Hey guys! Aaron here from Gough Custom,
and today I'm going to walk you through the journey that I went on
in order to buy my latest CNC machine!
So, these machines are Fadal VMC15s, and the guy actually said
that he would only sell them together.
They were listed for sale for $3,900 each which is incredibly cheap.
Because of that there was actually quite a lot of competition to try and get them
so I ended up just sending the guy money based on the photos that he'd sent me.
Luckily when I went and had a look at the machines they were as described!
They were, however, incredibly incredibly filthy!
Both of them had been used for their entire lives to machine graphite
and the graphite was just in every single part of these machines,
including all the electronics, which is an incredibly bad place
for conductive graphite dust to be,
so I knew it was going to be quite a job to clean them up.
Given the price and their good overall mechanical condition
I figured it was worth the risk, so I bought them.
I actually didn't have space to even put them in my shop when I bought them,
because I was still in my tiny shop.
So I bought them, I had a local company move them into storage,
and then I basically just forgot about them for about a year and a half,
until I was able to move into a larger space and take delivery of them!
Once I'd taken possession of the larger shop, and gotten the machines delivered
it was time to start working on them!
The first step was to disassemble them as much as possible
this enabled me to get access to every little nook and cranny of the machines
in order to start cleaning them.
The machines were covered in a horrible mix of way oil and graphite,
it was really hard to appreciate just exactly how filthy the machine was
until I actually had it disassembled.
I spent literally three of four days just cleaning each machine,
crawling around them on hands and knees with just a bucket of degreaser
and dozens of rags.
I ended up going through about 12 rolls of paper towel and four or five liters
of an industrial degreaser, just to get the oil and graphite out of the machine.
One of the reasons I was actually really interested in these machines
is because they're mechanically identical to the machine that I already had.
This meant that I knew my way around them pretty well and I was able to start
fixing it and cleaning it really quickly.
After many days, and a few pairs of ruined clothes, the machine was mainly clean.
So, at this point, it was time to start fixing stuff up!
The very first thing that needed to be fixed was actually the keyboard
it had a bunch of keys on it that weren't working, and that was
getting in the way of testing things.
Luckily I negotiated for the guy to give me his spare keyboard,
so I was able to just chuck it in and then get right to testing.
Unfortunately at this point things went wrong pretty quickly...
I left the spindle running at low RPMs for a little while, just to warm the bearings up
and to test everything out,
and as I was working on something else I could start to smell smoke.
I ran back over to the machine and found a bunch of smoke
coming out of the spindle motor.
Turns out the spindle drive had actually failed and sent full current to
the spindle motor and cooked it.
At first I was really demoralized by this, because I thought it was going
to be an absolutely huge job to get the spindle motor out in order to replace it.
Turns out it actually wasn't that bad,
I was able to get my engine hoist kind of around the base of the machine,
disconnect the spindle motor, pull it out, and then I ended up taking it
to a local motor repair shop, and they were actually able to fix it for about $900
which is fantastic.
Unfortunately I did also end up having to replace the spindle drive.
I replaced it with a Glentek unit, the same as I used in my other machine.
I've been very happy with these, so I decided to go with what I knew.
While I was in the back cabinet replacing the spindle drive, I decided I would
also replace all of the contactors and the relays that control all of the
tool changer functions, and the motor speed switching and forward / reverse.
All of these little parts are fairly inexpensive, but because they're mechanical and
they were all full of graphite dust, I figured some of them might be working incorrectly
so it was a good idea just to replace them.
Next I pulled out the spindle so I could inspect and clean it.
While I had it out of the machine I decided I would polish it, and blue it,
so that it matched my other CNC machine.
It might sound a little silly, but it's kinda nice if they look the same in videos.
It took a little bit of experimentation to get the cold-bluing process working properly
but once I got it worked out, it worked really well!
And I actually ended up getting the spindle nose looking pretty much brand new!
The next thing to fix was the automatic lubrication system.
This uses a pneumatic piston to inject high pressure oil
in order to lubricate all of the moving parts of the machine.
It took me quite a while to work out what was actually wrong with this,
turns out that there's a small choke inside that was clogged with debris.
I replaced a lot of parts that I didn't really need to replace in order to fix this,
but at least now I have spare parts!
There was also quite a bit of graphite dust inside the oil reservoir,
so I cleaned out the entire oil reservoir and also replaced the oil filter
to make sure that only really clean oil is getting to the moving parts.
Next I replaced the air regulator and filter system.
The filter was cracked internally which meant it couldn't be replaced,
so I decided just to replace the whole unit.
As I worked my way around the machine, I made sure that I was also
fixing paint and cleaning things as I went.
Not really something that's strictly necessary, but it is really nice to have a machine
that looks like it's been well cared for.
I also spent some time refinishing all of the way covers and guards.
I replaced all of the way wipers that help keep the chips
out of the internal workings of the machine as well.
These are small things, but it makes a huge difference to how the machine looks in the end.
One thing that I discovered during testing was that the timing belt
spindle drive mechanism in these machines is incredibly loud.
Without the head enclosure attached it's actually around 93 decibels when running at 7500 rpm.
I decided to try fitting automotive damping panels inside the head enclosure
to see what difference they would make.
Loud clang...
Quiet thud...
The difference in the damping of the head enclosure panels was immediate and huge,
so I decided to go ahead with fitting all of the head enclosure panels with the damping sheets.
After re-fitting all of the head enclosure panels I was really excited
to see how much of a difference it made...
Adding the damping sheets ended up getting me a 10 decibel reduction
in sound at 7500 rpm, which is huge!
*so much better*
I'll be doing some more work to try and make the spindle a bit quieter in the future.
Now that everything was clean, all the paint was touched up,
all the mechanical systems had been fixed where necessary,
and all of the electrical components were working, it was time to start reassembly!
First a new Z axis way cover was fitted, and then all of the re-finished and
refurbished way covers started getting fitted as well.
Once all the way covers were back in place, I was able to start
reassembling the enclosure around the machine.
As I reassembled everything I gave all of the paint one final go-over with a
buffer and some cutting compound, just to get it looking like new.
After the enclosure was reassembled I decided to upgrade the lighting system.
The original lighting system was just a single outdoor fixture on either side,
fitted with an incandescent bulb.
As an upgrade I fitted double fixtures on either side with high output LED lights.
Generally the inside of these CNC machines is very dim and dingy,
but that's definitely not a problem with this machine now!
The original CRT monitor on the machine was also pretty dim and hard to read,
so I decided to replace it with a new LCD monitor.
This has the additional benefit that now I can watch Rick and Morty if I ever get bored!
The final list of work that I did was pretty extensive... I had the spindle motor rebuilt,
I replaced the spindle drive,
I replaced the Y axis servo drive,
I replaced the X axis servo drive,
I replaced the keyboard, I replaced the CRT monitor,
I replaced the contactors, I replaced all relays,
I...
f@*!k that was a lot of work...
I really do think it was worth it though, I ended up with a machine
that looks great and runs fantastically!
The final cost of the machine was around $15,000 Canadian.
And this included storage and rigging, replacement parts and some upgrades.
For comparison: the closest equivalent in a new machine, a HAAS VF1 with some options,
would cost about $78,000 dollars Canadian, before tax!
One thing that ended up working out really well was that I realized
that I did not need the second machine.
I went through the same process of restoring it, replacing any parts that needed
to be replaced, checking it over and making it look really nice,
and then I sold it!
And selling it actually covered a bit over half of the cost of the machine
that I ended up keeping, which is fantastic!
It was a huge amount of work to get both machines cleaned up and running,
but in the end I think it worked out really well!
I've ended up with a machine that I know inside and out, that looks fantastic
and that runs great! And I'm looking forward to using it to make many more knives!
If you liked this video and would like to see more like it,
please make sure to subscribe!
If you'd like to get more info about my knives,
you can do so by clicking the 'shop' button now!
Thanks for watching!