Yes, poor little machine! It has suffered greatly. Some background information, the machine was owned by a New Zealand government research laboratory. They bought it new in 1986. The old controller and measurement system was removed in 2010. A Heidenhain TNC 320 computer was fitted with Heidenhain scales (photo). The drives are still original. The table is a universal built-in circular rotary table. The resolver has been lost. Unfortunately the standard table was thrown away.
Helmut, just to clarify, the table was fully lowered when I got the machine. The damage was done sometime ago. The photo shows that the balls have been in the dirt at the bottom of the machine for some time and a few have corrosion. I think more balls fell out when I lifted the table.
I made sure not to move any axes beyond the limit switches.
I managed to power up the computer by tracing the wires and connecting mains power. The computer is old and takes a while to power up. I tried powering the computer only and got some errors. It needs a 24V signal to know the machine is powered up. I used a 24VDC to power the relay board in the machine and that fixed some errors. The computer shows e-stop, drive and power errors. To be expected since nothing is running. The x-axis scale is works (moved the motors by hand). I unscrewed the z-axis scale from the machine but it gives a reading. Y-axis also gives a reading but I can’t move the table up so not sure if it is fully working. It has no obvious damage but rain did fall on it.
The Indramat thyristor driver (3TRM2) for the axes uses 140-0-140V. This is actually single phase and it is obtained from a very large transformer that is line-line connected across the 400V three phase. I believe a 240V-400V transformer will be able to power the axes (5-9kVA). I got this information from a very helpful schematic that Florian uploaded. Thanks!!
The TRK6 that drives the spindle is a 6 pulse driver so this needs 400V three phase. There is no option to use single phase. I need to swap the motor. In any case, it was full of water and a dead insect and does not turn smoothly.
I connected single phase to the lubrication system to flush new slideway oil through. Some tubes have air in them, do you know how I can ensure they are not blocked?
For reference, the hydraulic pump is three phase so will need an inverter.
The ballscrew has a hand engraved number on it that matches the nut.
The machine was purchased on 10/09/1985. They changed the z-axis (ram) gib bushing in 29/04/1986 (photo). The old bushing is about 10mm long, the new one very short (see photo). Would the machine wear out so much in 7 months? The scraping still looks very good on the ways (photo). The machine has 27,000h on the counter. Is that the spindle time or the on time?
The computer and measurement system was fitted in 2010. The computer has been on for 50,000h and the spindle has run for 1,099h. Is that a lot? I guess they left the computer on all the time since it takes a while to power up. The brushes on all motors look quite long.
This is a long-term project and I will keep working on in it in the background. I will update on the repairs as progress is made. Thanks for letting me know about the parted-out machine.