Am I the early bird again as there seems to be not much discussion on HiCON board?
Maybe integration with HiCON has been so easy for other people too - there's not much to ask?

Anyhow I'll share a few words about this control upgrade case I made recently as it was the easiest case I've had thus the control was new to me. VitalSystems I've known for years and our first dspMC/IP has been running in production for several thousand of hours now.

In next to the case itself.

BR. Arto

Here's the firs impression of the machine.

Made in Germany year 1983.
19" Rack taller than me full of electronics to control 3-axises. 3PH 400V supply 16A.
Frame surprisingly made totally out of cast iron and steel. HEAVY!
Moved with stepper motors - full step if I understood right.
Max. machining speed 600 mm/min. Positioning ca. 5000 mm/min.
Precise 700W spindle with water cooling 10-35 k rpm.



Next task - stripping all electronics and most of the wiring and some cleaning.

Woops.. I need to get the size set but where's the edit button..

Modified control:

I took the easy way and kept the original 6A steppers after making short trials and finding out the machining speed can be at least 4 X higher with new microstepping RTA drivers. Other possibility was conversion to Yaskawa AC servo's.

In the old wire connection box lays now the whole new control.

HiCON Integra controller
4 x RTA 6A drivers (XYZ + R)
56 V 5A SM PSU for steppers
5 V PSU for logic
24 V PSU for IO

OK. Bored with explanations and too large pictures...

You can skip to first raw video clip of how it works now:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OE_NNCMyABw