Leblond Makino

[Areo Defense]

Little progress. I was able to get the machine to run through MOST of my M57 Pot setting program. I cleared the CMOS and got through the entire program a couple times, then after that could only get through up to pot 11 for some reason before getting the same alarm as above. I am not aware of what that symbol is, and I have no errors on the diagnostic LED board on the electrical cabinet, no alarms on screen. Since I kept getting stuck at tool 11 I ended the program after 3 tools which left me with the ability to define that tool 2 was in the spindle, and 1 and 3 were in the carousel. After orienting the carousel and verifying that the "SPINDLE/POT" switch on the side of the control knew both tools were there I tried a tool change and it wanted to go but got stuck right before it grabbed both tools with the arm, with the same button lighting up on the control. Until find out what that is I fear I am dead in the water with tool changes.

I was able to start up, zero return, run the spindle, move the machine through handle, MDI, memory, I think the only thing I can't seem to get to function is the tool changer right now.

FNC 20, 74, 106, 1210? The 6 was decent control for the time, and if my memory serves me correctly, the no-frills 0 control shares a lot with the 6. If the turcite is in decent condition, these old box way machines could take some fairly heavy cuts. Is the head straight gear driven or have variable speed? The latter was fairly rare. I saw one, it was nice to have variable speed but could be wimpy when heavy drilling.

Can you tool change through all of the pots? I suppose if you cannot assign new numbers to all the pots, you could still use what's there. (assuming you don't want to throw a lot of money into this machine) Be careful when manually manipulating the arm and pots. I seem to recall the interlocks aren't in use when using the side panel to manually manipulate the arm/pots/clamps so it is possible to crash it.

As camhead said, Z floats quite a bit when tapping so make sure you use decent floating tap holders.

The axis uses actual OT switches and make sure you're at least 3" from axis home when zeroing. If you're too close to axis home, the axis will blow past the switches and will overtravel very HARD, risking ball screw nut damage.

In case you're not aware of this already, make sure you find all the grease fittings, I believe one is only visible with the table all the way to one side and don't skimp on the spindle oil spec.

The belleville spring stack on the drawbar rarely have issues but it's easy to fix. After removing the cylinder and a few things, the entire drawbar/belleville stack comes out as a cartridge.

I don't recall the controls losing the pot assignments after power cycling. Perhaps using origin after cycling??

Are you planning to program this machine offline?

 

[70olds]

The tool change issue was a real challenge for us when we first got it. I do remember running that program like you said after cycling power.
I will try to find out form the one guy here that could actually run that it.

That would be awesome thank you.

 

[70olds]

FNC 20, 74, 106, 1210? The 6 was decent control for the time, and if my memory serves me correctly, the no-frills 0 control shares a lot with the 6. If the turcite is in decent condition, these old box way machines could take some fairly heavy cuts. Is the head straight gear driven or have variable speed? The latter was fairly rare. I saw one, it was nice to have variable speed but could be wimpy when heavy drilling.

Machine is a 74. It is definitely a geared head.

Can you tool change through all of the pots? I suppose if you cannot assign new numbers to all the pots, you could still use what's there. (assuming you don't want to throw a lot of money into this machine) Be careful when manually manipulating the arm and pots. I seem to recall the interlocks aren't in use when using the side panel to manually manipulate the arm/pots/clamps so it is possible to crash it.

I can manually cycle the pots through the tool change location on the ATC umbrella, but I can't get any tools to change into the spindle itself.

As camhead said, Z floats quite a bit when tapping so make sure you use decent floating tap holders.

The axis uses actual OT switches and make sure you're at least 3" from axis home when zeroing. If you're too close to axis home, the axis will blow past the switches and will overtravel very HARD, risking ball screw nut damage.

Thankfully I had the rapids low when I did it but I did find out about the 3" "rule" the hard way. It still gets me when the machine won't do anything because I am at a limit switch and it just says "not ready".

In case you're not aware of this already, make sure you find all the grease fittings, I believe one is only visible with the table all the way to one side and don't skimp on the spindle oil spec.

Spindle oil is good and I have located the fittings. You are right the X axis screw requires the table to be all the way to the left.

The belleville spring stack on the drawbar rarely have issues but it's easy to fix. After removing the cylinder and a few things, the entire drawbar/belleville stack comes out as a cartridge.

I don't recall the controls losing the pot assignments after power cycling. Perhaps using origin after cycling??

It seems to be a very specific thing but I have found quite a few threads of people trying to do something very similar to my issues but not quite. The previous owner told me all about it and they owned the machine for 20 years.

Are you planning to program this machine offline?

Yes I am. Probably go with DNC4U to transfer the files.

 

[Garwood]

It should be set up where if the machine was parked at home position you can just jog the axis negative and it will zero return all on it's own. No need to back away 3" then jog positive.

It's not that it needs to be 3" from the home position, it's that the limit switch needs to be off the trip dog to home in the + direction. I think people used to have a better understanding of how these machines worked and how the home switches, trip dogs, encoder strobes and grid shift work together to make up an accurate home position.

If you have the wiring diagrams and ladder for the machine it should be straightforward to figure out what the alarm light means.

I would suspect there's a discrepancy in the tool registry, a flaky prox switch in the toolchanger or spindle orient needs adjusted. The light on the operator panel is probably just a general "machine alarm" light.

 

[freakycnc]

The FNC series with the Fuji sequencer is the worst part of this machine.
The light (picture you posted) indicates a sequence alarm. There is a display on the electrical cabinet for the spindle drive on the rear of the machine for the Fuji sequencer. I wish i had a manual for the sequencer.
If you have the manual you can rotate the thumbwheels to find what 'group' the alarm is from and burrow down from there.
I remember that before you shut the machine off you had to call "T0" to clear the spindle and this tells the sequencer that there is no data in the spindle. The CMOS in the sequencer holds the data for the tool table and various options that the machine is equipped with.
You've discovered the M57 which is great.
M57 Sxx Txx Where S is the Pot number and T is the tool number

 

[70olds]

It should be set up where if the machine was parked at home position you can just jog the axis negative and it will zero return all on it's own. No need to back away 3" then jog positive.

It's not that it needs to be 3" from the home position, it's that the limit switch needs to be off the trip dog to home in the + direction. I think people used to have a better understanding of how these machines worked and how the home switches, trip dogs, encoder strobes and grid shift work together to make up an accurate home position.

If you have the wiring diagrams and ladder for the machine it should be straightforward to figure out what the alarm light means.

I would suspect there's a discrepancy in the tool registry, a flaky prox switch in the toolchanger or spindle orient needs adjusted. The light on the operator panel is probably just a general "machine alarm" light.

This does have the ability to go negative then it will turn itself around once it comes off the switch. The 3" was just a random number to be safe, I know it has to be far enough away to not be hitting the first step, this particular machine does move a significant amount though, which makes it quite slow, it's very close to 2" if not more for X and Y. Z seems to be a little shorter.

I haven't received all of the books with the machine, so a lot of what I get is general programming manuals (from an 11M) and some parts books. I did get a Fuji binder though so there may be some info in there to help with the diagnostics if something shows up on the side.

The machine will start running the program whether I hit the green "start" button at the top right of the machine OR if I hit the tape start button. But only the "feed hold" near the tape start button stops it from moving, there is no stop near the start button. Is there a specific time where one of those buttons should be used over the other?

 

[70olds]

The FNC series with the Fuji sequencer is the worst part of this machine.
The light (picture you posted) indicates a sequence alarm. There is a display on the electrical cabinet for the spindle drive on the rear of the machine for the Fuji sequencer. I wish i had a manual for the sequencer.
If you have the manual you can rotate the thumbwheels to find what 'group' the alarm is from and burrow down from there.

Do I just keep scrolling until the lights show up? When I have had this issue there were no lights back there but I haven't tried rolling through the numbers on the thumbwheels. This is good to know.

I remember that before you shut the machine off you had to call "T0" to clear the spindle and this tells the sequencer that there is no data in the spindle. The CMOS in the sequencer holds the data for the tool table and various options that the machine is equipped with.

I went through the procedure to try to clear the CMOS data but I was unsure of what buttons I was supposed to push. My instructions said to push "alarm reset", "NC Reset", and "OT Release" all at once. Is the button I took a picture of the Alarm reset? I saw something that suggested it was the feed hold button, which was incredibly hard to hit all three buttons at once. Nothing happened so I am not sure I got it reset properly.

You've discovered the M57 which is great.
M57 Sxx Txx Where S is the Pot number and T is the tool number

That's what the sample program had in it. It had M57 twice however. Once to I think describe the tool in the spindle, then once to go through the rest. On the pot for where the spindle tool would have come from is has S2 T99. is that correct?

O0001
M57
T2
M57
S1 T1
S2 T99
S3 T3
etc...
M30

 

[camhead420]

That would be awesome thank you.

I had a chance to talk to the guy that ran the LeBlond.
He has a program O8888 that he runs. Tool 1 pot must be in place and run the program, then tell do an MDI T21 to tell it that's what is in the spindle. Never let it read a T# twice or it loses itself.
Program is simple.
%
O8888
M57
T01
T02
T03
T04
follow that to however many tools you hold
then finish with M30.
M30 wipes the spindle #
Thats when you tell it T21.

Good luck!

 

[LeeG]

you mentioned clearing the CMOS....can you briefly explain the procedure for this?
the battery died on my sequence controller, will running the M57 program reload the missing data or are there parameters that need updating?
what air PSI are you running to the machine?

 

[freakycnc]

70Olds,
Check out this link for the Diagnostic panel:

Leblond Makino, FNC 74-A Fanuc 11M

Look at the alarm description. It is saying you have an issue with the shifter. There are two digital outputs, SL04A and SL04B. Those are probably outputs to a solenoid to mechanically shift the gears of the spindle. There are two digital inputs, LS06 and LS07. Those are probably limit...

www.practicalmachinist.com

I hope you have the "Diagnostic Manual" for your FNC.
If the battery went dead on the UM15A sequencer it may be at default settings, Default places the magazine capacity at 20 tools.

 

[freakycnc]

The above post is just an example of the process for troubleshooting FNC with UM15A sequencer.

 

[70olds]

70Olds,
Check out this link for the Diagnostic panel:

Leblond Makino, FNC 74-A Fanuc 11M

Look at the alarm description. It is saying you have an issue with the shifter. There are two digital outputs, SL04A and SL04B. Those are probably outputs to a solenoid to mechanically shift the gears of the spindle. There are two digital inputs, LS06 and LS07. Those are probably limit...

www.practicalmachinist.com

I hope you have the "Diagnostic Manual" for your FNC.
If the battery went dead on the UM15A sequencer it may be at default settings, Default places the magazine capacity at 20 tools.

I will check on this, but my machine has the 20 tool carousel anyway. I have scheduled some time to meet with the guy who actually ran this machine last so hopefully he can give me some insight into what is going on and he might be able to point me directly to the solution.

 

[DouglasJRizzo]

Very solid machine and many are still in daily production around this area with Fanuc 6's, and 11's.
If it doesn't have helical interpolation - most do, btw - it can be field installed with a parameter change.
Easy to work on, too.