The Craftmans Shop > New from Old

Yet another Beaver resurection (TC20F)

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JeffK:
Well - after telling Mr Mawson I would start a new thread I finally got round to it.
I had always fancied getting myself a CNC lathe to learn on. Having played with manual machines a good bit I thought why not?
Problem was I live up North of Aberdeen and anything cheap enough to play on would cost the earth to get here.

Around Christmas I spied an ad for a Beaver TC20F for sale in Aberdeen. I thought here's the chance and got in touch with the seller.
Turns out the very problem I had getting a cheap machine up here applied equally the other way round. Everyone interested in it told
him it was far too expensive to ship it down South. We negotiated a deal and I am now the proud owner of a non-working TC20F for little
over scrap value. And so the journey starts..........

After stripping as much weight as possible off it to transport it the 25 miles back to my place ( a slow and sketchy journey with said slimmed
down machine on a trailer in a couple of journeys) I got it back home and with the combination of JCB, forklift and a couple of trolley jacks
got it where I needed it.

Next stage - power.

I have a generator for 3 -phase so duly wired it up thinking 'off we go!!!'  No such luck. Signs of life but that was about it.....

Time to start trawling the internet - where I came across MadModder and the Andrew Mawson Beaver epic. :clap:

I started to read and slowly realised maybe I had bitten off a bit too much here..... too late now !!! :doh:

Anyway I read somewhere changing the phasing might help so I did - and it did. Things started to come to life - but not quite as I had expected.

The statement ' it hasn't been used for a couple of years - but I've seen it turning' was a slight exageration.

My Fanuc 10T sprang into action with a screen full of errors - so now begins the fun.....

As a start I thought I would post a few photos so people can admire how much work Andrew put into his and see how far I have to go.....

As info is scarce on this machine if anyone recognises bit it would be great to get your opinions, good, bad or just plain ugly..... :thumbup:

awemawson:
Well done Jeff, it's reassuring to think that I'm not the only lunatic on the planet.

Although your machine is based on an entirely different controller, and all the servo electronics is different, they follow the same principles as mine, and I suspect that there is more Fanuc knowledge floating about that Siemens.

I look forward to further episodes !

tom osselton:
Good luck I’m sure it will be worth it in the end! I have a 96 Cincinnati 250t ( simodrive 611) that did fire up and was able to move around but now just shows a initializing host post on the screen. The only other thing it brings up is the test for buttons.

RodW:
Good luck with this. The important photos to take are of the ID plates on the servos and their drives. Assuming the fault is not a simple one, I would recommend retrofitting with LinuxCNC. Post said photos on the linuxcnc forum and ask for help. You might be surprised with the outcome.

Mesa have an amazing array of electronic hardware http://www.mesanet.com/
And also Pico Systems has some Fanuc interfaces https://pico-systems.com/osc2.5/catalog/index.php
Both Jon from Pico and Peter from Mesa are active on that forum.

Its a bit outside my sphere but there are many people there who will help. I did see there was a Beaver mill retrofit on one thread.

JeffK:
Thanks gents

I am learning a few interesting things along the way just now.....
I power my workshop with a couple of generators - a 50KVa which is good for most things and a 250KVa which was also rescued from a scrapyard.
The 50KVa I bought brand new (Cat Olympus) as it was a lot cheaper than getting hooked up to a 3-phase supply. The 250KVa was a backup generator
for an oil company in Aberdeen. They decided to demolish their offices and move and I got wind the generator was being scrapped. I spoke nicely to
the demolition crew and managed to get a 20 year old DAF powered 250KVa generator fully serviced with 100hours on the clock again for a little over
scrap value. It is noisy and thirsty but does the business!!! :)
Anyway when I run the lathe off the 50KVa it is fine until something else kicks in (I have a substantial air compressor), At this point the voltage drop gives
me all kind of problems and errors. When I run it off the big beast the power is not stabilised and that also gives issues (though less). So a stabilised power
supply is important.
Another point which I have seen on several posts also rings true - a thing that is not used is often subject to more issues than one that is regularly used.
I sent a note to Andrew M the other day about not being able to zero reference my machine because the zero switch didn't seem to work. I was tinkering
the other day and got a phone call which pulled me away, however I didn't shut the machine down. It got warm and when I came back a couple of hours
later the zero return switch had magically started working. I guess the warm in a cold damp Aberdeen workshop in winter (its not that bad really!) had
driven a few of the damp gremlins away.
I guess the point is with an old machine that has not been used for a while assuming things are broken is not always valid. A bit of TLC can bring things
back to life just as well as wading in with the spanners.

Thanks for the info as well Rod. At the moment I am trying to keep cost to a minimum and fix what is there.... call me cheap but I also like original.... :D

To continue where I left off - having read about the nightmare of backup batteries leaking everywhere I figured the first thing to find was the backup on mine.
I searched hi and low looking for something the size of a car battery to no avail. I opened more covers and hatches that the Queen Mary. Finally I found a small
cover on the door of the bolt on cabinet at the side of the machine that houses the PLC power supply and IO cards. To my surprise under the cover I found
3 Duracell size D batteries (dated 2012). Needless to say these were easily changed and I could breathe a sigh of relief that they were neither expensive
or leaking..... also rather well positioned where they couldn't damage anything if they did.....
On to the next error - axis field error...... more on that later....

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