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General Mach Discussion / DC driver board, terminal abreviations?

« on: January 05, 2011, 03:20:59 PM »

Converting an old allen bradley bandit 3 controlled mill to Mach 3.
The current 'DC driver board' in the machine has the following input terminals (one set for each axis)

Sig - LO, H, and SH
Tach - H, LO, and SH
Driver - SH, ENA, FLT, and GND

The Tach has connections going to the motors, for feedback I assume.
The Sig has wires going to the LO and H that go into the CNC computer board.
The driver block has nothing connected to it.

This board has wires going to individual boards that are then wired to the motors.

Can someone just give me a quick rundown on what these are.  I am assuming this is a +/- 10V driver board? and can't be used (directly) with mach 3's step/direction signal?

Thanks

2

General Mach Discussion / Encoder wiring on OLD machine.

« on: January 05, 2011, 02:49:26 PM »

I'm currently replacing a old Allen Bradley Bandit 3 setup with MACH3 software on a early 80's vertical mill.  I realize a lot of hardware will need to be replaced, but I'm taking it step by step.
This is for a mill for personal use, so budget is limited and time isn't very important.

Step one is to get the encoders to read on on Mach 3 software.

There are rotary encoders on the ends of the motors. They have 6 wires coming out of them.  Twisted pairs red-white, black-white, brown-white.  How can I meter these or make a setup to figure out which ones are which?  Or do I need to take them apart to see where the wires end up going. These were going to the computer board on the control unit.  There is a seperate tach signal that goes to the servos.

I build electronics for a living so I have access to any testing stuff I need. 
Thanks