Hello,
I try to exchange the control of an old Emco mill with automatic toolchange.
The mill spindle is driven by an DC Servo with step / dir control.

The spindle moves the tool change wheel - so it is necessary to have the posibility to use the spindle for positioning.

The spindle works as an ordinary axis (axis A).

So my problems are at the moment:
how to get the DC servo work as a spindle?
 
I tryed SwapAxis(3, 6) but I didn´t get the spindle working

I would be glad for any help

I think you can set same pins for A axis and spindle, then use M3 and S commands for regular work and in toochange macro be sure to stop the spindle and use A axis.

If its VMC200 Emco then I may be of some help as I service one of those. If that is the case you will need 3 operations for the spindle

1. regular spindle ... rpm direction etc

2. index to home position set by the encoder behind the spindle case, to properly engage SK40 and leave them in toolchanger
also if the position is not correct the gear on top of the spindle will not engage properly with one on the toolchanger and will strip its teeth (plastic if its ruined order one from Emco they got replacements)

3. spin and count the proxy switch to change tools while in most upward position detected with one of the limit switches behind the z axis

toolchanger has one proxy more to detect tool No1 so its practical to have a macro for finding that one too.

Thank you for your help,

it´s an Emco VMC 100

unfortunately the pokeys plugin doesn't map the pins to mach3 - so SwapAxis doesnt work.
The "help" from Pokeys was - "read the manual" ( thank you pokeys ! )

then I tryed Mach4 software.
it was easy to setup the Servo as an ordinary axis (A)
set up the servo as axis OB1 and the connect the spindle to the motor OB1 - spindle working!

the plan now is to switch the axis with a mechanical relais A(axis) <-> OB1 (spindle)
the rest should be less problematic (hopefully?!)

Hello Loupo,

I am facing the same challenge:
EMCO VMC100, conversion to MACH4 with Pokeys57CNC. Were you able to solve the problem with the tool change via the spindle control at the time?
Best regards, Markus

So I have been down this road .Getting it to turn on and off is not the problem its once you start trying to run programs . I could not get my servo spindle to thread come to find out the Pokeys  plug in for Mach-4 Lathe dose not support threading with a servo spindle . I had to control my spindle with 10 volts.