MadModder

   looks like you got your work cut out there Andrew..........Carry on!...

Thanks chaps - I really do appreciate the encouragement as enthusiasm declines with lack of success (as well as age!)

Today's task is to find a suitable skyhook.There are several heavy chunks that are filled with an excess of gravity and are not man manoeuvrable in their current positions.

A/ The Tool disk.

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B/ The Tool Disk Servo Motor.

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C/ The X-Axis Turret Assembly

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Yesterday I tried to get my Engine Crane into position. The tape measure said no-go but I wanted to prove it as it would have been ideal. The man on the ground agreed with the tape measure - it would be ok if its legs would go under the lathe but they need 7" and the clearance is only about 2"

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My next thought was the crane I made a few years back  to lift big chucks onto the spindle. Another no-go as it only gives 39 inches of clearance and I need considerably more than that.

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Now I have two knocked down scaffold towers outside the workshop but despite much cogitation there is no room to erect them in suitable places.

OK I thought - what we need is a counter-balanced boom coming in from the chuck end dangling a hoist in the right place. It needs to be movable to lower all this gravity in the right places. Pallet load of sand bags and a pallet jack maybe with a construction mounted on top.

Then I thought - you daft fool, you have a fork lift truck that is a nice heavy counter balance and easily can lift the weights we talking about, it 'just' needs its forks extending to 10 foot. What have I got that's 10+a fork length and likely not to bend too much in this dodgy configuration.

A quick inspection of the  welding shop 'stock pile' (sadly rather rusty from my inaction) revealed not one but TWO possible solutions:

A/ A full stick of about 100 mm heavy box section - so probably 20 foot long

B/ 10 foot length of 3" channel section

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The 4" box isn't quite big enough to slip over the forks so would have to be clamped above them as would the 3" channel so for a first try it's the channel.

A fair amount of clobber will have to be shifted before the fork lift can get up close and personal with the lathe - but do-able as I think most of it is on castors.

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Good to see you're back on it, Andrew.

Well after a very long hiatus I am back looking at this massive, and currently none working CNC lathe.

Last time I was here I'd managed to get replacement O rings fitted to the  valve block that controls the Turret Spindle movement for changing tools. The entire Tool Disk has to move forwards unlocking from one Curvic coupler and engaging a second one that lets the turret servo motor rotate the tool disk to the correct position. Sadly the valve wasn't the issue and here we are months later still head scratching.

There is a co-axial hydraulic double acting cylinder formed by the disk axis spindle and the housing casting. Piston is of course part of this spindle with hydraulic seals in suitable places. At the moment this spindle will not rotate nor will it move back and forth. My suspicion is that the seals have maybe rolled and jammed but the only way to tell for sure is to dismantle the turret.

Only feasible on the bench as too cramped inside the enclosure so the turret needs to come off. This presents several problems:

A/ The Z axis servo drive electronics failed with the tool disk right up at the chuck end leaving no room to de-tool it for removal (it's a high proportion of the weight of the turret. (Grasping the 50mm lead screw with gloved hand I couldn't turn it to manually move the Z axis to a more accessible position)


B/ I have no 'sky hook' above the turret for lifting, and oh boy is it heavy so as much as possible needs to be stripped before lifting.

So today's objective was to mine into the chuck end of the beast, expose the toothed belt drive and hopefully use the extra diameter of the drive pulleys to apply enough torque to rotate the lead screw.

Having moved a fair pile of boxes and bits and pieces eventually I got to be able to open the access door and get to the Z axis servo motor and it's belt pulleys. Once I got my hands of the pulley actually on the lead screw rotating it was no problem at all

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The servo motor that turns the lead screw is huge !

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This allowed me to manually rotate the lead screw moving the turret assembly into a position where at least I could remove the tooling

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The next stage is to investigate removing the equally large servo motor that is attached to the turret to rotate it and drive the powered tooling, but that's for another day.

This is a fun bit of gear, I need to come up with a fix for coupling the shaft from the generator to the shaft of the turbine. Googling I have read that it can be flexible (like the silicone tube it came with but has worn over time) or a solid coupling.
It REALLY winds up! It's a steam hungry beast for sure.....fun? You betcha' it's fun 😊😊