Official Luthiers Forum!

My Air turbine is capable of receiving its air from the through spindle coolant pathway. Has anyone tried this? How did you clean out the lines? Can the coolant pathways and seals withstand 90-100 psi?

my only experience with thru-spindle anything has been with Haas. their thru-spindle coolant is pressurized up to 300 psi. there is an air purge at the end of the cycle before a tool is changed. not sure about the Fadal.

your turbine should be getting a small amount of spindle oil in it's air while it's running correct? how are you planning to deal with that?

on the Haas, the length of the air purge can be set in a parameter setting. perhaps so with the Fadal?

Thanks Arie. I had no idea how much pressure was involved with TSC. Makes sense.

This tool needs dry air.

I never had TSC on my machine, yours must be one of the fancy ones!

As Arie said, TSC is run at really high pressure, so that shouldn't be a problem. I had my turbines hooked to a hose with a solenoid valve toggled by an M code, and I always put them in the last position on the ATC.

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Bob Garrish
Former Canonized Purveyor of Fine CNC Luthier Services

I made a mistake. I'd thought we had TSC but I had it confused with 4-axis pre-wire - which we'll likely never use.

How did you keep your hose from tangling and catching on stuff Bob?

one time i accidentally turned the main spindle on with all the hoses connected. last spindle rpm was 10K in mdi. man, in about 2 seconds that thing (an NSK) was spinning about flinging hoses and wires around like a texas tornado!. luckily all it took was a repair kit to replace all the hoses, lines, and assorted plastic connectors and we were good to go. i took a nice lashing across the hand from a flying hose. got lucky.

i suggest clearing out the mdi commands before running your program and using spindle lock (M19) in your code just to be sure. break-away connectors on the hoses and controller leads are very useful if your unit has them.

i usually run lines out the side door and use a kant-twist clamp on the enclosure next to the window to keep it from dropping down and pinching the hoses & wires

I use hoses with press-fit QDs on them, so the hose tears out if the spindle gets turned on.

If you put the (2) turbines in the last two spots on your ATC they won't tangle so long as you make sure to lock your spindle when they get picked up (so it doesn't spin to reorient when it picks up the next tool).

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Bob Garrish
Former Canonized Purveyor of Fine CNC Luthier Services

Thanks guys. The part I'm trying to wrap my head around is the hose tangling on tools, fixtures etc if it's left in the tool changer.