Retrofitting a 1986 Maho 400E

Hello David
Thanks for writing. As far as I know the hydraulic tool changers were both working until I interfered with them. Now the horizontal one is not working and been like that fo two years. I suspect the springs are broken but I don't know haw to pull the unit apart. There is hydraulic pressure in the lines but maybe the lines need bleeding. I cant see how best to do that.
I need to send you some photos. I tried once before (years ago) and failed.
I am going to be away for a few days. Promise some action on my return
Cheers Chris McMullen
Auckland New Zealand

Further David
Yes I have the English Operators Manual and the same shows a few drawings
No instructions so I have been flying blind and relying on help from members of this group
Thanks to all.
Cheers Chris McMullen

Hi Chris,
It's likely you tried attaching photos etc larger than the 1.6Mb limit on LinuxCNC. Any digital camera will create a photo much larger than that limit.I use a free download program called paint.net for editing simple stuff. Bring a photo into it then do a "save as". It will take you to a preview image where you can do a bit before saving. Up the top left is a slider which allows you to compress the photo. The preview shows how bad the final image will be. You can compress almost any happy snap to below 1Mb and still have acceptable quality for posting. The "okay" button is down at bottom right.
There is a black round side plate on my machine that allows access to the horizontal quill clamp.See attached. I some cases they have another quill handle there which would be handy for manual use. I unclamped mine but the quill is stuck with what looks like old oil varnishing.
I'll have a look, if I get time, to see where the hydraulic hose goes. I suspect it will have the same rotary joint as the Z quill. It will need disconnecting there. There will also be an anti rotation/ travel stop pin somewhere.Then the whole quill will need to come out.
I'm confident you don't need to bleed the hydraulic hoses. The trapped air will act as an accumulator. So the air will compress up to the hydraulic pressure of 180 Bar. In fact I suspect if it is bled the switch/pump feedback will have conniptions. It would only have the flexibility of the hoses and oil to slow the switching cycle down.
If the claws on the tool clamp aren't retracted by the hydraulics the tool holder wont go all the way into position. The claws sit naturally in the clamped position forced by the springs. So if it looks like the tool holder needs to go further by a bit less than a centimeter then the springs are working, at least to some extent. If you have adjusted the setting distance without the hydraulics pulling the claws back then you have messed up the correct position for the claws.

Cheers,
David

OH My. How quickly I forget things.
Here are a couple of photos of how it connects. I had them in my archive. You need to take off the rear spindle motor covers. The incoming hydraulic pressure hose comes up the rolling conduit. Then you get the birds nest shown. You can see how it splits to the Y and Z tool holder retraction. The pipe you see sticking out of the casting when you have the hose disconnected is free to spin easily. You can see the drilling hole through the top slide is big enough for the pipe fitting to travel through. So I'm fairly sure that if you disconnect like this then you can just pull the whole quill assembly out through the front as I described previously, being careful not to break that pipe. It looks like the long length of pipe simply cantilevers off the rotary joint in the Y quill. I remember thinking it feels like it when I turned it. The hoses hanging around there are all that holds the pipe from spinning when the hoses are connected!
I don't know how to pull the Y quill out. There is nothing to grip on. I could fit a tool holder perhaps, but pulling on that pulls on the retraction claws. Maybe a gentle pull to see if it works.
The other small tube is a sight glass tube for the very front gear selector that engages the Z spindle. So it isn't anything to do with the hydraulics or the Vogel lube system. That gear case is filled via the front orange filler plug. On mine the very long drilling to the sight tube was clogged and it took a lot of rodding out to fix. It's hard to read through the sight hole on the cover when fitted, and a small tilt on the machine would make it misread. I would simply drain and refill the gearbox with the amount in the manual. If you take it's top cover off you can't see the oil. It's down below the gearset in a cavity, but the lower part of the gear dips into it.
Cheers,
David

Sorry, this photo didn't attach to the previous submission. It was a bit big.
Cheers,
David

.Trying again

Trial photo Kind regardsChris 

Focus is a bit off but it's exactly the same as mine. If you disconnect at the elbow you will see what I mean about the tube going to the rotary joint being free to spin.
The way they are set up means you couldn't extent the Y quill for a special machining set up as the elbow would jamb on the rear of the Y slide.
Maybe you could shine a torch down the hole to see if there is anything else stopping the tube pulling out with the quill.
I haven't had a chance to figure out if there is an anti rotation slot and pin on the quill. You have to remove the one on the Z quill to remove that quill.
Cheers,
David

Big note here: Philips and Maho named the axes differently to the current standard, so your manual may have Z and Y swapped. On My machine with the Heidenhain controller the top slide is the Y axis. I redid my manual to show that, but I may have missed a few places.
Looks like we are on the right path. Here is the page out of my manual for it. It looks exactly as I have been saying.
The feather key is item 6. I'd pull it right out in case it catches just retracting it 6 mm in the instruction. That holds the quill from spinning and sets it's maximum travel. It looks like you will have to set the Y axis full forward to get to it. The drain screw is also visible under there.
I'm not sure about Item 2. Mine has a clamping bolt somewhere there. Take the round black plate (from a previous photo) off the side to look in.
I think you will find the quill assembly nearly identical to the vertical assembly.

David

Hi Chris,
I've opened mine and I can see how it works. I suspect the vertical and horizontal quills are identical enough that we could swap them.
The bolt with the sleeve is item 2 on the drawing. If you replaced the head of the bolt with a Kipps handle it would work like the vertical clamping handle. So that sleeve will push on the 2 arced pieces like in my photos on page 171, and clamp around the quill.
You have to remove the cover plug to get to the bolt head. Take out the 5mm grub screw and use a normal 5mm bolt to pull it out.Once loose, the quill should be free. Remember to disconnect the hydraulic elbow item 5 at the rear and the feather key underneath the slide item 6. I would think that the quill would slide without removing the front seal system item 4, but it may be full of dirt like mine.
If you look closely you can see the type of markings on the spline they talk about for reassembly. That's on a different spline though.
Looks pretty easy.
Good luck with it,
David