Hello Guest it is March 28, 2024, 11:20:32 AM

Show Posts

This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.


Messages - cjmerlin

Pages: « 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 »
31
General Mach Discussion / Re: Denford Orac 8 station turret
« on: February 13, 2011, 07:54:29 PM »
Hi, i'm pretty sure there 12v. You could test with a meter though.


heres the info sheet on the electronics in the toolchanger.

32
General Mach Discussion / Re: Denford Orac 8 station turret
« on: February 13, 2011, 06:35:40 PM »
Hi, Your breakout board wont accept the signals from the toolchanger optos directly.

I dont know if there are any breakout boards that will accept a 12v signal input, perhaps an email to cnc4pc explaining your problem may help.

33
General Mach Discussion / Re: Denford Orac 8 station turret
« on: February 13, 2011, 11:57:10 AM »
Ok, This might be a problem as those resistor values will need playing with to get your 5v levels.

Lets try this another way. What breakout board do you have? Does it have 3 spare inputs.

34
General Mach Discussion / Re: Denford Orac 8 station turret
« on: February 13, 2011, 11:31:53 AM »
TTL stands for Transistor Transistor Logic. It is a standardisation so all logic chips of that type can interface at the same level directly.

Attached is a very simple voltage divider that could be used with an opto-isolated breakout board.

A macro is a short "Basic" script that allows you to control Mach to do what you need.

35
General Mach Discussion / Re: Denford Orac 8 station turret
« on: February 12, 2011, 09:18:55 PM »
The 3 sensor wires output 12v on the original machine. You will need to convert this to 5v TTL input for most breakout boards.


If you are using a breakout board with opto-isolation the simplest way to convert the 12v is with a potential divider using 2 resistors and a zener diode on each of the sensor wires.

If your breakout board does not have opto-isolation then the purchase of an opto chip and resistors and veroboard would be a safer solution.

I have a macro for the Orac toolchanger but in the middle of rewriting it and will post once i've tested it.

See recent posting "Denford Starturn"

Hope this helps

John

36
General Mach Discussion / Re: Denford starturn
« on: February 10, 2011, 01:51:32 AM »
Electronics is not a problem for me so I'll try to help the best I can. It is also a bit difficult as my Orac has a home made breakout board so the setup will be different.

I'm assuming that you have bought the machine as it is with Mach running it and not done any mods yourself.

The motor forward and reverse is already setup in Mach as you have said which is a good start.

The next thing to check is the wires coming from the toolchanger coloured mauve,white and blue. Do these wires go to a circuit board (breakout board). I'm hoping that they may already be connected for use. These 3 wires are for the opto sensors to detect tool positions.

Perhaps a few photos will help to see what you have.  It would be helpful to know what breakout board is used to interface with Mach.

Sorry to hear you got made redundant, I'm sure we can sort this with a small budget. Once I got my lathe up and running it has been making me money ever since so I hope yours will do the same for you.


cheers

John




37
General Mach Discussion / Re: Denford starturn
« on: February 09, 2011, 07:10:13 PM »
Hi, I think my toolchanger is the same. I have a Denford Orac. You will need 3 inputs for the opto sensors, be careful with connections as the voltage going to the turret is 24v so you will need some electronics to get down to TTL levels.

I have attached my toolchanger macro that operates my toolchanger, have a look and perhaps Hood could help you make it better as it was my first attempt at macros, it does work I have been using the lathe pretty much every day for the last 6 years but now and again during a toolchange Mach seems to forget which tool it needs and the changer just spins aimlessly until I intervene. I have never sorted that and as it happens only once in a blue moon it is more bothersome than annoying but I would like to know why.

Hope this is of some help

38
General Mach Discussion / Re: Wierd LPT problem
« on: January 13, 2011, 02:30:53 PM »

Am I  having a senior moment day or what! I discovered the mill is ok, I forgot to put thr 5v for step dir on the gecko's back into the computer.

So,ooo, Back to the Orac, I have discovered that my Sinclair battery operated oscilloscope cant see the lpt step pulses. I got the suitcase sized oscilloscope out and there they were. All the ports are ok.

I then moved half the workshop and a good brushing of cobwebs to get to the back of the Orac lathe to discover that there is no 5v on the Gecko enable pins. I started to remove the screw from one of the drives and the 5v came back and everything's working again.

Arrg.

Thanks for you help hood.

John.

39
General Mach Discussion / Re: Wierd LPT problem
« on: January 13, 2011, 10:35:41 AM »
Hi, I got further with it today, I decided to swap my Mill computer onto the Orac lathe and transfer copies of my profile and macros.

As the mill computer only needs one lpt port I had to install the lpt2 card from the lathe computer.

When I got booted I had to configure the 2nd port and I got the axis to work again. The second lpt wasn't configured correctly as my
tool turret was spinning. I got the configuration right as the tool turret stopped but lost the axis again.


Now the bad bit, I then put the mill computer back on the mill minus the 2nd lpt card and fired it up, now I have no axis on the mill either.

Is it possible a bad 2nd port pci card could burn some pins on the primary lpt port?


Head in hands, looks like i'm 2 motherboards down now.



40
General Mach Discussion / Re: Wierd LPT problem
« on: January 13, 2011, 06:13:05 AM »
Hi Hood, Ok so I did that, freq says 1210mhz and time int says 9.4 and 10 (jumps about alot).

No progress with steps though.

When doing driver test for the second time after boot it says pulsing too fast and then settles down to "successful".

 

Pages: « 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 »