That coolant line blowout on the VF-3 got me good

I was running a batch of 4140 parts last Tuesday, about 3 hours into the cycle, when the high pressure coolant line let go right at the swivel joint. It sprayed straight into the spindle housing, and I didn't catch it until the machine started throwing alarm 140 and the temp gauge shot up. By the time I killed the feed and hit e-stop, the coolant had already pooled around the way covers and got into the chip auger gearbox. Took me 4 hours to tear it down, dry out the motor connections, and clean the congealed mess out of the auger drive. The line itself was only a $28 replacement but the labor was brutal. I've since added a cheap flow switch on that circuit so it kills the pump before it floods again. Has anyone else had a high pressure line fail mid-cycle and wreck their day like that?

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abby_king2221d ago

Count yourself lucky it didn't take out the spindle bearings and turn that $28 part into a $4,000 repair job. Honestly, a 4 hour cleanup sounds like a win when you think about how much worse a flooded motor or a wrecked gearbox could've been. You probably saved yourself a whole lot of headache by catching it when you did, even if it didn't feel that way at the time.

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