Zeiss Contura G2 Minimum Air Pressure (Z Axis causing a hissing after a weekend shutdown)

[[Co...]]

Morning all,

Everything has been working great on our Zeiss Contura G2. Someone decided to shut it down over this past weekend. I powered things up this morning and now I am getting a hiss from the top of the machine whenever I drop the Z axis to anywhere from about 0" to 12" above the granite. Anything above 12" doesn't hiss at me. I took a look at the Zeiss specs and I see that they say

Air Supply "Minimum pressure 6 bar, max pressure 10 bar."

Air Consumption of CMM "Max 30 I/min at 5 bar"

I went to the back of the machine and took a look. The digital gage on the CMM reads "5.1 Bar" and the dial at the wall for incoming air is at about 85 PSI. Has anyone ever made an adjustment to the dial on the machine that is currently reading 5.1? I'm wondering if I increased this (if I can) to 6, if this hissing would go away? Some AI searching is telling me that my pressure could be too low or that I could have a loose or cracked fitting. Says that my best route right now is to increase my pressure to see if the hiss goes away.

Thanks in advance for any advice!

[[Ch...]]

Sounds like you have a crack or hole in an air line.  We had a Micura that cracked an air line (1 month after delivery).  It was easy to replace.  But I could be wrong.  lets see what other peeps say. 

[[DW...]]

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 I am pretty sure the digital air readout at the back of your Contura should be 5±0.1 bar. Where is the snippet in your post from? Are you confident enough to remove the mast covering to look at the lines/connections? I believe they are all push fittings too.

[[Ja...]]

I agree. A position dependent leak would point me towards a bad air line or a fitting starting to come loose.

[[Co...]]

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Pulled it from another Zeiss Forum post here - https://qualityforum.zeiss.com/migration/images/3301_42e56fb432f8730173a16496301be092.pdf and it can be seen on Page 3.

Have never removed any covers / probably not the most confident in removing them and checking this out. I have two others on site pretty familiar with CMM's so we will have to group together to see how we feel about it. We have a yearly calibration coming up in November so if the machine is still operating as it should, just with a snake inside that hisses now and then, I guess we might be able to hold off a few more months and let them take care of it while on site.

[[DW...]]

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Your snippet is 6-10 bar from the air source. The attached snippet is how much air the CMM consumes. So your digital readout at the back of the machine is correct, do not adjust it. The cover is held on by hex screws, you can't really mess anything up by removing it to get a look under the hood. I wouldn't operate the CMM with it leaking at all. 

Edited 4 hours ago