With the motor mount plates that cover the encoder pulleys back from having the pockets milled out for clearance for the new encoder pulley mounting I found I needed to drill out some clearance for the end of the encoder shafts too.  I did that by hand and now the motor mounts are done.




While replacing the broken auxilliary actuators on the spindle limit and home switches I figured out that someone had messed with them before and switched locations between the home and plus over-limit switch.  I put them back where they are supposed to be and adjusted them according to the documetation.  The over-limit switch cuts the drive power supplies at 0.200" before hitting the bumper.  The limit switch activates 0.030" before the over-limit switch and the home switch activates 0.020" before the limit switch.  I'm waiting till I mount the quill servo motor (still waiting for the belt) to adjust the lower limit switches.




With the limit switches corrected and working some of the front panel push buttons started working like they should and this sent me off examining the wiring and relays to find out why the rest of them weren't working yet.  In that process I found that many of the bulbs in the series 3 micro switch push buttons were burnt out or missing all together.  Honeywell lists them as discontinued with no replacement but emailed me some old documentation on the series which told me that the bulbs were j1 bulbs.  With that information and a bulb and a set of calipers in hand I was able to determine that the bulbs are j1 with sub-micro flange bottoms which are available from chicago miniature.  I continued into the relay panel to find that my relay lay out didn't quite match the logic diagram I thankfully was close enough that with a bunch of backtracking of circuits from what I did find that matched I was able to figure out what was different.  The logic diagram I have has a note at the top about the addition of the cr18 relay which is included in the diagram.  My mill does not have the cr18 relay.  My relays go in order and match the logic diagram for 1 through 16.  Then where you would expect to find relay cr17 there is a blank receptacle used for wiring posts in the back which is in fact what is called p17 in the logic diagram-- then the next relay is cr 3 which is where it is drawn in the paperwork, then relay cr-17 is where cr-18 is drawn in paperwork.  I labeled them all with a paint marker to avoid future confusion.



While I had the relay panel off doing all my tracing of circuits I pulled the "jog board" which handles zogging the spindle while switching the back gear and examined it.  It had an electrolytic capictor on it that had done what old electrolytic capacitors do and sprayed it's contents causing a little bit of corrosion on some adjacent parts but nothing bad.  I replaced the capacitor and reinstalled the board.  While tracing circuits I also verified the pinouts of the amphenol mil spec connectors to the harnesses for everything and labled the connectors with a paint marker.  This is where I found my problem.  When I removed the spindle motor starters and 3 phase wiring and connected the panel to 115 single phase I got a wire wrong.  With that corrected the rest of the front panel controls work and the drawbar panel has power when it should though itself is not working yet.

Since the internet seems completely devoid of information illustrating how a varispeed spindle drive works  I'm going to post some pictures and information here on it now that I've taken mine apart.

Not having any idea what was on the inside I took the rpm indicator off of the front plate.  It turned out that wasn't necessary.  The rpm indicator dial is driven by a worm gear connected to the varispeed adjustment shaft--both mounted to the front plate.  Turning the input shaft turns the indicator dial and moves a fork mechanism on the inside of the plate up and down.  It all pulls off in one piece.



That fork pulls up or pushes down a throw out bearing which moves the top half of the spindle pulley up and down thus adjusting the effective diameter of the spindle pulley.  The varispeed belt is basically a sturdy wide v belt.  When the two halves of the pulley are moved closer together the belt rides further out on the pulley; when the two halves of the pulley are moved further apart the belt rides closer in towards the center.  The pulley on the motor is also two seperate halves--idential to the spindle pulley parts except that a spring works to try to compress the two halves together so that it can react in oposition to the adjustment made to the spinlde pulley.  As the spindle pulley halves are moved closer together making that pulley effectively larger it pulls on the belt spreading the two halves of the motor pulley making it effectively smaller.  As the spindle pulley halves are moved further apart making that pulley effectively smaller tension on the belt is reduced alowing the spring on the motor to compress the two halves of the motor pulley making it effectively larger.  Thus the spring on the motor pulley maintains belt tension at a constant and the effective size of the motor pulley adjusts in the opposite direction to changes in the spindle pulley size in order to maintain that tension.





I found the following documents explaining the numbering of varispeed belts and how measurement of "pitch length"
http://www.jdv-belts.com/imagesjd/VARIABLE%20SPEED%20V-BELTS.pdf
http://www.gates.com/facts/documents/Gf000204.pdf


The belt I removed is very worn.  It was a 1922v332.  19 = the width of the v groove at the outside of the pulley at it's furthest closed position is 19 1/16ths inches wide.  I measured my pulleys and verified that was correct.  22 = the v groove angle.  I measured my pulleys with an angle finder and verified that was correct as well.  v = varispeed type belt.  332 = 33.2" length  I measured the centers of the pulleys to be 8.25" apart so double that for a contribution of 16.5" to the length of the belt.  That leaves 16.7" of belt length contributed by the circumfernce of the pulleys which means a 5.3" diameter at the pitch line of the belt.  My pulleys are 7.5" in diameter.  I'm estimating the pitch line on the belt to be .3" in from the top of the belt so I figure the diameter of the fully open pulley at the pitch line to be 7.2" and the diameter of the fully closed pulley at the pitch line to be 3.4"  Those two numbers averaged together = 5.3"  So the belt is the correct belt--probably the original 30 year old belt.

I finally got the power draw bar working and I got the spindle going so it's nice to know it isn't in the condition the power draw bar was, lol. 

The spindle is a 3 phase multi-voltage motor.  I'm running it on 3 phase 230V provided by a variable frequency drive.  I used a 4 wire cord to bring line 1, line 2, neutral, and ground to the machine.  That goes to a 30 amp breaker I put in the relay cabinet.  I haven't moved the 115 stuff over to that yet but I'm going to; that's why I used the 4 wire cord and brought neutral over in it.  From there I used a 3 wire cord to bring line 1, line 2, and ground up to a tyco corcom 20 amp emc filter which I mounted to the back of the aluminum bracket the vfd is mounted on.  I mounted that bracket to the bracket that the old reversing switch was mounted to.  From the EMC filter line 1 and line 2 provide single phase 230 to the vfd.  The vfd grounds through the back plate.  The vfd provides 3 phase 230 to the spindle motor.  Since it's being run with 230V the spindle motor is wired phase 3 to ( 1&7 ), phase 2 to ( 2&8 ), phase 1 to ( 3&9 ), and ( 4,5,&6 ) tied together.




The power drawbar while kind of cool was a mess electronically.  It uses an electric impact wrench for the turning and a pneumatic cyllinder to bring the impact wrench and drawbar socket down onto the drawbar.  It uses a 115v air solenoid to actuate the cyllinder to bring it down onto the drawbar.  The coil on the solenoid was bad.  It uses a relay to switch poles for forward and reverse and has some electronics to enable an adjustable delay between when the solenoid is activated bringing the socket down onto the nut and when the impact wrench starts going as well as adjusting the speed difference in the impact wrench between tool in and tool out.  This makes it work beautifully when it works and suitable for automatic tool changing but it needed a little diagnosis to get it going.  I started by replacing the electrolytic caps just because they are 30 years old and are electrolytic caps.  I noticed a bad transistor and replaced that as well.  I plugged it in to test it out and as soon as it got power it ran wild (and began blowing the new transistor).  At that point I had to figure out how the thing worked.  Since it's part of the summitt dana bandit gear and not actually  manufactured by spindle wizard I don't have the luxury of the schematics for this part but it wasn't impossibly complex.  I found the diode going from the transistor that was melting had 20 ohms resistance instead of no continutity and needed to be replaced.  Then I found the scr had less than an ohm resistance instead of no contiunity and needed to be replaced.  Now it works beautifully.





Able to reinstall a tool holder and ready to run the spindle I did just that and did some testing and adjusting of the varispeed so that the indicator which I removed when I took the varispeed housing apart was set back to the correct place.

And now I've diagnosed the last broken thing I know of--the gear changer.  It's operated by a couple MAC Valves air valves--one for high gear and one for low gear.  The coil on the one for high gear is bad.  Interestingly while trying to look up a replacement coil in the MAC Valves catalog online I found out they say they have a lifetime waranty on coils on every valve in the catalog.  I don't know if they have a lifetime waranty on the coils on valves they made 30 years ago or not but I'll sure be asking come Monday.

I went ahead and tuned the vfd a bit.  The motor is rated at 5.8 amps for 230v and a max of 8 amps.

I set the motor overload current to 6.5 amps.  The vfd manufacturer recomends a setting 10 to 20 % higher than the motor is rated for this setting.  This is the setting where the vfd starts doing whatever it does to bring the amperage down short of cutting the frequency.

I set the maximum output current to 7.5 amps.  This is the setting where the vfd starts cutting the frequency to bring the current down.

I found the auto torque boost produced better results than the manual torque boost so I set the manual torque boost to 0 and the auto torque boost to 30%.  That gave me a pretty flat amperage across frequencies without coming close to hitting overcurrent during acceleration.

I set the acceleration time to 3 seconds.  I could run it a little faster without hitting over current but it didn't really seem to get the spindle up to speed faster so why stress it.

I set the deceleration time to 3 seconds which gives some comfort from hitting over voltage for now.  I expect to turn this down to almost nothing when I'm actually running but I didn't have the spindle brake operating for this tuning session because I've got the airvalves taken apart for the back gear.

Well I've run into a nasty bump here.  I have the Galil AMP-19540 which I purchased new along with all the cables and modules to hook up to the DMC-2160 I also installed and had purchased used.  I wasn't able to connect at first because my laptop has vista and unbeknownst to me since it isn't listed in the documentation there are some special settings you need to make to get the galil software to work in vista.  I called there tech support and after we went back and forth about a bunch of stuff that wasn't causing the word xp came out of his mouth and I said "hey I'm using vista" and he said oh well you have to change some settings for vista.  Anyway after I got the file that told me what settings to change and changed them I was able to connect to the controller no problem and sends some simple motion commands to make things move just to check everything.  This is when I found out it was only displaying 2 of the 6 axiis the 2160 is supposed to have and that the controller is displaying as a 2120 in the galil software although the serial number on the board checks out and it has all the chips on it for 6 axiis.

I tried calling Galil tech support to work out this last issue before buying the software to tune the servos and the secretary informed me that she had been told the tech support department would no longer talk to me because my controller is used.  I talked to the tech dept manager and told him I'd purchased everything from them excep the control but he didn't care.  His response was "Upgrade to a new 2260 and I'll shower you with support."  Asside from it just not making business since to only support products for original purchasers  I don't consider it good service and don't want to stay in bed with such a company.  I'm returning the Galil stuff.

The DSPMC/IP from Vital Systems looks like an interesting control.  I haven't spoken with anyone there yet but the isntructions are certainly friendlier and it looks like it integrates well with mach.  Anybody have any experience or opinions on it?

I got four 30A8 Advanced Motion Controls amplifiers.  Comparing these to the Galil amp-19540 amplifier I returned I have the impression that Galil documentation is intentially vague and confused to keep their customers from realizing that they have limited options under software control for the same settings other company's products have been setting much more accurately and easily with potentiometers for the last 30 years.   The 30 year old bandit control I'm replacing was easily tunable with 3 or 4 potentiometers.  The Advanced Motion Controls amplifiers are easily tunable with the same few potentiometers.  Since I'll be using the amplifiers in current mode and closeing the loop in the control I'll have the pid parameters to configure there--I suspect I won't find them that mystical to configure.

After my experience with Galil I'm being much more cautious about giving my money out.  I seem to be in this kind of limbo period where there are about to be products that do everything I want but they just aren't there yet.  I really want to get my machine up already but then I'm not about to do business with companies I consider as unscrupulous as I consider Galil and I'm not going to jump into any of these other products that have a lack of response or slow response about what features work and don't work and what's being done to make them work.  Right now I'm holding out a lot of hope for the dspmc/ip though.  The feature set/capabilities seel bang on for running a machine like mine--they just need to finish it up.  I'm hoping to see the index pulse added to homing for the dspmc/ip control very soon and expect to go ahead and pull the trigger on that control then.

Usfwalden,
        I am working on a similar machine a bridgeport boss machine. (just look at my thread) I am interested in the 30A8 advance Motion control amplifiers..... are those servo drives?  My tool changer is manually operated by air (pushbutton) the speed control (vari drive) was controlled by air motor with electrical relays. I plan to use a stock manual crank in place of it and control  the speed with a vfd within limits. if I need slower or faster speed window I can then crank it up and down manually. the head has backgear as well.  It looks like the Smooth Stepper and cnc4pc   dedicated breakout board are the trick system as of now.  there seems to be a couple of bugs still but that is the way I am going. it also has a tac feed so we may be able to comfortably tap with a floating tap holder.   as it stands right now I intend to use the larkin Viper servo drives with outboard mounted heatsinks and fans blowing on the inside components. I am not sure that is necessary but that is the way I am going with it.

      I have enjoyed your thread. I am surprised I had not stumbled upon it before.

Happy Hunting
archie =) =) =)

Thanks Archie,

I'm very happy with the 30A8 servo amplifiers.  I would definitely recomend Advanced Motion and Control amplifiers to anyone wanting to run big DC servo motors.   The 30a8's are actually bigger than necessary for my motors but they fit where I was installing them and that's what I found in the quantity I needed.  a-m-c has both larger and smaller amps.

The setup is extremely easy and they let you test the system without having a control.  In the 30a8 doc there was a note to check the engineering notes for additional installation pointers which I did.  I'm using them in current mode so all I had to look at was page 13 of the engineering notes where there is a step by step for hooking them up and testing the system.  http://www.a-m-c.com/download/document/support/general/instnotes.pdf  The two things I would point out is that with these drives you are setting them to run your motors at the current the motor wants to run which makes them perform extremely well and that you can test the motion of the axis with the amplifier before you have a control.

The current adjustment is described on page 5 of the 30a8 doc  http://www.a-m-c.com/download/datasheet/30a8.pdf  The 30A8 amps are 30 amps peak 15 amps continuous.  My motors are 5.8 amps continuous.  The current adjustment potentiometer is 12 turns + 1 inactive turn on each side and linear.  So all I had to do was take 5.8 amps divide by 15 amps multiply by 12 turns +add one turn for the inactive turn = turn the potentiometer 5.64 turns from the ccw click to perfectly tune each amp for my motors.

I'm still holding off on the control but the motion from turning the test pot on the amps is very nice.

Usfwalden,
 I am working on a similar machine a bridgeport boss machine. (just look at my thread) I am interested in the 30A8 advance Motion control amplifiers..... are those servo drives? My tool changer is manually operated by air (pushbutton) the speed control (vari drive) was controlled by air motor with electrical relays. I plan to use a stock manual crank in place of it and control the speed with a vfd within limits. if I need slower or faster speed window I can then crank it up and down manually. the head has backgear as well. It looks like the Smooth Stepper and cnc4pc dedicated breakout board are the trick system as of now. there seems to be a couple of bugs still but that is the way I am going. it also has a tac feed so we may be able to comfortably tap with a floating tap holder. as it stands right now I intend to use the larkin Viper servo drives with outboard mounted heatsinks and fans blowing on the inside components. I am not sure that is necessary but that is the way I am going with it.

 I have enjoyed your thread. I am surprised I had not stumbled upon it before.

Happy Hunting
archie =) =) =)

The Belt size should be the standard one for the converted mill They would not have changed it for the conversion. Trust me they are a hard job to put back in    Did it twice on the mill I used.