The Craftmans Shop > New from Old
The Sequel - Oh Blimey I bought a CNC Lathe (Beaver TC 20)
awemawson:
Then, not being able to procrastinate any further I made up half a bucket of Castrol Hysol Excel from my remaining stock. Then I put a new input hose on the pump, balanced the end of the input hose well clear of the coolant, and with the original output hose cut short then dunked under the milky liquid, I went to the front of the machine to turn on the pump motor.
Lots of bubbly noises as the pump pumped air into the bucket. Gingerly lowering the new input hose into the bucket an impressive flow of coolant started circulating at a great rate of knots!
OK how do I stop this without getting soaked? - Pull the input hose out of the bucket making sure that the output stays submerged, hold it vertically until all has flowed that will, then high tail it to the front of the machine and hit the stop switch !
In celebration I've ordered the 'in tank' filter that I illustrated above, and also the 125 micron inline filter element. Still no definite answer on the Castrol coolant. Speaking to their local rep it turns out the the Hysol Alusol A has itself been replaced with something with loads of letters details of which he is emailing me (as at the time he was driving and I was cooking bacon and eggs :clap:)
Hoping this afternoon to replace the remaining hoses as I think I have the correct stuff in stock, then I need to pay attention to where the coolant is injected into the turret. There seems to be a plain ended threaded tube projecting towards the rear face of the tool disk. When a tool change is commanded, the whole tool disk moves forwards to disengage its curvic coupling, then rotates and clamps back to it's previous axial position. Now on the Traub lathe the equivalent bit was made from PTFE which presumably had a bit of 'give' in it for a good seal. This one looks to be just steel on steel. I will try and remove the nozzle and see if I can perhaps let an 'O' ring into it's end, or even make a PTFE cap to go on it's end.
awemawson:
It turns out that the latest version of Castrol Hysol Excel is now 'Alusol RAL BF' - where DO they get these names from ! It actually looks quite useful and I'm awaiting a quote - it seems a simple phone call isn't good enough these days to find a price.
Anyway I took out the old and very sticky hoses replacing them with identical length new ones. I suspect that that long curly one is intended to be tethered to the rear cover when it is re-installed leaving sufficient for the carriage to trundle up and down the ways without tearing it off. At first glance it seems too long, but it can always be trimmed.
awemawson:
It turns out looking at the Patent Application drawing, that the Coolant Nozzle is supposed to be spring loaded, so as to seal properly as the tool disk re-locates backwards on a tool change. It wasn't, it was stuck tight !
A bit of fiddling about with grips and a bit of Plus-Gas and we have a moving spring loaded nozzle again :thumbup:
Look carefully and you can just about see it move on this short video
awemawson:
There's no point in getting the coolant up to the tool disk without sorting out how it is directed at the individual tools. The VDI40 tool holder incorporates an internal duct from the hole in the tool disk to the outside world close to the tool, but there needs to be a short (about 2") length of tube of some sort directing it at the tool 'action point'.
I'm blessed with three different methods for mounting the tubes across my range of VDI40 tool holders.
1/ The genuine Beaver ones have a sphere, through bored 6 mm, locked in place by a countersunk hex cap screw allowing the ball and tube to be swivled to point where you want it.
2/ The non beaver holders have a similar ball, located by friction, and tapped in the bore M6 x 1
3/ The Baruffaldi Powered tools have a 1/4 BSP port intended for 'Loc-Line' fittings. Now this always raises an issue because 1/4 BSP loc-line connectors are rare beasts, they are usually 1/4 NPT 18 TPI as opposed to 19 TPI for BSP
The four genuine Beaver tool holders I have equipped with bits of copper pipe to direct the flow.
The four threaded sockets raise a problem. Threading M6 x 1 on the end of soft copper pipe is a no-no as it buckles. I had this issue with the Traub and bought some 6 mm heavy walled steel tube but can't for the life of me find the remnant :bang: I may silver solder a thread on the end
For the three powered tools I have ordered up some Loc-Line and the 1/4 NPT connectors are going to be warmed and gently eased into the 1/4" BSP hole - dead easy to sheer off the fitting doing this, but it does work 'sort of'. I'm actually tempted to make up some 1/4" BSP compression fittings and do it in copper as a better engineering solution. we'll see . . . :med:
awemawson:
Slight change of plan: I decided not to use Loc-Line (despite having ordered it!) and to run the powered tooling coolant in brass compression fittings and copper tube. The Loc-Line doesn't go round as tight a bend as 6 mm copper will, and having a coil of 6 mm copper tube I can easily customise the nozzle length and shape in the future if different tools are loaded.
So last night I fired off an order the RS for some 1/4" x 6 mm compression fittings which duly arrived today in the same Parcelforce van as the Loc-Line :clap: Never mind, it will undoubtedly be used in a future project!
Fitted them this morning and it makes a nice neat job of aiming the coolant at the cutter.
Now I need to devise a way of making the M6 threaded nozzles for the other tooling. I notice that there are firms selling a 'lollypop' of a ball on the end of a tube, but I'm not sure how my friction mounted ones will stand up to removal and re-fitting. Also were I to go this way I might just as well drill the spheres that I have out to 6 mm !
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