I love nature, but when that nature starts messing up my stuff....
Two days ago, had breakfast, did some reading, and out of the blue had a thought of finally doing something with this beast, it has been a constant daily reminder of how pressed for time i am, for over 4 years...
So off to the shop all happy and plug it in, turn it on, and i hear fans ... nice ... wait the hydraulic pump is not on, it should be on, so i move to the front and nothing, no lights, not monitor, nothing, so move to the left side to oped the servo drive/controller cabinet = darkness = no lights at all, so i open the back cabinet where the power supplies and spindle VFD is = VFD has a single LED on that says "zero speed", nothing else .... oh well.
So i check around and found 2 broken wires going to the X servo drive and i am sure those can not be the issue, was late so i left it.
Yesterday took the DVM and started hunting for gremlins, some time in and there is no power going to the controls/PC, and since i know for sure that without it it does not power anything else, i start chasing wires ... and finding mice poo everywhere! See above for nature.
Still sore from all the climbing on and chasing and removing panels, i opened one of the top covers and .... horror, oh the horror! One or more of those mice decided to make a living there dragging half the shop in there and chewing on cables, so now i am left with half a trash can of mice .... everything. Poor vacuum is full of $hit, parts of cabling are missing and had to spray everything with WD40 to remove the smell and maybe, just maybe keep them away, so i sprayed every cable in every cabinet, impulsive i know, but i was out of ideas.
Back on track:
i did 3D print some holders for bearings and encoders, made shafts for two of them, found out that the third resolver has a different mount that i will have to print, so a bit of progress, finally.
Mending all those wires will be tricky and will take some time, but at least i am not looking back, i am retrofitting it, i have all the Mesa board X2, i figured out the VFD yesterday while chasing .... so i am certain i make make the VFD work, but i have nothing on the servo drives but i might figure out with a lot of testing and measuring, but more importantly, i have nothing on the over 40 relays controlling the hydraulics of everything, from chuck to tool changes.
From what i gathered yesterday i will need about 40 to 60 inputs and 30 to 40 outputs, but i might be way off.
I might change the title to: Saga, a never ending story!