Messages

101

Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) / Re: Ex-Cell-O Spindle Wizard to retrofit

« on: March 06, 2008, 11:53:30 PM »

well I see the plugin for the g100 is a beta and that link shared above would indicate that there may be firmware changes need to get it fully functional with mach and gecko isn't going to make them...I guess I should assume the g100 and mach won't be fully functioning together any time soon?

I see the plugin for the ncpod is a full release but I can't find the ncpod for sale anywhere except as a beta still at oemtech.  Is that correct?  Was the timing error ever fixed?  Is it fully functional now or not?

I'm going to guess not many are going to wander into my thread but I'm posting my questions here anyway because this is what I'm going through to get the mill up and running and I'm just not finding the answers in my searches.

102

Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) / Re: Ex-Cell-O Spindle Wizard to retrofit

« on: March 06, 2008, 09:54:00 PM »

Because they are quadrature encoders 500 cpr gives me a .0001 resolution, right? 

103

Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) / Re: Ex-Cell-O Spindle Wizard to retrofit

« on: March 06, 2008, 01:20:38 AM »

On the note of the g100, I was just doing some poking around and found the latest install guide here on the forum and it says probing isn't working as of sept 2007--has that changed?  Is that going to change soon?  I definitely do want to get a contact probe.

I also want to run on a laptop over a usb cable without any worries of timing difficulties

104

Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) / Re: Ex-Cell-O Spindle Wizard to retrofit

« on: March 06, 2008, 12:08:45 AM »

The motors for the x and y axiis are directly coupled to the ballscrews.  The motor for the spindle z axis belt drives the spindle ballscrew--the pulleys are still 1:1.  The ballscrews are 5 tpi.  The motors are 110v 5.9A 1800 rpm.  The power supply in the bandit that the mill originally came with is only 60V though.  So ya, I suppose if I changed the power supply too I could close to double my max feed rate.  I'm just thinking there must have been a reason spindle wizzard matched the 60v power supply with the motors in first place.  Opinions anyone?

105

Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) / Re: Ex-Cell-O Spindle Wizard to retrofit

« on: March 05, 2008, 09:09:50 PM »

I also decided what to do about the 3 phase spindle motor.  I ordered a varispeed drive from WEG that takes single phase input.  This both takes care of my 3 phase problem and makes it easy for me to control my spindle speed with mach.  It has a pwm input.
http://www.weglibrary.com/pdf/cfw10.01.07.pdf

I still haven't taken the top of this thing apart.  If anyone is familiar with them and has any insights on what to take apart first to remove the belt and get into the mechanical mechanism it has for speed control now please do share.

106

Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) / Re: Ex-Cell-O Spindle Wizard to retrofit

« on: March 05, 2008, 09:00:47 PM »

Ok, I'm finally getting to this.

I've decided to rip out and keep only the power supply from the control. I'm keeping my DC servo motors and replacing the tachometers and resolvers with encoders.

The set up I'm going with is:

US Digital H5MD-500 encoders http://www.usdigital.com/products/h5/
US Digital EA-R10-W5 differential receivers http://www.usdigital.com/products/ea/
GeckoDrive G320 DC servo drives http://www.geckodrive.com/product.cfm?pid=13
GeckoDrive Grex G100 http://www.geckodrive.com/product.cfm?pid=19

I'm using the G100 so I have enough I/O for all the relays and limit and home switches and to give me acurate timing--I'm thinking with the G100 handling the timing I may run the mach mill software on a laptop and not have a computer dedicated to the control of the mill.

107

Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) / Re: Ex-Cell-O Spindle Wizard to retrofit

« on: September 01, 2007, 10:11:23 AM »

Anybody know a good place/way to find out what pins are what on these drives?

Anybody have any advice or suggestions on where to ask about the best way to free the spindle motor of the belt and even more importantly propperly tension the belt?

108

Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) / Re: Ex-Cell-O Spindle Wizard to retrofit

« on: August 19, 2007, 06:09:42 PM »

I've done some cleaning up and probing with the idea of keeping the motors and drives that are on it.  It turns out that a lot of the documentation I got for it is incorrect.  I don't know what the motors are but the drives are neither the siemens drives or the standard drives described in the bandit documentation I have.  I'll post pictures.  Maybe somebody is famliar with the bandit contro/drives and can share some helpful information.

I checked the power supply and it is functioning.  It is a 60V DC power supply.  I'd like to check the drives and if they are functional retain them and use pixie boards with them.  My hurdle to this is I don't have any documentation for the drives to tell me the input pins and they way they are wired doesn't give any hints.

The following drawing of the motors seems to be correct.


In the back of the Summit Dana Bandit box are 3 drive cards which connect to the resolver phase logic card/motor control card with a ribon cable.


Up in the card rack is the resolver phase logic card.  The resolver cables plug into that card and then it outputs its signals to the drives through a 16 pin ribon cable.


The ribon cable connects to all 3 drives.  I pulled the ribon cable from each socket and wrote down which pins are present on each connector in order to identify which pins are common to all drives and which pins are unique.  There are 4 pins that are common to all the drives and 4 pins unique to each drive.  The pin numbers I wrote down isn't an actual pin number it was just an easy system to use to draw a connector without making mistakes.




If anyone knows the pinouts of these sockets or knows where I can find the pinout for these sockets or how I can figure out the pin out of these sockets, or has any idea at all to get me past this hurdle PLEASE share.

109

Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) / Re: Ex-Cell-O Spindle Wizard to retrofit

« on: August 18, 2007, 04:51:30 PM »

I'm guessing I remove the front plate of the head that says Ex-Cell-O?  It has motors that drive chains to operate whatever is in there to mechanicall shift gears and control spindle speed.  Unfortunately I don't know what's on the inside of that face plate until I take it off.

110

Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) / Re: Ex-Cell-O Spindle Wizard to retrofit

« on: August 18, 2007, 04:31:55 PM »

is there a defacto standard way to remove the spindle motor on these things.  I want to pull this motor off so I can measure the shaft and bolt circle and find a single phase motor to replace it with.  I'm new to this and would rather not dissassmble more of the head than I have to out of ignorance.