Another Jones & Shipman 540P Surface grinder post

[Pawcu]

Alas, Paragon Paints state "Please note that paint sales are open to UK mainland customers only due to the restrictions placed upon us by our delivery agents."

I just checked one of the courier services and I think if I use the standard delivery (trucking not air transport) it might be OK to ship paints.
https://www.maltapost.com/Sendon/en/Home/ProhibitedItems?hubServiceCode=UGT

However that means it will take a long time to get over here anyways. I guess if I knew better I should have planned this before xD

 

[Pawcu]

So I woke up early this morning (around 5:45 AM) to try and test out the machine. As mentioned yesterday I opted to use the oil pump to get the oil back in the tank to reduce spills. Unfortunately this did not go as planned... The output hose is coiled and a bit stiff and as soon as I started the pump and oil started flowing, it immediately spat out of the tank and started spewing oil all over the floor. I turned it off immediately but this still made a bigger mess than when I was pouring the oil from the container
Out came the paper towels and I wiped as much as I could from the floor to stop it from spreading. After making sure that the hose was properly inside the tank and I was holding it down, I continued pumping. I was almost ready and I went to adjust the hose inside the container as it had started to pick up some air... not sure what went wrong maybe I was still a bit sleepy but somehow the output pipe got directed at one of the side slits that the SG hydraulic tank has (not sure what's the reason for it ... maybe for lifting?).... so yeah you guessed it, I filled up the inside of the SG as well with oil now.... things were really not looking great for me this morning.... nothing to do... more paper towels:

Good news though - after wiping down the outside of tank, it seems that the sight glass is holding oil. Unfortunately though it's very hard to deduce if it's leaking from anywhere else, considering I managed to fill the outside with oil as well.... But I'll take that win for now.

I quickly wired up one of the VFDs with the hydraulic motors (CE certified I swear ) and made sure that the valves for the table left and right traversal were shut. I on purpose left as much stuff off from the saddle in case I have to remove it again to fix any blockage issues. I turned on the motor at around 25Hz (didn't want to go full speed at first in case of any issues) and for some reason I decided the most important thing to check was to see if oil was coming out of the chain lubrication point. Unfortunately that means I missed all the oil coming up on the saddle and only realised when I saw it pouring down the hose
So now I also filled up the lid and top of the hydraulic tank with oil... at this point it seems I was bent on getting the oil everywhere except keeping it inside the tank

At first I though I had somehow either cross threaded the hoses or had ruined the mating surfaces but I knew I had started tightening them by hand at first. It was only when I got up and noticed the saddle filled with oil that I realised what had happened. Even though the cylinder valves was shut, oil still slowly comes up it seems and because there were no cylinders, it meant that the holes that would normally be occupied by the bolts for the cylinders were now just through holes for the oil to freely flow through and down the SG At least it was nothing serious.

I got the cylinders and hand wheel installed - made sure to use a bit of thread lock on the bolts for the cylinders so hopefully they won't leak:

After more wiping of the tank, I decided to try another attempt and turn it on. This time there were no dramatic leaks.
I started fiddling around with the controls and confirmed that the cylinders cycle left to right and also confirmed that the crank for the saddle traverse also works
I was starting to panic as by now no oil had started coming from the holes for the ways but then as soon as I was about to give up... success

It seems that oil seems to get pumped more as soon as you cycle from left to right - which makes sense.
Anyways you can imagine how thrilled I was. At least I know that the machine should work once I fully assemble it.
There was nothing left to do but turn it off and continued wiping up as much as I could from the mess I made. I left some paper towels to soak up the oil as much as possible and will continue wiping down tomorrow God willing. Most probably will also get a wet rag with white spirit to get rid of the oily residue as much as possible as other wise it's going to be impossible to check for any leaks.

 

[Pawcu]

Update for this week - so after last Monday's fiasco I spent a bit of time wiping the internals of the machine as best as I could using white spirit to get rid of the residue. I am happy to say that so far I haven't found any leaks from the tank yet so that is a good sign. I still need to see if there are any leaks from the saddle though.

I got the valve cover plate installed - originally this seemed to have some rubber washers or gaskets around the holes of the controls but these were super crusty and broke off when I tried to remove them. So I resorted to using some O-rings which I superglued in place (the super glue overflow does bother me a bit):

When I had taken the cover off the first time, I had found the top of the valve block filthy with dust and grime... so I decided to try and use some RTV on the plate to seal it as best as possible... unfortunately the plate is a bit warped so had to fiddle around after i installed it to add extra rtv where it was missing. There will be some gaps as the cover doesn't seal all the areas but hopefully will reduce the amount of grime that goes in:

I also added some left over door insulation strips for the hole where the park lever is (probably overkill but might as well):

I noticed that the way wipers were leaking a bit so I added some rtv there as well (probably for nothing as it might still drip from the ways themselves... time will tell):

Next I turned my attention back to the cabinet box - cut some holes in the front panel for some switches and the VFD displays:

VFDs and cabinet installed:

Not the neatest wiring but it's the best I could do without wasting too much time - still took the better part of Saturday working on it. Not very visible but I also installed a 3Phase 4 Pin outlet on the cabinet so I can connect the auxiliaries to it (Coolant pump or the extractor)

Wired up the front panel:

I went to turn on the pump and for some reason it wouldn't turn on. After some debugging I found that the front panel switches weren't making good contact - remove them and cleaned them - as you can see they had some rust and grime in the contact area:

unfortunately I forgot to take pictures of it fully clean but it works now

 

[Pawcu]

Yesterday my friend came over to help me with the table:

We also installed the belt and tensioned it:

This morning I also got the saddle handwheel installed:

Haven't had a chance to full it test it yet but we did run the x-axis controls yesterday to make sure the table traverses well.
Over the coming week will test it out a bit more, check for any other leaks and continue installing the last bits of pieces. Once those are sorted, hopefully all my parts for the auto-lubrication system would have arrived and I can get to focus on that before turning my attention to the coolant pump.

This is how the machine currently stands: