Dear sir/madam,
I am relatively new to forum and to CNC.
Basically I have both a Boxford VMC190 and a TCL160. I have been trying to convert the Boxford VMC to Mach3.
I decided to start on upgrading the VMC190 first (maybe bad decision?).
My purchases thus far have been:-
1. Smoothstepper board and house in seperate box (the intention is to use one smoothstepper to control both machines).
2. 5axis CNC Breakout Board off fleebay
3. THB7128 Stepper motor drivers boards off fleebay.
I housed the smoothstepper board in it's own case with it's own power supply. I wired the old stepper motors to the above driver boards using the original power supply and connected these to the 5axis CNC breakout board. I disconnected the power to the original stepper motor drivers. I have not removed anything from the machine thus far.
Top and bottom of it, I can get the machine to run for all 3 axis using Mach3 but I also have an autotool changer facility on this machine which runs off a separate PLC. Firstly, I cannot see an option on the 5axis CNC Breakout board for tool change, even if I could see an option I am struggling to understand where to feed this switch to on the VMC.
Is anyone knowledge on the forum that can help with this query?
I have photos of the internal of the machine which I can post on here if that helps.
Regards
Steve