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Messages - hawkercnc

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FAQs / Re: plug and play with old machine?
« on: August 20, 2010, 06:36:17 AM »
In considering the HSE driver boards, some older memories have been dragged up.  The HSE board to drive three axes had separate step pathways for each axis, but two of the three direction pathways went to a common terminal.  This made only 2.5 D machining possible. 

2.5D is as follows if you consider cutting a three sided pyramid, then the cuts for at least two of the base lines will involve changes in the x and y values all the way along the lines. This creates 2 oblique lines and this is known as interpolation.  If some height was added to create interpolation with x, y and z changing all the way along the line then full 3D is needed.  The early Wabeco would cut in one plane like a slice then there would be separate code for the next slice up and so on until the top of the pyramid was reached.  This gives a step sided pyramid rather than a smooth one. 

Sawston Steve looked up the application notes of the ICs (chips) involved (look up the IC numbers on the web to see the wiring diagrams) and as I said before altered the circuit board by cutting tracks.  However this progressed to a modification which involve removing an IC inserting a linking chip with a board above and hence modifying the board to be fully 3D.  This involved little or no soldering.  We thought of offering this to distressed Wabeco users stuck on DOS programmes with dongles who wished to use Mach 3, but did not manage to create any awareness of the potential product.  (The early Wabeco board was the HSE board)

The product was further refined by adding a box at the back of the control box which had full opto isolation, voltage control, speed control of spindle, spare relays and extra inputs and outputs for Mach 2 as it was at the time.

My Wabeco machine still with it’s HSE boards has full 3D, a fourth axis, a view cam camera attached, Accurite struts which read through the Accurite box and display and then into Mach 3, meaning at least that I have a measuring microscope, spindle speed read out and control via Mach 3 and still have spare inputs and outputs.  There are of course 2 parallel ports to handle all this.  All this was care of Sawston Steve.  He reckons that he has at least one board left.  If interested get in touch.

As an aside no one seems to ever mention the fact that if you have a couple of DRO (digital read out) struts from a big machine in a scrap yard ( Steve cut my down to the right length) or a rotary encoder without the read out boxes you can use Mach 3 to read them.  Therefore an old computer with Mach 3, a couple of old DRO struts,  a view cam and some sort of sliding x. y table and you have a digital measuring machine.  Again a rotary encoder attached to the headstock of your lathe, an old computer, mach 3 and essentially you have the basis of a highly accurate rotary measurement device, to cut facets, drill PCD (pitch circle diameters) or cut gears.


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FAQs / Re: plug and play with old machine?
« on: August 18, 2010, 04:58:46 PM »
With regard to your machine it uses a HSE board which was also found on the Wabeco Machines a few years ago.  I bought one of these machines unfortunately as it had to run the software in DOS and needed an expensive dongle from Wabeco.  The board was designed to be 2.5D and not 3D.  I must say that I thought I had been well and truly ripped off.  The board had been purpose designed to keep people using their archaic software and dongle updates.  Anyway not to be defeated by this I contacted my great friend 'Sawston Steve' a great electronics and CNC guru and he examined the board and after some pondering, cut some of the tracks, added some components converted the board to full 3D and ever since I have using MACH3 on the machine.  This was about 5 years ago and I posted it - possibly on the CNC zone with all the photographs.  We should between us be able to resurrect this data if required.
Regards  John (Bedford UK)

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Third party software and hardware support forums. / Re: GRIFFIN POWERMATE
« on: December 06, 2009, 08:26:35 AM »
My powermate worked about 2 years ago until some distant update of Mach 3 occurred.  It is now non-functional.  I had upgraded to the new Griffin software and so tried going back to the previous version.  Guess what - it still doesn't work.  It needs to be Art Fenertied!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

John

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