[N4NV]

I have still been working on the lathe every day. For the past 6 days I have fabricated some covers and then painted them. I have two of the original covers for the stand and I had to make 3 more. I have posted enough pictures of the paint process, hence the reason for no post. I also painted the monitor/keyboard/mouse support.

A friend who was looking over the lathe pointed out that I had it on 8" of blocks. I had set the keyboard height without taking into consideration the blocks. I made a new support plate which allowed me to mount the keyboard higher. This also needed painting.

After re-mounting the keyboard support, I found that all the cables to the computer are going to be too short. I have to purchase some extender cables to make it work.

Vince

[N4NV]

My extender cables arrived. I really do not like cables with coils in them. I don't see how they are better than a straight cable. If you stretch the coil to get more length, they pull out of the socket.

I installed the bellows for the X axis. This was something down on my list and now I know why. It took over an hour to install 12 screws. It is really tough to get in between the bellow folds and install the retaining brackets without pulling the bellow out from behind the retainer. I also had to remove the two cross slide side plates to get the bellow in place.

Next I think I will start on the X axis cover.

Vince

[N4NV]

It has been a while since I last posted. During the summer, all my weekends are taken up hang gliding. This last weekend the smoke from all the California fires made it impossible to fly so I spent some time making a part for the lathe. I made a cover for the x-axis end. I made it out of 1/2" acrylic scraps. I only have a miter saw to cut the pieces so I had to spend a lot of time machining each piece to make it square, then bond the pieces together. Once bonded, I put the entire piece in the mill and squared off the edges and drilled the holes for the mounting screws. The entire project took over 3 hours. I now have one more cover to make, which should be a lot easier.

I really need to get the lathe home so I can get some time to work on the programming. I only have an hour a day (from 5am to 6am) to work on it. I need to sell my tent trailer to make room at home. I need a good 4 straight hours to finish off the programming. Once I get the last cover made I can make chips, but to be fully automated I need to get this programming done.

Vince

[sc brian]

I am in Santa Clara and plan to retrofit my CHNC-1 as well. I plan to completely replace everything electrical, so you or others might be interested. I can't wait to see your finished product.

[N4NV]

I am in Santa Clara and plan to retrofit my CHNC-1 as well. I plan to completely replace everything electrical, so you or others might be interested. I can't wait to see your finished product.

I would be interested in seeing it. I stuck right now. I can't move forward until I get the lathe moved home and I have to sell my tent trailer first. I was hoping that it would sell because it takes a lot less gas to pull it as apposed to an RV. I have been trying to sell it for the last 3 months.

Vince

[Runner4404spd]

anyone doing these retrofits, have a spare collet closer? mine just died and i need to get another one. also has anyone rebuilt one of these collet closers?

[N4NV]

A friend of mine who got me started in this whole CNC thing recently lost his battle with cancer. I have been spending a lot of time with him these last several months and could not find the drive work on my lathe. He would have wanted me to continue on so I have started to get back to my lathe.

Last Friday I had the lathe moved from my work to my garage. Now I can get to all the little things I could not do from work. The first thing I found was I had one hose in the coolant system that I did not replace and it blew out, making a mess on my garage floor. After cleaning that up, I accidently turned the coolant pump on without the hose and made another mess. I did manage to replace the hose and test it. No leaks to far.

I wrote a g code program to test the tool turret. It would occasionally miss a tool position so I made a minor adjustment to the magnet over the encoder and it hits every time now (several hundred position checks). I did find a related problem though. Randomly after several repeated turret indexing operations, my break out board would lock up. It would take a power reset to get it to work again. I will have to contact Arturo to see if he knows what could be causing the problem.

I made my first parts today! They consisted of just a hole in the center of a 5/8" aluminum dowel and then facing the part. I had NO vibrations like I had with my Southbend lathe. The facing gave a mirror finish without a finishing pass. I was using some cheap inserts. I don't know if they are even for aluminum.

I have the collet closer to program. For now I have it on manual switches. Then I have to install a spindle sensor so I can work on threading. I also have to learn the G codes for turning. I also found that my PLC that runs the turret was not on the EPO and it would continue to run. I have to change that. Lots to do.

Vince

[BobWarfield]

I'm sorry to hear of your loss, Vince.

Your lathe is looking sharp. Quite a change from when you first dragged it in, eh?

I'll look forward to seeing some pictures of parts made and perhaps (please?) some videos of it in action.

Best Regards,

Bob Warfield

[N4NV]

As soon as I have it set up safely, I plan on posting a video of it making something. Right now, it a little loose as far a safety and interlocks go. I need to hook up a sensor that will verify that the tool turret is seated and ready to go. I also need to get the EPO fully installed. I also need to work on the tool table setup. I do not have that with my mill so it is new to me. Then of course I have to figure out the lathe g codes. I need to play with lazycam for the lathe and see how that works. At least now that it is home I can work on those items then head out to the garage and give them a try.

Vince

[79TigerPilot]

Vince,
Sorry to hear about your friend. I had been checking in from time to time to see how things were going, thought you may have been hang gliding or flying. Glad to see you are back at the project.

My Bridgeport project is progressing, I am in the Bondo stage of refinishing the castings, very slow going. I hate Bondo!

Glad to see you back,
Craig

[Karl_T]

Vince,

Just an update on my CHNC. My son got laid off this spring so he took lathe production work. I had trouble with drift of machine 0 due to losing a few encoder counts over a thousand parts. switching from single ended to differential encoder solved the issue. The machine went onto make about 20,000 parts and held tenth tolerance the whole time. Hardinge makes one hell of a nice lathe.

karl

[N4NV]

Karl, it nice to see you put your lathe to good use. 20,000 parts! I did not think anyone ordered that many from a US supplier. I thought China had all our work. It's nice to seem some work done over here.

I have made a couple of parts now, but I can't do them fully automatically. Somehow my tool turret is causing my CNC4PC C11T board to lock up. Arturo is sending my a replacement card to see if that fixes the problem. Up to this point I have been testing either the tool turret, or the machine motion, but not both. I can make stuff, but I have to stop the program to change tool positions. I should have the replacement next week.

Vince

[N4NV]

I had an intermittent problem with the tool turret. About every 4 or 5 times the turret changed tools the break out board locked up. I was using a C11T board from CNC4PC. This board was a prototype. I contacted Arturo and he said they had made some changes to the board since I received mine. He sent me a new board which I installed today and now it does not lock up.

My collet closer valve was leaking a little air so I decided to take it apart again and see what could be the problem. In the process I lost one of the springs. I made a new one out of steel wire, but now it leaks more than ever. I will try changes some of the O-rings again, maybe a slightly larger size.

As soon as I can get some 1” aluminum bar stock, I am going to try to make some special pulleys. It won’t happen for at least 2 weeks as I am going on vacation next week.

Vince

[fdos]

The collet closer should be using Quad rings if it's anything like my 16c closer. Mine also leaks, I cured all the leaks on my HXL's turret, but at the expense of a $200 seal kit from Hardinge. Not sure what the closer seals cost, not as much I hope!


Wayne.....

[N4NV]

The collet closer should be using Quad rings if it's anything like my 16c closer. Mine also leaks, I cured all the leaks on my HXL's turret, but at the expense of a $200 seal kit from Hardinge. Not sure what the closer seals cost, not as much I hope!


Wayne.....

The collet closer is not leaking, it is the valve that contolls the closer that is leaking. There is a company in Santa Clara called Ace seal that sells O rings. I purchased all the o-rings for the turret for $7 (yes, they had the quad rings).

Vince

[FPV_GTp]

beautiful work N4NV seems you have a nack for restoration work


cheers

[N4NV]

beautiful work N4NV seems you have a nack for restoration work


cheers

My wife says I am the Mother Theresa of old machines, I just can’t to see them neglected and I try to help them all. I think if I had a 10 car garage I would still fill it up.

Vince

[N4NV]

I got to work trying to set up the tool table in Mach so I can use the turret in a program to make some pulleys. As I started on the tool table, I found that my limit switches no longer worked. I had recently changed my C11T board to a newer model (I had a prototype). On the prototype, pins 13 and 15 had high speed optoisolators and required a pull down resistor of 1K to work with my Hall Effect limit switches. On the new board this no longer seems to be the case (I am waiting to hear from Arturo). On the prototype pins 11 and 12 it took a 300 ohm resistor. Just in case Arturo changed from the high speed optoisolators, I tried a 300 ohm resistor on pins 13 and 15 and they worked. Repeat ability on the Z is .0001. On the X it is more like .0005. The X axis has a mechanical switch that moves a magnet over the hall switch. The Z axis has no mechanical switch in between the magnet and the hall switch which is giving it more accuracy.

Now that I am back to where I was two weeks ago, I can get back to working on the tool table. I have read through the manual several times and I think I understand it, but it will take some trial and error (hopefully no error as in tool crash) to get it all figured out. When I get it working I will post a video.

Vince

[N4NV]

I spent last weekend picking up my glider from Clear Lake, CA. I worked on the tool table set up for about 3 hours today. I screwed up twice and hit the chuck when I was changing tools. The chuck was not turning, but I knocked it out of round both times. It is a set true type so I fixed it both times. I'm pretty sure I have the tool table set up properly now. It was a lot of work but if I did it correct, I won't have to do it again unless I change tools.

I would like to program the M6 command in Mach so that it will move the Z axis to a safe location for the tool change. I will have to look into that (which means I will have to post the question to the Mach support forum).

Maybe this week I can work on writing the G-code to make my pulleys. As soon as I make some parts with the tool changer working I will post a video.

Vince

[N4NV]

I made some parts! Pulleys that take 4 different tools. No crashes! I found that the boring bar I was using was flexing too much for an accurate cut. I purchased a new boring bar today. I am having a little difficulty getting tooling. I have some tools mounted but I don't know how well they are suited for the machine. I have 1/2" chuck mounted but it is too big for the turret. It would be nice to have more split collets and a couple more holders, especially the three hole holder. It would be nice to see what others are using for tooling.
I wrote the program by hand. I tried Mach LazyTurn, but it did not like my drawing. I don’t have my turret seated sensor hooked up so I added a 3 second pause for the turret to finish indexing. I initially forgot the pause and just missed the chuck with a ½” drill. So far since I got the turret working it only missed indexing once and that was the first time of the day when it was a little cool.
Any suggestions on how to accurately set the X axis for drills (especially center drills) would be appreciated.

I used the coolant system for the first time cutting parts. It made for a better finish. I also found that I had a gap in my enclosure that I had forgot about and made a mess on my garage floor. I sealed it up today and the sealant won't be dry for two days so the earliest I can make a video would be Thursday.

When I was boring I was having trouble getting the chips (long, long chips) out of the bore and from around the boring tool. I found that I had to grab them with needle nose pliers. I may have to set up a program step to stop the lathe and withdraw the boring bare so manually clear the chips. Any suggestions here would also be appreciated.

Vince