arm overshoot is a problem I have seen. The machine has either Allen Bradley or GPD amplifiers for the tool chain drive and arm. These require a plug in pendant to access the parameters which may need tweaking. By the way, the motors have brakes that release with power on (have no function other than holding position when powered off, so essentially designed to do very liitle) and I believe the problem is that the amplifiers are tweaked to work well originally, then give a little too much ooomph when the gearbox assembly is well worn in. The pendants are hard to come by and very expensive even used ( I have seen them for over 1000$ used on Ebay). I have recently retrofitted a generic Yaskawa drive that cost a few hundred dollars. It did take a lot of tweaking to get it set up and to finally stop at the correct position.
As for the probe, etc. the short answer is yes. The option enable is keep relay K7.0 for the part probe. I cannot find any factory option for tool probe, it was either a "Hardinge special" or a retrofit (most likely Renishaw? - I suggest contacting them - they would most likely have some standard set up info for this machine)

[manta]

thanks for your reply, i was beginning to think no one had worked on one of these.
I'll be powering it up in the next week or so and start messing with it then.

I posted this on the the other web site too and the one person that replied mentioned the brake so ill check that out too.

Any other things i should watch out for with this machine, any information and tips is greatly appreciated

thanks
Chris