Production Machinery and Machine Tool Rebuilding, Retrofitting and Repair

Since 1980, Cavco has rebuilt production machinery and machine tools back to their original specifications. A whole machine or a single axis, depending on the condition of the equipment and what you need from it. The precision workmanship that restores worn machinery, improves accuracy, and extends the productive life of equipment worth keeping.

Variable speed drives, lubrication, coolant and hydraulic systems, way covers and guarding, and ball screws where there were acme screws, engineered, specified and installed. The mechanical half of modernising a machine worth keeping, fitted onto geometry that has been put right first.

Precision scraping of ways and bearings restores flatness, straightness, squareness and concentricity to a machine's alignments. Hand scraping for fine work in small areas and round bearings, power scrapers for larger areas. Straight edge masters from three inches to twelve feet, with lasers, precision electronic indicators and electronic levels.

We diagnose machine tool problems from the machining problem level, not just the slide-way table repair level. We take a machine tool repair from diagnosis through correction of the root cause, on your floor, mechanical and electrical, then run and test the machine with your people.

A proprietary process for grinding and restoring worn ways in place, on your floor, at its best on very large machines, boring mills and grinders among them. Way surfaces restored to factory flatness and geometry without the rigging, trucking and downtime that sending the machine out costs. Often four to six weeks less downtime.

Moglice, Rulon and Turcite way liners for heavily worn ways, fitted and then precision scraped, because fitting restores thickness and only scraping restores the geometry. Excellent wear characteristics and low stick-slip, and an alternative to regrinding where the geometry allows. On very large machines the work is done on your floor.

CNC machine repair and retrofitting, at our shop or on your floor, mechanical and electrical. Geometry lost after a crash, worn ways and spindles, ball screws repaired or replaced, drives, motors and controls, and the mechanical rebuild that goes with a retrofit.

Chatter, taper, a bore out of square or not concentric, a slide that sticks, a spindle that runs hot. Each points at a short list of causes, and measuring the machine says which. We diagnose from the part the machine is making, not from the component that failed.

Two types of lasers, precision electronic indicators, two types of electronic levels, and specific metrology software for plotting way surfaces, grafting work, and checking alignments. Buy the survey on its own, with our recommendations, and have us do the work or not.

Surface, cylindrical and specialty grinders from Brown and Sharpe, Mattison, Okamoto, Kellenberger and Studer. Tables and ways, spindles and workheads, hydraulics and controls, back to the geometry the machine was built to hold.

Backlash, lost position and an axis that has started to growl, diagnosed to the screw, its thrust bearings or the nut before anything comes apart. The screw repaired or replaced, then installed preloaded and aligned to the ways, so the axis holds position instead of the new screw wearing in the old way.

Runout, heat, noise and a finish gone off, measured at the spindle and at the machine before anything comes apart, because about half the time the spindle is fine. Bearings, seals, journals and tapers rebuilt, then the spindle set back true to the ways and the table, with the numbers from both.

Wotan, Giddings and Lewis, DeVlieg, Toshiba, Lucas and the floor types, repaired where they stand. Column and saddle ways ground and scraped in place, the table relevelled and its index put right, the quill and spindle brought back true, and the whole machine realigned with lasers and levels before we leave.