Restoring a Fadal Vertical Machining Center

629hugo said:
It's hard to tell if those are just plane steel plates for leveling feet or if there is some type of isolation. You might upgrade those feet too to help reduce vibration. It probably wont do much but it should help isolate your from the machine. Are you on the ground floor of that building? Is there concrete slab underneath you or floor joists?
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Just steel plates for the leveling feet at the moment.

I have about 9" of concrete on grade under the machine as I'm on the ground floor. The 'wooden' floor is only about 1/4" thick. I'll be interested to see how much noise/vibration it makes once the machine is spun up. Will probably wait until it's a problem before replacing the levelling feet!
 
I was going to ask about your foundation. That model is a lighter machine so 6" slab is likely adequate
 
hsc3_90293 said:
I was going to ask about your foundation. That model is a lighter machine so 6" slab is likely adequate
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Yeah I think the foundation that I have should be more than sufficient (9"). I haven't levelled the machine yet though, so we'll see how much it settles...
 
Yeah, your floor is good. I have bigger machines on less.

You don't need or want vibration isolation on a machine of this sort, you want stability. Steel plates for the jack screws set on thick concrete is good.
 
Nathan the Machinist said:
Yeah, your floor is good. I have bigger machines on less.

You don't need or want vibration isolation on a machine of this sort, you want stability. Steel plates for the jack screws set on thick concrete is good.
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Good to know, thanks mate! I'm really looking forward to getting the machine up and running!
 
Not saying you need them but adding vibration isolators in most cases will not decrease the rigidity of the machine. The machine frame and bed and spindle and guide rails are designed such to provide rigidity and decrease relative motion of the machine components. If the machine moves relative to ground because it is on isolators that means it is isolated to a certain degree and not transferring forces or vibration to ground. Now this "movement" should be small enough that the user will not look at it and be like "holy crap this thing is rocking 1" side to side". You wouldnt even see it moving. Unless you selected a grossly undersized isolation system. With that being said isolators dont fix a vibrating machine. Some production facilities will actually provide specifications for vibration isolation on their machines. Some places even have codes specifying this type of stuff. If done right it will not cause the machine to become "unstable".
 
Congrats on your new machine! You are going to be able to do some pretty trick work with that set up. Thanks for sharing!
 
BallewBlade said:
Congrats on your new machine! You are going to be able to do some pretty trick work with that set up. Thanks for sharing!
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Thanks mate! I'm looking forward to seeing what kind of stuff I can make with the help of the new machine, that's for sure!
 
Yesterday I got a chance to do some more work on the machine! The spindle motor fan had burnt out, so I had to fit a replacement:

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I also fitted a nice air filter in the process to help keep crud out of the spindle motor. With the spindle motor fan installed I could finally run the spindle without fear of overheating the motor! I did a run-in process to help re-distribute the grease in the spindle. Basically ran the spindle from 100-3750RPM in 500RPM steps, with a 1/2 hour dwell at each step. The spindle sounded good at all speeds and after running for 4 hours continuously was barely warm to the touch (around 30ºC/86ºF).

While I was letting the spindle warmup program run I worked on re-finishing the way covers:

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They're cleaning up fairly well!

Soon I'll be looking at clear-coating the paint on the machine, then greasing and running in all the linear bearings. After that's done the machine will be ready to go back together!
 
Very nice Aaron, hey in case the knife making doesn't work out for you, we can hire you to work at our shop. All 4 Fadals need refurbishing... Just kidding :-)
 
hsc3_90293 said:
Very nice Aaron, hey in case the knife making doesn't work out for you, we can hire you to work at our shop. All 4 Fadals need refurbishing... Just kidding :-)
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I actually really enjoy the work! It's kind of like working on a car, dirty but satisfying!
 
Yesterday I started work on purging/cleaning all the grease lines on the machine and preparing to re-grease all the moving parts. Unfortunately when I tried to purge the grease lines on the Y axis every single one of them ruptured... The grease lines had an aluminum hold-down block that had reacted galvanically with the grease lines and the steel components. The resulting corrosion weakened all the grease lines and they ruptured.

Here you can see the aluminum hold-down block along with another that was never exposed to coolant. The frontmost one saw a lot of coolant and therefore galvanic action:

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So today I spent a few hours replacing all the grease lines for the Y axis. The grease lines are made from copper tubing and have to be bent/fitted fairly precisely so they don't impinge on moving parts. Everything went fairly smoothly, even despite how cramped it is to work on this part of the machine. Here's what the new grease lines look like:

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I still have to get a new header block to replace the existing one as it's also been affected badly by corrosion, but once that's done I'll continue greasing the machine and getting the linear bearings run-in. I'm hoping to actually be using the machine sometime around the end of the month!
 
Copper tubes into an aluminum block ??? You're asking for trouble !!! That's what they did when copper house wires were connected to aluminum power lines .That even burned houses down ! Without changing the block the best is to smear the area with anti-oxidant goop. .Poor design !
Anyway doing an older machine the best is to plan on completely taking it apart, checking everything , replacing parts , redesigning etc .Otherwise you'l be doing it many times .Copper and aluminum don't mix ! Just saying !
 
mete said:
Copper tubes into an aluminum block ??? You're asking for trouble !!! That's what they did when copper house wires were connected to aluminum power lines .That even burned houses down ! Without changing the block the best is to smear the area with anti-oxidant goop. .Poor design !
Anyway doing an older machine the best is to plan on completely taking it apart, checking everything , replacing parts , redesigning etc .Otherwise you'l be doing it many times .Copper and aluminum don't mix ! Just saying !
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Hey Mete!
The block that's seen in the photo is temporarily fitted to make sure the lines were shaped correctly. I plan to replace it with plastic to avoid galvanic problems in the future...
 
That does look like some galvanic action there, but be aware that some coolant will eat up both aluminum and copper over time by itself.

It helps to avoid fully synthetic coolant.

I like Trim Microsol 585XT. It does a good job as a cutting fluid, it doesn't go funky after long sits in the sump, it doesn't harden into a sticky film, and it doesn't eat up paint and metal so bad.
 
Nathan the Machinist said:
That does look like some galvanic action there, but be aware that some coolant will eat up both aluminum and copper over time by itself.

It helps to avoid fully synthetic coolant.

I like Trim Microsol 585XT. It does a good job as a cutting fluid, it doesn't go funky after long sits in the sump, it doesn't harden into a sticky film, and it doesn't eat up paint and metal so bad.
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I believe they were running synthetic coolant on this machine, so that might explain it!

I'm actually planning to avoid flood coolant as much as I can, but we'll see how that goes after I actually get setup. The plan right now is to do all my steel machining dry using coated tools and air-blast in combination with HSM toolpaths. G10 will also be machined dry, I will be installing a serious vacuum system to stop G10 dust getting everywhere. Any aluminum cutting I do will hopefully be done with the aid of MQL instead of flood coolant.

As they say though 'no plan survives contact with the enemy' so we'll see how that goes once I actually get stuck in.
 
Over the weekend I received some new parts and some spare parts for the machine. The most important ones were the new grease manifold for the Y axis and also a new way cover for the Z axis:

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The way cover that came with the machine was a ratty fabric bellows that looked terrible and didn't work properly so I'm glad I am able to replace it with a proper cover.

The grease manifold went on nicely (after a bit of persuasion) which was nice. I'm still waiting on one part for the grease system on the Y axis, but after I receive that the machine is ready to start going back together! Pretty excited to get started actually using it!

One other little thing I did was put some neoprene rubber strips under the spindle motor fan cowl. At high spindle RPMs the cover would rattle and make a hell of a racket. With the foam in place it's dead quiet and the machine is pleasant to stand next to even when running at full speed. The foam was basically just weather-stripping:

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Programming a machine like this is done one of two ways.
1) Manually typing in commands, each line explaining how the machine should move
2) By running a program on your computer to turn a CAD file into toolpaths.

Programming these machines is something that a lot of people seem scared of, but basically it's fairly straight forward. For example:

Code: 
F100.0 X10.0 Y10.0
S1000 M3
F10.0 Z-1.5
F10.0 Z0.0

F100.0 Tells the machine to move at 100 inches per minute
X10.0 Tells the machine to move to a position 10.0 inches from the home position on the X axis
Y10.0 Tells the machine to move to a position 10.0 inches from the home position on the Y axis
S1000 tells the machine that the spindle speed should be 1000RPM
M3 tells the machine to turn the spindle on in a clockwise direction
F10.0 tells the machine to move at 10 inches per minute
Z-1.5 tells the machine to move the spindle downward 1.5 inches
Z0.0 tells the machine to move back up to the zero position

With this sequence of commands you could have theoretically drilled a hole in a part exact 10 inches from it's top left corner. This is a bit of an oversimplification but it's not far off!

If you were to run a program on your computer to turn a CAD model into a toolpath it would produce code exactly like what you see above but much more complicated. For instance it might use lots of little movements to trace the outline of your knife design. The machine would follow that path while cutting with an endmill and then you'd have your knife!
 
I've been trying to post some examples of more complicated programming so you can see what they're like, but the forum keeps rejecting that code... Sorry guys!
 
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