Oh Blimey I bought a CNC Lathe !!!!

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awemawson:
:ddb: It's been a long time in the coming, but at last we have a working coolant system. :ddb:

Firstly I needed to wire up and plumb in the manual wash down pump. The wiring went very well, I was actually able to pull a multicore 'SY' cable through the existing ducts from the control panel all the way to where I've mounted the 'motor protector' and the contactor that drives the new pump.

awemawson:
I had a stroke of luck wiring up the motor protector, which is on the far right hand end of a row of them. Turns out that the three contacts for the three phases are distributed using a busbar. They obviously had standard length busbars using two in this row, one of which would have been too long originally, so they overlapped it on two devices. All I had to do was remove it and 'single overlap' the busbar and the three phases were connected - result :clap:

When it came to the plug and socket leading from the machine to the pump, there was already an existing cut out in the machine chassis that was blanked off. However the size of the cut out was suitable for a ten way Harting industrial connector which I couldn't source at a sensible price. I could get a 6 way as a 'Han-Kit' comprising plug / socket / inserts / covers / clamps - the whole shebang for the price of just a 10 way insert :bugeye:

So .... reduce the hole. Not too hard really as the width was the same just the height was out by 13 mm - so I milled out a little adaptor ...

awemawson:
So now there are two plugs in that row that could be put in the wrong sockets. The extreme left hand one is for the motor for the swarf conveyor, and of course the new pump. They are both 415v 3 phase motors, so as long as I used compatible pin outs at least things wouldn't go bang if someone made an error!

Checking the swarf conveyor connector it turns out that pins 1&2 are intended for a thermal trip, which isn't present in my conveyor, so just had a link across them. It's as well I didn't just use pins 1,2, &3 for the three phases :bugeye:

So I copied the swarf conveyors connections using 3,4 &5 for the phases, and assembled the plug such that if it was put in the swarf conveyor socket the cable would point upwards. hopefully this will stop someone connecting it wrong in the future, as there is no other way of personalising the socket so it cannot be used by the wrong plug :(

awemawson:
I also installed a tramp oil skimmer - just managed to squeeze it under the rising part of the swarf convayer where hopefully it'll be out of the way and not get knocked. Although I cleaned the tanks as far as I could, there was still a lot of tramp oil that I couldn't reach.

awemawson:
I've uploaded a video of the coolant system working, and mostly going in the right places.

I had bought a 'venturi mixer' to fill the coolant. A gizmo that fits on top of the 20 litre drum of concentrate, which it draws up using a venturi in the line from a tap. It incorporates a setting valve so that the correct ratio is mixed.

All sounds a very good theory, and with 320 litres to mix for this machine seemed a good idea. Total waste of time, and it's going back to MSC on Monday as not fit for purpose. Even at it's maximum setting the highest concentration I could get it up to was just under 5% measuring with my refractometer so I'm confident of the readings. I need at least 7% and really aiming for 8%.

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