Topics

1

Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) / Trumpf TC 260 CNC punching machine retrofit

« on: April 19, 2022, 09:04:20 AM »

Recently retrofit this turret punch machine from Trumpf in Kazan, Russia. Had been a great experience. Replaced 6 servos on the machine with Chinese AC servos. Used a customized screen for user interface and tons of coding in VB script, brains and Arduino to make the different functions work. Mechanical structure of machine was excellent and after the new electronics installed the useful service life of the machine was extended for many years.

Customer was not happy at all with the old Bosch controller which broke every other day. After tinkering with it for over a year they invited us over for the retrofit. The look on the customer's face was priceless when the machine started punching and produced their first part effortlessly. Reclamping, autoindex, auto-retracting clamps and a load of other functions were programmed in the controller. Took us almost a month including the mechanical fittings of motors, display screen, keyboards, and other stuff.

Here is the video of the machine in operation.

https://youtu.be/epibX_NZ1Is

Zafar

2

Bargain Basement / Boko CNC mill - new hybrid stepper motors, Mach3 retrofit

« on: August 12, 2020, 02:07:30 AM »

Hi,
This BOKO CNC mill is for sale in Liverpool, UK. Bed travel is 1000x600 mm. ISO40 spindle. Running on new hybrid stepper motors. Retrofit is unfinished but all the hardware needed is included with the machine. It is running on two parallel ports with Chinese breakout boards. The main panel board needs fitting in a cabinet so does the PC and display. Z axis motor needs fitting in the machine. Drives are all installed on the panel board. Spindle is controlled through inverter by a POT. I was carrying out the retrofit when the pandemic hit us and I had to leave. Mechanically the machine is in very good shape.

Zafar

3

Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) / CNC turret punch - Mach3 parallel port is the best

« on: April 22, 2019, 02:33:56 PM »

Finished a CNC turret punch retrofit last week. It's a Finn Power TP 2000. Manufactured in 1993. It is now running on Mach3 with two parallel ports and an Arduino Mega on modbus and brains. It is consuming 48 inputs and 36 outputs including servo motor outputs.

Customer bought it used and when it reached here two months ago then they realized that machine had been lying around in open and had rain water all over it. It took a month to clean up the machine and paint it then customer invited us to try out it's controller. Water marks were inside the electrical cabinet too and predictably it did't show any display when powered up.

It was decided then and there to retrofit it to new control and motors/drives. Machine was equipped with 4 Siemens servo motors which we replaced with Chinese motors. Siemens System 3M controller was also disassembled and in went our Mach3 system. Hydraulic servo punch controller was interfaced with Arduino and parallel port. Arduino is also handling inputs and outputs for tool changer and other bells and whistles. Designed our own break out board to interface machine I/O with Arduino and the PP. Here is a video of the machine running at 350 hits per minute. It is capable of 600 ppm in nibbling mode and 900 ppm in marking mode. That's the capability of parallel ports in Mach3. Mach is a winner. Took almost a week for the wiring, one for motors mounting and another couple of weeks for screen design, macros programming and other logic design. See the video on Youtube https://youtu.be/GlgS88Fz0wc. It's been a very satisfying project thus far.

Zafar

4

Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) / suggest simulator for Pipe Bender

« on: August 29, 2018, 02:18:50 AM »

Hi,

Recently developed the machanism and controller for this 3D free form pipe bender in Turkey. Need a simulator for viewing the product and process before programming the machine. Can anyone suggest a suitable source for this. Here is the link for a short youtube video of the machine.

https://youtu.be/WuIS3OMXAD0

Zafar

5

General Mach Discussion / Tangential knife control

« on: October 31, 2017, 09:38:50 AM »

Hi all,

Recently I noticed that tangential knife control slows up the feed when working on curved contours broken into lines. I think what it does it change the A-axis orientation at the beginning of each line segment while stopping the x, y axes movement. Is there any workaround to get the optimum performance. What about Mach4. Is it better in this sense.

Zafar Salam

6

Feature Requests / Axis inhibit changes don't take effect till Mach3 resets

« on: September 17, 2017, 09:58:52 AM »

I am working on Mach3 V3.043.062 and noticed that if I make changes to Axis Inhibit then it doesn't get effective till I reset Mach3. I need to do it on the fly through VB script. Is this fixed in some other version of Mach3.

Zafar

7

VB and the development of wizards / short pulse output with macro

« on: April 26, 2015, 12:42:00 AM »

I am sending pulses to arduino from Mach with coding similar to this

activatesignal(output1)
sleep(110)
deactivatesignal(output1)

If I reduce the delay below 100 then most of the time arduino doesn't pick the deactivate signal. Is there a workaround for this. I need to output a pulse of 50 ms.

Zafar

8

Third party software and hardware support forums. / Rigid Tapping - which motion controller to use?

« on: December 30, 2014, 12:03:12 PM »

Hi all,
I have a machining center on which I need to do rigid tapping. It has a max 6000 rpm spindle motor with 1024 pulse quadrature encoder installed. Which motion controller would be the best or easiest to use for this application.

Zafar

9

G-Code, CAD, and CAM discussions / Opthalmic lens curve generator g-codes

« on: October 25, 2014, 08:21:29 AM »

Hi,

A friend of mine has an opthalmic lens surface genrator cnc lathe which is out of order for over a year. I was thinking about converting it to Mach. It is equipped with two linear axes controlled by servo motors and the the spindle also powered by another servo. There's a touch probe on it too which measures the mounted lens blank. I was wondering how to calculate the lens curves and the resulting g-codes. Is there any application software out there for programming these machines.

Zafar

10

Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) / Raskin Turret Punch

« on: March 22, 2014, 07:38:21 AM »

Here is the latest retrofit. It's a Raskin RT-210-12 turret punch. 20 ton punch with 20 tool turret. 2 auto-index tool stations. Hydraulic servo ram with position control. 5 axes controlled by AC servo motors. 53 I/O's and hydraulic servo managed with UC300 motion controller and Arduino. Here are a few photos before, during and after the conversion. Will shoot a few videos next week.

Zafar