"He who marches out of step hears another drum." ~ Ken Kesey
Quote from: pwalsh on September 25, 2011, 08:36:06 AMAlan: It’s certainly possible that a replacement capture fork could have been made locally in Houston, but doing it right is a fairly involved process. This part as a number of wear surfaces that include where the cam follower runs, and also the sliding surfaces of the fork itself. In order to ensure accurate location and long service life these wear surfaces need to be heat treated and then precision finished. It would have seemed to me that dropping a replacement part into a FedEx international pack from Poland would have been the quickest way to get the part onsite. Why it wasn't overnight shipped is amazing to me. This is what a 100k machine? I think there is some wiggle room. Which judging by some of the quality of things so far about these machines there may be a lot of wiggle room so they should have stepped up. Quote from: pwalsh on September 25, 2011, 08:36:06 AMIn any case I’m sure that Robert and his team know what they’re doing, and that they will get the press up and running in short time. I really think that Brian (Binkspot) is one of the best assets that the manufacturer has on their side to get the press repaired, and as long as there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with the design, engineering, or manufacture of the press, he’ll get it right. At least we’ve moved on from the nonsense that the capture fork was a deliberately designed sacrificial part, intended to break whenever the machines E-Stop was engaged.Binkspot is a shinning star in the group of them for sure, I am certain he can replace what is wrong with the machine but as you said he can't change its design so if it's a problem before its likely to continue to be one. I can almost hear the "don't hit the estop" conversations. I agree on the nonsense such and such was spewing, I don't think a sole believed that BS though. Quote from: pwalsh on September 25, 2011, 08:36:06 AMOne area where asdf and the customer both got lucky is that Scarborough Specialties has a shop full of M&R equipment that runs every day, so their production is not being totally impacted by the faults with the new machine. I’d expect that the stress level would be much higher at a shop where the new press was their only source of production.That's very true and I bet they look at those machines much differently now. I mean after all it was clearly a habit of the operator to hit the Estop on the M&R's, they are still running. But 1 hit on the new pos machine and it breaks.
Alan: It’s certainly possible that a replacement capture fork could have been made locally in Houston, but doing it right is a fairly involved process. This part as a number of wear surfaces that include where the cam follower runs, and also the sliding surfaces of the fork itself. In order to ensure accurate location and long service life these wear surfaces need to be heat treated and then precision finished. It would have seemed to me that dropping a replacement part into a FedEx international pack from Poland would have been the quickest way to get the part onsite.
In any case I’m sure that Robert and his team know what they’re doing, and that they will get the press up and running in short time. I really think that Brian (Binkspot) is one of the best assets that the manufacturer has on their side to get the press repaired, and as long as there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with the design, engineering, or manufacture of the press, he’ll get it right. At least we’ve moved on from the nonsense that the capture fork was a deliberately designed sacrificial part, intended to break whenever the machines E-Stop was engaged.
One area where asdf and the customer both got lucky is that Scarborough Specialties has a shop full of M&R equipment that runs every day, so their production is not being totally impacted by the faults with the new machine. I’d expect that the stress level would be much higher at a shop where the new press was their only source of production.
This topic has brought up a few questions and thoughts that I think all shop owners and operators should consider. Almost could be seen as a wake up call. Just curious how many owners have a plan in place to check the safety systems on their equipment and shop. Does any one check to see if the E-Stop or safety cables/bars even work on a scheduled maintenance plan, including all the equipment in the shop, not just the press. Who has their fire extinguishers checked and serviced yearly or inspected monthly? Do you have an eye wash station? Is everyone properly trained on the equipment, PPE, use of the MSDS etc. Do you have a flammable storage locker? Point being is most of the time safety is overlooked until there is an near miss or an accident, usually too late then. Just saying.
Yes the press is up and running. If you would like details there is a post on another forum, I don't want to drag the bs over here so I posted it there.
We were able to trace the fork failure down to a faulty relay on the machine. While running the contacts in the relay would “make and break” or “chatter” telling the servo to start and stop several, times a second. This sudden start-stop was hammering the fork until it would finally break. In the process of trouble shooting we tried to replicate the cause and effect on another Prism II with no joy. Consulting with Printex we were quite cretin the failure was due to a faulty fork. I arrived back on site with a new fork from a different batch, checked the press to be sure everything was in place, installed the new fork and dry cycled the machine for about an hour when the same thing happened. The second fork had broken but this time I was right there and witnessed what had happened. Seeing the failure I was able to describe the events directly to Printex. With this information we traced the problem back to a relay in the control circuit. The following day I installed another new fork which a local machine shop had made, new relay and made the necessary adjustments. I dry cycled the machine for about four hours, changing index direction, speed and other functions. The press ran fine. The following morning we started to run production and continued through out the day. When the production day was done I continued dry cycling the machine for another six hours while I completed some work on the other machines in the shop with no further issues.
Brandt, really I think they all care or the subject would have never come up, just cause you may have a issue with someone does not mean they don't care about there customer. Look at this way if they don't care about there customer they won't have them long or anyone else on the matter.
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Topic: E-Stop botton dumb idea (Read 8384 times)
