[conveyor]

Our Okuma VMC had the tool changer stuck about 3 inches down from the head of the machine in the middle of a tool change when I went in this morning. I was thinking the operator had hit the emergency stop but he says he just heard a loud clinking and it stopped before he hit emergency stop. Either way, the machine will not accept an M06 since I can't orient the spindle or move the Z axis to its toolchange position. None of the codes that it says to use with an M59 (M32,M33,M34,M35) do anything when I put them in to move the ATC. We have been using the solenoids to move the toolchanger and that works to get it to move, but the minute we let off the solenoid it goes back to its original position (ex. when it is up and we want it to go down it will go back up when we let off the solenoid) It is currently all of the way up with no tools in it but we can't get the arm to swing back to its resting position and stay there. Any ideas on what other options we have or what possibly might be wrong with our machine? Thank You.

[neilw20]

Last year some time I saw a similar problem thread, and it's solution.
I believe the part that senses the turret postion has got out of sync.
Couldn't find the thread easily.

[conveyor]

We solved our problem with the Okuma. It ended up that two of the four studs (that open and close to let the toolholder in and out) were stripped out of the plate which they were threaded into. This kept the spindle closed so that when the tool went to go back up into the spindle it was stopped, thus setting off the alarm. We ended up moving the ATC arm by going into MDI mode using the M59 (bypass interlock) and then M33,M34,M42....etc. to manually move the arm and subpot. Note that when in bypass interlock you need to use the Cycle Start to get the codes to work, not the normal green start button that would normally be used when using MDI. Still aren't sure why the studs were stripped out but they were very simple to make and it was a very easy fix once we figured it all out. Hope this helps someone if they every have the same problem. Thanks