water in head

[Kevin Watts]

good morning. i have a good one. i had the luxury of a 5 day weekend and started getting calls on friday about problems with my cmm. operator started up cmm in am and suddenly water came out of the head---B&S global status7/10/7 ph 10thead tp20. Is this a problem. i have air filters and an air dryer inline and water filters. i think that we can correct the air line problems, but what kind of damage are we looking at to the ph10t ? i did a search and did not find this problem on this site before, so i am assuming it is a rare one. but the simplicity of it(how easily it can be prevented, and how fast the water got to the head) leads me to believe that some of you probably faced this one before. when i got here this morning after draining the air lines and filters, same thing, water still in lines in the machine and water came out again. probably about1/4 cup this morning, and from what i understand of last friday about 1/2 cup. please tell me we dont have to repair the head.. thanks and good morning
kev

[#2#]

Doubtless not good.

You say you have an air dryer. Is it a refrigerated type dryer or just a filter?

You definitely need to dry out your lines and having to replace a ph10 would be good ammo to get the powers that be to purchase a refrigerated dryer.

[Kevin Watts]

yes it is a refrigerated type, we are currently checking the status of it to make sure it is working correctly

[Jan d.]

You have water in your counterbalance. It has filled up to the point where it comes out of the top.

I have seen this before. You are in danger of frying the PH10, if it has not already been fried. That will be infinitely more expensive than getting some serious air dryers.

My suggestion: shut the machine down, call Hexagon and figure out how to drain the counterbalance. That will be very tricky.

What you have is typical. Are you at the end of the shop air line? Your shop compressor probably has an air dryer, however, on very humid days, usually in August, the air dryer on the compressor can not handle the load and water is pumped into the shop system. And whoever is last, gets the bulk. And when this water reaches your machine, no amount of air drying is going to salvage you. It is going right into the machine and do its thing.

Search for some older threads. Install a water trap (your maintenance people will know what that is) AND a pressure vessel in the line, BEFORE going into the refrigerant air dryer (10SCFM minimum). Empty the trap daily, especially on muggy summer days. This will catch the water first in the trap, and if that were to fill up, in the tank. Make sure the bottom of the tank also has a ball valve to release the water on occasion.

Frying 1 PH10 will pay for a lot of traps, vessels and air dryers!


Jan.

[dwade]

You could try one of the membrane dryers from Kaeser. A lot less money then a refrigerated style

[cmmguy]

Dessicant air dryers are also good and they dont change the temperature of the incoming air.

With the refrigerant airdryer make sure that you are emptying the water reservoir or that the drain line is not plugged up or frozen. Also, purge your main incoming lines too(in front of the airdryer). with summer humidity, you can get a lot of water in the main air lines that can be too much for the airdryer to handle.

[Kevin Watts]

i think that our first step is the air dryer, it is not working properly. we are possibly going to purchase a new beefier one today. after we get the air dryer/ water in lines issue resolved only then will we look at cmm problems. i think that i need to call hexagon and look at the counterbalance as Jan D stated. i hope that i have no problems with the head.

[spazus_maximus]

You have water in your counterbalance. It has filled up to the point where it comes out of the top. Jan.

holy cow mon!

[bw_bob]

1st thing I would do is see if there is a mop & a bucket....unbelievable

Sounds like you might have air in your water line

[craiger_ny]

Zeiss markets a "liquid filled head" or at least they used to. Might be a good thing...............

[Cumofo]

You could try one of the membrane dryers from Kaeser. A lot less money then a refrigerated style

I use the Kaeser HTR D20 it takes a lot of abuse.

Sorry about your machine, you've got months of recovery ahead of you, invest in some denatured alcohol too.




G

[Kevin Watts]

just an update, we purchased a new air drier refrigerated type, our old one was faulty. after we replaced it we drained our air lines and let them dry out. i then got my machine on and calibrated fine then i just ran it back and forth in all axis through a loop program for about 3 hours to help dry outthe lines, recalibrated, checked various ring gages and test parts and we are still good. been running parts all day now. thank God that there was no immediate damage, but ill need to keep a close eye on it to make sure nothing is messing up.. thanks to all
kev

[rangerboat72]

That's GREAT NEWS Kevin. I'm glad to hear all is well. Those probe heads and replacing air lines can get very expensive...

[All Parts R Good]

Water spout

Kevin, I had this happen last year to a Mistral machine I was running. Quite the sight I must say. I never expected "water" to come shooting out around the Tp20. Anyway, like one of the previous threads mentioned, we were at the end of the shop air line and the dryers just could not keep up. We installed 2 more inline filters. One outside the room and one inside the room. This solved our problem although I STILL had to empty the filter inside the room once in a while. As for the Ph10, it was still working fine back in April when I left there so I would think you should be OK in that department. (At least for 6 months)

[inspector212]

just an update, we purchased a new air drier refrigerated type, our old one was faulty. after we replaced it we drained our air lines and let them dry out. i then got my machine on and calibrated fine then i just ran it back and forth in all axis through a loop program for about 3 hours to help dry outthe lines, recalibrated, checked various ring gages and test parts and we are still good. been running parts all day now. thank God that there was no immediate damage, but ill need to keep a close eye on it to make sure nothing is messing up.. thanks to all
kev

Glad to hear no damage, as of yet. Hope everything works out.