Hi there

We bought a old Reichenbacher CNC gantry router from 1993. Its a 6.5 ton beast with a 9kw main spindle and a 16 position rotary tool change. It sports a Sinumerik 810M controller and bosch servos and servodrives.

Here is a thread on cnczone about it http://www.cnczone.com/forums/commercial_cnc_wood_routers/124586-look_what_i_bought_6_a.html

The machine is top quality from back when they made everything to last a 100 years. The only downside is, that the controller is way outdated and we are limited to 30kb of program memory and a transfer speed of 1200 baud.

So we decided to swap the controller and mach is the choice, mainly because we can customize it and I used it on a couple of machines before. The servo drives are +-10v and the servos are "duel" encoders with one going to the servo drive and the second going to the controller.

Ive searching through a ton of information and came up with two choices Galil and dspMC/IP, im leaning towards Galil because of the more "professionel" look. Anyway, this thread are not about one vs. the other but I have a couple of questions regarding Galil:

1. Whould I gain anything from choosing the 4040 over the 4143? I will use the board only as motion/spindle control and for input of limit and home switch (24v). There are over 160 I/O, but these are going to be handled by a PLC.
2. Do I need to buy the Galiltools software to tune the axis? All I want to do is to tune the once and use Mach, no custom interface or anything.
3. Are there any advantages of PCI vs. ethernet? I could go with a 1842 or 1846 and a ICM-2900

I probably have a lot more questions, but this is it for now. Thx in advance

1.  4143 will do fine.  The 4040 will be overkill, but they are nice!
2.  If you have never tuned a servo PID loop, then I would suggest you buy the Galil Tools software.
3.  I like Ethernet.  1 wire to the Mach computer instead of many.  The Galil can sit in the control cabinet and make your retro-fitting life a lot easier.

BTW, you will need a Galil axis to control your spindle.  So take your total servos and add one axis for the spindle to come up with the total number of axes you need on the Galil.

Steve

Hi smurph

4143 sounds the way to go then.

I have been trying to map the pin out corresponding to the current controller as I will make an adapter board, so the control can be swapped back and forth when im testning. Im having a little difficulty understanding the different labels of both the sinumerik controller and the galil. This is my best shot so far, would be nice if somebody could comment, if I could get the pin right, I would feel comfortable enough to place an order