Opinions on Kitamura Mycenter 5X?

[Garwood]

Got this bugger all leveled and wired.

I need to turn the spindle accel down! Way down!

I let it warm up at 500, then 1000 for a bit. Hit S3000 and she tried to get there a bit too quick for my 50HP RPC.

 

[DavidScott]

I am curious what your recommended warm up time is? For my 15k BT30 it's 4 hours if not run for 7 days, and 30 minutes if run every day.

 

[Garwood]

I am curious what your recommended warm up time is? For my 15k BT30 it's 4 hours if not run for 7 days, and 30 minutes if run every day.

Same on this one. Says 30 minutes at 30% and 30 min at 50% over 48 hours then has a 4 hour long stepped procedure for more than 168 hours.

I'll ask the PO's if they ever warmed it up. I bet they just let it rip every day.

This thing pukes a lot of oil from the spindle. That was one of the reasons they didn't like it.

 

[DavidScott]

You might want to confirm the individual "oilers" for the spindle bearings are adjusted to flow the right amount of oil. I did this when I bled my air/oil unit when I got my mill since it had been sitting for months. Supposedly these things do not like to sit unused.

What are your rapids?

 

[Garwood]

I just spent over half a day figuring all that out. When you're ready let me know and we'll start a thread on it that should have you up and connected to the data server in less than an hour.

I can't believe I got this thing last May. Time flies. Paul- If you're still up for going over the data server connection I'd love your input.

 

[Herding Cats]

I can't believe I got this thing last May. Time flies. Paul- If you're still up for going over the data server connection I'd love your input.

Sounds like a plan, I was just fooling around with the data server settings last night so you picked a good time. It's still kinda fresh in my head.

Start a data server thread and I'll post up a few procedures I use. When I was trying to figure it out at first I had a tough time finding much on the internet so a fresh thread should help keep it visible and easy for others to find.

I'll grab some pictures of the Fanuc side on my machine to help. Much of the settings can be set in the Fanuc side or the Seicos side on my Hitachi's. The Fanuc side is a little less obvious but should apply to more people but also work on a Seicos control.

 

[Garwood]

You might want to confirm the individual "oilers" for the spindle bearings are adjusted to flow the right amount of oil. I did this when I bled my air/oil unit when I got my mill since it had been sitting for months. Supposedly these things do not like to sit unused.

What are your rapids?

Bit late to respond to this, sorry. Rapids are 1181 IPM X/Y and 945 IPM Z. 945 IPM max feed for all axis.

I did find out that the oil dripping from the spindle nose is the gearbox oil, not the spindle.

I'll be pulling the spindle out in a few months to replace seals, do the retention springs and to clean everything. I have a big project I'm working through and as soon as I'm cashed out of that I can pay for whatever parts this machine needs. Biggest problem with this machine is it's just gross. I spent a few hours, multiple times, cleaning toolpots with rags and simple green only to get metal chips on tool tapers repeatedly. The toolchanger magazine is pretty buried in a dark hole, just couldn't see how nasty it really was until I pulled all the sheetmetal off.

 

[Garwood]

I didn't take a beginning picture, but it was real bad. This is a shot with the toolchain removed and the thick stuff scraped out with a putty knife.


After a few hours of scrubbing and cussing-


Parts after caustic soda wash


The toolpot is the pin in the chain. Each pot has an insert in the end with 4 10mm ball bearings, 4 springs and a retaining ring.


All the toolpots done. Took a few hours to assemble them all.


I assembled the chain one piece at a time working from the top down. I used some 1" square tubing, a couple pieces of flatbar and a bunch of small clamps to align the chain guides to the upper sprocket and the lower idler wheel.


Mostly done. I need to add a clamp to the servo conduits. They don't want to stay out of the way now.

 

[DavidScott]

Oh the joys of a used machine! That looks much nicer.

 

[Garwood]

I debated blasting and sanding everything bare metal and dropping it off for black oxide, but in the end this thing is just a tool and I have more important shit to do.

 

[Garwood]

Used machines are fun. Sometimes.

In my hand there is a fill plug with a vent. When this machine was built that plug w/vent was installed in a standpipe off the top of the spindle gearbox. Somewhere along the line this vented plug was dropped down into the nether regions of the machine. It's been gone until today.

The day really got going with Alarm 2033 OIL COOLER LOW FLOW. In the entirety of manuals for this machine only one place is cooler flow mentioned. In the electrical diagrams there's an option for an oil flow switch. Doesn't show me where the switch is, but I tested the wire at the I/O board and sure enough, it's bouncing in and out of an alarm state. I hooked up a tone generator and traced the wire to the headstock. A couple hours later I got the headstock sheetmetal off and among the 100 pounds of microscopic razor blade-like chips this vented plug drops out.

Basically, they dropped the vented plug, installed a solid plug instead which causes the gearbox to pressurize and blow the gearbox oil out of every seal and hose connection. I thought the gearbox oil had a reservoir in the back (which was full), but I was totally wrong, the gearbox reservoir is the headstock and it was about to run out. I couldn't see the level indicator because it was packed solid with chips. Thankfully this thing has the low flow sensor option which forced me to investigate.

In summary, Kitamura books suck for this machine. I had a mid 80's Kit HMC and the books were fantastic. This thing, not so much. This is a really complicated machine and it should have better documentation. The reason I got this machine for a low price had a lot to do with how much oil it slobbers out form the spindle gearbox lube/chiller system. Looks like I may have found why it has all those leaks- I like an easy fix.

 

[DavidScott]

It is worth calling the national tech center to get them to send any PDFs they have on what you're working on. They have often had much more info than in my manuals that was quite helpful. I only wish they would just send me everything they have for my machine in one go, but no luck with that.

Considering the care they took of that machine it makes me wonder what they were doing to blow the gearbox up. It has what, 4 speeds? I bet that spindle produces a lot of torque in low gear!

 

[Vancbiker]

Have you verified that the spindle is air/oil lubed or greased? I've seen gearhead oil end up in grease lubed spindle bearings. The end result is not pretty......

 

[Garwood]

It's just 2 speed. 0-5000 and 5000-10,000. The spindle motor is 6000 RPM so it's not very grunty for a 50 taper. This machine has about the same HP, but 1/2 the gear reduction and 1/2 the iron of the 50 taper Mori that it replaced. I could use a 40 taper machine fine, but I sure do take advantage of the long reach capabilities of 50 taper a lot. 50 taper 10K rpm should be able to haul ass and reach out a foot when I need to.

I would probably run a 2" pipe tap no sweat in that old Mori. Low gear was 0-1000 so it could put 20HP in the tool at about 500 RPM if needed. I'd be concerned running 1" NPT in this thing.

I believe this Kitamura started out profiling 3" to 4" thick 4340 PH plate burnouts. Then around 10 years of age they moved it to their facility where they mill 55rc toolsteel. This thing had a big mag chuck on it and profiled the sides of 55rc material with a 5/8" 5 flute and face milled the top surface with a 2" indexable.

The interesting part is they got 25-30 years out of 1980's Jap machines running balls out. The 90's machines hold up mechanically the same, but need way more electronic repairs. The 2000's and newer stuff is really like 15 years and done doing the same jobs.

They actually replaced this Kitamura with a pair of new Haas VF4ss 50 taper machines. Haas is right down the street and the sales people have been desperately trying to get machines on their floor. They got a smoking deal on a pair of new Haas's and they're going to flog them the same as they do everything else. They're not very optimistic. It will be interesting to see how they hold up.

I think one big thing that has changed is they're able to eek out more production with ultra fast rapids using high speed toolpaths and do things like hard milling toolsteel to eliminate needing to run a gajillion parts through Blanchards. The downside to this is that the high speed toolpaths in hard toolsteel make chips that really are the nastiest shit on the planet. It's like if you made mouse fur from razor blades. Fucking horrible shit. You can't pick them out of your skin. You have to wait a week until they start to fester and cut them out with a razor blade. Goes right through the thickest leather gloves. Horrible shit. For that reason it's really asking a lot for maintenance to repair some things so instead of keeping them in top shape they just run them until they explode and fix a bunch of shit at once or they sell them to me. lol.

I think the idea with Haas's is that they can just call Haas and pay them to fix it. See how bad Haas wants their business after their tech's arms are bloody stumps. lol.

 

[Garwood]

Have you verified that the spindle is air/oil lubed or greased? I've seen gearhead oil end up in grease lubed spindle bearings. The end result is not pretty......

It's definitely an oil spindle. The air/oil spindle lube is Velocite 6 and the gearbox is also Velocite 6.

The spindle sounds great.

 

[Vancbiker]

Where I retired from, we milled Inconel castings using some kind of ceramic inserts at really high speeds. They made crazy little razor sharp fishhooks for chips. Same thing as you are experiencing when working on the machine. Little fuckers would get through gloves and stick in you. Hard as heck to get out. Get one jabbed in under a fingernail and you just about wanted to gnaw your fingertip off to get it over with.

 

[Vancbiker]

It's definitely an oil spindle. The air/oil spindle lube is Velocite 6 and the gearbox is also Velocite 6.

The spindle sounds great.

You should be ok then.

I have seen a handful of machines that had oil from the gear head get into a greased spindle. The “diluted” grease led to a pretty short bearing life.

 

[Garwood]

You should be ok then.

I have seen a handful of machines that had oil from the gear head get into a greased spindle. The “diluted” grease led to a pretty short bearing life.

Wonder if that's what happened to my MV-65? It always dripped gearbox oil from inside the spindle.

 

[Vancbiker]

Wonder if that's what happened to my MV-65? It always dripped gearbox oil from inside the spindle.

Never saw a Mori get oil through the spindle. Have seen several where a failed o-ring let the spindle cooling oil leak from around the spindle flange. Easy to nip that o-ring when swapping spindles.

 

[Garwood]

This is the tool transfer arm that takes the tool from the magazine to the "wait pot" before it goes in the spindle. I feel like Kitamura must have had some Germans working on this design.

Four reasons this machine was acquired affordably- It leaks oil, Tool retention force is low, it's filled with razor blades and the toolchanger randomly crashes which wiped out the tool magazine door completely a long time ago. So that door isn't even there anymore.

A little runtime on this machine and this transfer arm is fucking up. When it goes to put a tool back in the toolchain, sometimes, it pulls in early jamming the tool into the side of the toolchain or into the sheetmetal enclosure. I need to call Kitamura and see if they have a better procedure for the ATC recover/maintenance mode. Again, the books suck.

Because it's so random I haven't been able to test much, but my theory is one of the transfer arm extend cylinder piston sensors is turning on before it's supposed to. Telling the control it's over the toolchain when it's not there yet. If you look at the picture there's a section of flex conduit right in the middle of the transfer arm. That contains the wires for the 2 cylinder piston sensors. That conduit and the wires inside twist 180 degrees every toolchange. I'm betting on the wires inside being pretty trashed and shorting internally on occasion. Since it's a PITA to pull the covers and replace all that wiring I ordered new cylinder sensors so I can replace all of it with new at once. Hopefully that's the problem. If that doesn't fix it atleast I'll know those parts are good.