DAY 1:
Synopsis: Oh Shit.
I was out of town immediately after picking the machine up and today was the first day to take a close look. My goal was to get an understanding of the architecture of the machine since I could not even tell the front from the back. I also needed to get the thing in its final spot and get it off the pallet that it shipped on. Since it weighs well over a 1,000 pounds, it takes some thinking and patience to do it alone like I did. When I go to the machine shop tomorrow I will pick up the super level and get the table nice and flat.
The PC boots up but the application is stuck because of a licence problem - the previous owner did not pay. I have not yet seen anything move. PPM spent considerable amount of time on the phone today talking me through things and have not charged anything yet. I learned that if you try to game the license system it will brick the interface and you have to replace the PIC micro on the interface PCB. The are overnighting a new PIC for delivery tomorrow and giving me a temporary license to get the machine running. Cant wait to see that happen.
Right off the bat, I had to get dirty. The feet and the threads on the machine for leveling were damaged when it was removed from service. I had to insert Helicoils on the bottom of the machine for the new stainless leveler feet. I also removed the rack mount PC becuase the previous owner never mounted it properly and it was barely hanging on for dear life.
There was a serious layer of dirt. After speaking with PPM I learned that the machine had not been used since 2012. The owner did not pay for the perpetual license and machine will do nothing. A few years of dirt and MANY thousands of loose parts all over the machine. Passives of all types, SOIC, crystals littered the machine everywhere I looked. The operators REALLY did not give half a shit about this thing or the work they were doing. About 2 hours of cleaning and inspecting got it back to where it should be for production.
One pass with my hand.....
There were empty tubes, and about ten plastic cups filled with mis-picks. Many fell into every open crack available.
The enemy of neglect.....
The feeders all need service. Mainly the idler wheels that have disintegrated on may of them. I learned that these are the 12v 8pin models and apparently that is good news. 32 8mm, 16 12mm, 5 16mm, 5 24mm, 5 lane tube feeder, and two large matrix trays.
I hope that I can replace the idler myself. All the other functions seem to be good.
This does not look good....the wheels are falling apart.
The entire table is just a large and very heavy piece of steel with threaded holes. Anything and everything can be moved anywhere....its really cool. Very flexible.
The ball screws are very fast helix. It looks like the wrong grease was used but I should be able to get that worked out fairly easy. A fast ball screw requires a very fine encoder to get good position accuracy.
Linear encoders on this beast. These measure the actual position of the head as opposed to counting pulses of the motor encoder. Generally much more accurate and repeatable.
That is it for now. Hopefully I can get the machine to move around tomorrow when the PIC micro is installed. The feeders will take a while to get into production condition, but I can experiment and practice programming without the feeders.
This is awesome.