Machsupport Forum
Mach Discussion => General Mach Discussion => Topic started by: Marwellca on December 19, 2008, 07:19:52 PM
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Howdy all,
I recently purchased a used CNC Router with a DSP Controller system. I can't say that I like the DSP at all. Not enough feedback for me. How easy would it be to change the DSP controller to a computer hookup that I could run with Mach 3?
Keeping in mind that I am pretty much electronically illiterate I need to find a system that would be fairly easy to install.
The CNC is a Chinese unit that runs with 3 steppers and is 110 volts but 3 phase.
Martyn.
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Do you have links to any doccumentation? As it is a stepper system then it will more than likely take Step/Dir inputs so should be possible to convert to Mach without much trouble but without knowing the system its impossible to say how hard it will be.
Hood
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Hi Hood,
Sorry the documentation I have is very poor and the translations are not very good.
I can hook the DSP unit into my computer with a PCI SCSI card. I am going to check tomorrow with my local computer geek store and find out if I can get a cable with two male ends. Maybe I can hook one to my computer and the other to the input on the CNC machine. I do not know if that would allow me to command the machine or not.
Martyn.
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SCSI will not work from Mach, you will need either parallel port or one of the external devices such as the SmoothStepper.
Hood
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Well there goes that idea then, and it was such a nice one too. Can I get a parallel to SCSI cable? Would that work?
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Dont think so :(
If you can scan the schematics you have maybe we can figure it out, some of us speak fluent Chinglish :D
Hood
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Hood,
just took another look at what I have. I have an Adobe PDF file that may, I say again, may be the schematic for the board. Let me know what you think.
Martyn.
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That looks as if it would be fairly easy to convert over,its late here (1:45am) so I will have a better look tomorrow. If I dont post please shout as I have a bad memory :D
Hood
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Thank you kind sir, you are a gentleman and a scholar, and there aren't many of us left.
Talk to you tomorrow.
Martyn.
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Hi, Martyn
With the PDF file in hand you have most all the info you need to start planning this conversion.
It's a matter of removing the 50 pin interface board and installing a breakout board (BOB) w\Spindle control options.
Tracing the existing Interface boards 50 pin connector and making a 50 pin to 25 pin adapter cable mite also be a way to go.
At least your looking at stepper controls that are step & direction and sensors that are adaptable hear.
Chip
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Depending on what voltage is used in your control would depend on the best way to proceed. The limits and home switches seem to be 24V which is good for noise imunity and is what I have but if the 24V carries on out of that board then you would need to convert it to 5V before you hooked it up to your computer. I am busy working out how I am going to fit the spindle motor to my lathe at the moment but I will have a better look through the docs later on and see if I can gather any clues, in the mean time if you know what voltage comes out of the connector let us know.
Hood
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Hood,
I am thinking that the voltage that goes to the DSP controller is only 5V. The reason I say this is that I can hook it up to my computer using the supplied cable and a PCI SCSI controller board. I will try to check this later on today.
Chip.
What do you mean by "Tracing the existing Interface boards 50 pin connector"? I am not electrically savvy at all. I may be able to get a local shop to make me a cable.
Martyn.
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if its 5v then thats great as all you will have to do is as Chip says which is trace which pin on the 50 connector is for what. It might be in the docs, not seen it so far but not had a real good look yet.
Hood
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Hi guys,
just to show what we are looking at, here are some photos of the controls.
Martyn.
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And a couple more.
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From what I have found so far, I cannot get a 50pin SCSI to a 25 pin parallel cable. So that option is not looking too good. If I was to go with a breakout board what would I be looking at?
Any and all help is greatly appreciated.
Martyn.
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Martyn
The SCSI to PP wouldnt work anyway, what you will need to do is hack up a SCSI cable and sperate all of the pins then possibly put them into one but more likely two Parallel ports or maybe a SmoothStepper would be a better option. First you need to figure out which pin does what then you will know how many Inputs there are and how many OutPuts.
I have not had a chance to look again as I have just got home from the workshop, have a few drawings to do and then I will have a proper look at the docs you posted to see if there are any hints there.
Hood
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Hood,
having absolutely no experience in that, I would be a little nervous in trying. I am beginning to wonder if it would be easier and less stressful to replace the board completely. Given my lack of experience it may be a little more expensive but safer in the long run. What do you think?
Martyn.
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Replacing the board would be easy enough to do but there would be a few things you would have to address one of which is the limits and home switches require 24V. That in itself is a good thing and it is what I power my limits etc with, in fact all of my I/O are 24v with the exception of the Step/Dir signals. To use the 24V you need to drop it down to 5 just before it goes to the computer (or breakout) you can do this with relays etc. If however your board already does that then it would probably be the simplest solution to keep it and just find out which wire is which.
I have just printed out your docs and am away to have a look.
Hood
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Martyn,
There is no info regarding which pin is which of the SCSI so you would need try and trace them with a meter.
If you decided to go the Breakout board route it would be fairly straightforward to do with the exception of the spindle speed control as at the moment it seems to require 24V. If you have a manual for the VFD (Inverter or as they call it Inventor) then we may find it can use 5V or 10V which I think most of the speed controllers sold for Mach use.
The only other problem would be converting the 24V from the Home switches to 5V but a simple relay for each would do that.
Do you have the touch plate ?(CAD feature as they call it)
Oh and your pendant, not sure how that interfaces, do you have any info on that?
Hood
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Its ok regarding the VFD manual, just found it and downloading now.
Hood
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OK looks like your inverter take 0 to 10V for speed control so any of the speed controllers sold by the usual suspects should do fine. I have no experiecnce of using any of them so hopefully some of the guys that do will come in and give the opinions of the ones they use. I know Peter Homanns digispeeds get a good name so I will see if I can get him to give you a bit of info regarding his product.
Hood
Edit, I have attached the VFD manual if anyone wants to look through it.
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Hood,
I have done a Google search on the first letters on the Serial? Model number? and came up with this website.
http://detail.china.alibaba.com/buyer/offerdetail/197492842.html
It is all in Chinese, you will have to translate sorry. What exactly do you mean by "Do you have the touch plate ?(CAD feature as they call it)" What is a touch plate?
Martyn.
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I am meaning the manual mentions CAD feature which seems to be a touch plate for setting tool heights.
Hood
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There was no touch plate with the machine. I may have to see about making one later but I do not have one right now.
Martyn.
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OK thats fine as its one less thing to worry about. Looks like it would be a fairly easy conversion, you would need a breakout board (I like the PMDX 122 but there are lots of others to choose from) Also you will need a few relays and something to control the spindle speed. Agian there are quite a few speed controllers out there one of which is the one I mentioned earlier from www.homanndesigns.com
Hood
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Thank you kind sir, I will contact him as soon as I can. I am in Canada and may look for a supplier in the USA. It is much closer than OZ and I may be able to get it sent to a friends house and not have to worry about the mail delay for Customs.
Martyn.
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I think Steve at PMDX does a speed control as well, in fact most of the breakout board people do.
Hood
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OK looks like your inverter take 0 to 10V for speed control so any of the speed controllers sold by the usual suspects should do fine. I have no experiecnce of using any of them so hopefully some of the guys that do will come in and give the opinions of the ones they use. I know Peter Homanns digispeeds get a good name so I will see if I can get him to give you a bit of info regarding his product.
Hood
Edit, I have attached the VFD manual if anyone wants to look through it.
Hi Hood, Martyn,
I have looked through the VFD manual and yes, the range of DigiSpeeds should have no problem controlling the VFD. I'd suggest using the DigiSpeed DC-06 with the on board DC/DC conveter.
http://homanndesigns.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=1&products_id=39
Even though the VFD can supply the 10Vdc reference voltage, the speed controllers require about a volt for it's own use, meaning that you end up with a slightly reduced maximum speed. The DC/DC converter elliminates this.
The DC-06 takes the spindle axis step/dir signal and converts it to an isolated analog value. It also has a couple of small relays, ideal for switching the control inputs on a VFD. These are normall used for direction cotrol, brake, enable, etc.
If you have any more questions let me know.
Cheers,
Peter
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Martyn
That pendant you linked to, is that the actual control for your system? Looking at the site it certainly seems that way.
Hood
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It looks very much like it. The Model/Serial number on mine is
RZTHNC-053xSI-080522 The one on the web site is
RZTHNC-053XS-080616
As you can see there is very little difference. The board in their picture looks very much the same as well.
Martyn.
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Ok so it must be a very basic control, no graphical toolpath representation or anything. If you convert to Mach you will I presume just be using a mouse and keyboard along with the computer?
Do you have a pic or a link of your actual machine?
Hood
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Hood,
I have a very small CNC Router that I built myself last year. It operates using Mach 3. I wanted to use the computer and mouse because I find it much easier to use than the Pendant. I am still trying to set up this machine and am having a hard time doing so. For one thing the machine needs to be turned on all of the time, or the pendant reverts to its original configurations, which are all incorrect for this machine.
The machine is almost brand new, I purchased it from a fellow here in Canada who had bought it but then was moving into an apartment and he had no room for it. I do not think it has actually bee used to cut anything. Either that or it was very well cleaned.
Martyn.
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Looks like a nice wee machine and now I realise that the pendant is the control and you will be doing away with it then the retrofit to Mach has become even easier :)
Breakout, Speed Controller, few relays and your computer and you are set :)
Hood
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Thanks Hood,
That was what I needed to know. As I said, I do not like the pendant control at all. I figured I would use it if I had to but would much prefer to use a computer and something like Mach 3. Much easier all around.
I have sent an email to Peter and will wait to see what he has to say. I will keep you up dated as things go on.
Thanks again for all of your help.
Martyn.
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No probs, if you need any help setting Mach up etc just shout back and I am sure you will get the info you need :) Oh BTW pendants are still nice as secondary controls for such things as jogging and external buttons, I have made one for the mill I am doing at the moment and I think I will make another for the lathe. Quite a few people are now selling them for use with Mach.
Hood
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I will keep that in mind. Hopefully things will go a little smoother in the New Year.
Martyn.
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nice info in this thread.
iam also planning for such china router for my wood work.so before that i want to know exactly what lies in side that 50 pin controller(dsp pendent).if some thing goes wrong will we be able to repair it?
if any one have its circuit layout pls share with us.
as per my guess there shld be a PIC or AVR inside that controller.so how doest it do linear interpolation nd circular interpolations etc.and ofcourse acceleration and de-acceleration calculations too.
iam more worried abt the DSP than the drivers of interface board.
Need some desperate help here
Regards
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Hello,
i have exactly the same problem as MARWELLCA I do want to convert the same kind of CNC Chineese machine from DSP Controller to Mach3 & I am looking for solutions technically how to do.
Could you please give me some help.
Many thanks
David
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Hi All,
For what this worth is worth, as i have a similar but different system, made by Multimek, and that pendant looks
almost the same. My system had steppers, drives, power supply, an interface board etc. The drives needed to be flashed based on a program which would control the stepper movements and the buttons on the pendant would, based on programing, could do basic control finctions. As a system, it was meant to do something over and over, like controlling robots. At first i though, woo....woo, a nice four axis contoller. Long story short........
The tech people said, even though you could convert it for a different controlling program like MACH, the drives and communications just wouldn't cut it for CNC machining and would be limited.
They said i would not be satisfied even if i got all working.
Would be nice if you could find out more about the drives. You have a box, power supply ( which should be adequate for the drives / steppers) and connections. So the controller is basically there. Just need to trace out the wiring and find out what each is for / connected to, so you can do some wiring changes as others have said.
Once that is known, you can add the other things BOB, SS or whatever to refine that controller to make it do what
you want with MACH.
Like I said, for whatever this is reply is worth, LOL
RICH
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Hi friends!
I'm needing to do the same thing with a chinese router. I readed all the talks but still can't understand all I need to do, also I have doubt if there is any difference between the router from Marvellca and to the I have to convert. Please could someone of you guys give me some help? Marwellca, have you succeeded with the conversion? All went right? Please can help me?
In advance, thank youfor attention!
Here are some imagens of the router.