[kudos]

Hi all

i throught i would come here and share some photos and info etc on my conversion project we are doing right now involving fitting EMC to an old 1985 Leadwell machine.
has 550mm of X travel
16 ATC
10M rapid

this machine had an old mitsubishi control fitted to it but we deemed it was time to change it over to something else for our needs. as we needed a control to do 4th axis work, as well as process blocks quicker many other things, As well as refitting the machines control we have also been bussy giving it a good well needed service on slides,ballscrews etc.


For the PC we have gone with Mesa 5i20 card setup, two cards infact due to IOs and 5 axis A-D control (at time of buying hardware EMC did not have the 5i22 support unlike now)

PC specs are
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-P35-S3G
CPU: E4600 Core 2 Duo- 2.4GHz
Memory: 2GB DDR (cheap as chips these days)
Hard Drive: Mtron solid state hard drive 32Gb plenty of room for emc and cnc programs (will be installing linux file server into office to access all programs over later so storage space will be no problem ever )
GPU: Asus GeForce 8600GT 512mb graphics card
Motion Control: 2x Mesa 5I20 Cards with 4x 7I37 I/O cards & 2x 7I33 Analog cards

(see wiki if intrested in the Latency test results)

here are a few early on photos, we have been doing abit on and off over weekends and spare time (im sure you know how it is)

Few photos from when work started


as you can see, guards still on machine, the old brain is on the table on machine, control interface is mounting on the arm hanging over the machine table.


These photos below show guard taken off, many things stipped of the machine, ball screws taken out so we can take the slides off and fit encoder to end of the ball screws (fitting 2500PPR encoders using Quad), to check oil lube lines & restrictors and also replace some slide matrial ( turcite little like PTFE matrial but many other additives with in it) on bottom Y slide





Here is a photo of where the old control was mounted, the new home for EMC


Here are the 3 axis drives for the axis motors, they are mitsubishi drives and motors fitted to this machine, as they use resolved for feedback we will be fitting incoders to the ball screws.




Here are some quick snaps of the mother board mouting to alli sheet plate which will mount where the old control once was.

if any one would like DXF etc for mother board mounting hole locatino etc please let me know, will be happy to share it so you could make your own up.



Hope to update with some more photos soon, as machine is now repainted and the slides are back on ballscrews back in, and most of messy wireing pulled out for new to be installed.

[cadmonkey]

Looks very nice - keep the pictures coming

Another wonderful EMC example fitting.

Greg

[stevebeale]

Come Rob and K its about time this was finished

[kudos]

here is a quick video of the machine in action, showing cutting some splines on some shafts on the 4th axis, and quick show of the axis interface in use.

the guard on table is to come off once we get the rest of sheet metal done as machine will be fully inclosed then.
next video will be of some real milling,drilling, rigid tappin etc.
for now injoy

[samco]

very nice work! that has to be the quietest machine I have heard.


Any gotchas?

sam

[123CNC]

Nicely done. I really like your axis speed & direction indicators added to the display.

Hope you will share some tool changing videos along with rigid tapping.

Thanks for sharing. I don't think I'm alone in marveling when people demonstrate there personal execution of using EMC2 and how well it can meet the premise on which the EMC project all began. Especially in the bigger iron. Breathing new life into your machine.

I would be curious to hear how would you rate it overall compared to the original Mitsubishi controls, assuming you ran the old controls.

[kudos]

hi, thanks for the comments.
yes we ran the old control for many tears (~20 years) as machine was not too old when we had it.
the old control it would kinda of wallow around, in drill cycles it would pause abit on blocks.
the first thing we saw with EMC was the block execution speed just no pause what so ever (not what one can see )

it was realy well worth taking machine apart to give it a very good service we had not i don't think it would be as good. so time well spent in redoing slides, lube system pipes etc. as u say it runs nice quite on screws and slides now.

i believe i ram them drives even harder as they are hardly working still quite a steep ramp.

tool changer works perfect, both ways etc i will be sure to upload a video of it soon.
still using the old Mitsubishi FR-SE ac drive one day i may upgrade spindle motor and drive so i can use the renishaw probe on it fully. as old drive is +analog only.

thanks, robert

[richardfp4]

Hi Kudos,

This is really well done. We are evaluating to rebuild
a waterjet with EMC. Circular roundness is important
for us. Apart from mechanical clearance, every PID filter
has some inaccuracy at the quadrants of a circle. It also
depends on the resolution of the encoder.

Did you already test the circular roundness for your Leadwell?
I mean just cuting out for example a 40 mm hole with a 10 mm
mill, after that measuring the diameter on all the places.
There are a lot of things in the EMC software that will need
optimization here.
I am very curious about your results with circular roundness.

Thanks
Richard

[samco]

Come on now - don't leave us hangin!

sam

tool changer works perfect, both ways etc i will be sure to upload a video of it soon.
still using the old Mitsubishi FR-SE ac drive one day i may upgrade spindle motor and drive so i can use the renishaw probe on it fully. as old drive is +analog only.

thanks, robert

[kudos]

well sods law i went to use the machine yesterday and now the mitsubishi spindle drive is
not working properly has a fault with the regen & ramp side of things. so does not brake the motor from a speed to zero and just errors out

maybe it was feeling little left out as everything else has been cleaned/fixed or painted!!
so right now looking at ways to fix it or have it fixed (best quote yet is £1300 - 1500+ or £2500+ exchange unit) or i change the inverter for new technology and get my full spindle positioning.

richard iv not milled a pocket yet and checked it out on our trimos but i exspect it to be as good if not better than what old control could do. most of it is into getting the backlash and jib strips done up right. also good motor tuning will help alittle. EMC is always keeping machine on the move due to its quick block processing times.

robert

[kudos]

quick video update

i was using the mill the other day and was doing some rigid tapping, so throught id better make a video to add up on here.
so here we have it

Rigid tapping M3x0.5 at 1500RPM in the video. tapping 8holes in total
i did try 2000rpm but found on way out most time was spent waiting for spindle to wind up so no real advantage but still worked grate
once i get the encoder board for the VFD ill try little faster as hope to ramp/accelerate spindle up quicker

[pimpbike]

Hi, great work on the retro! Maybe I missed something but did you reuse the original mitsubishi servo drives?

[kudos]

Hi, great work on the retro! Maybe I missed something but did you reuse the original mitsubishi servo drives?

Hi

thanks, we are very pleased with it its now the machine it should of been and can do alot more (4 & 5 axis ready etc) as you can see from the vids


everything is pretty much standard as it was, which was intention of this upgrade, only replace what is really needed to be replaced
relay cabinet was really all over place nutting like drawings so maybe id redo this if i was todo it again but nothing a day did not sort out
so main control board/cabnet was taken out and the hole unit that hands on the arm was taken off

i kept the standard Mit servos that where on the machine and the drives (TRA31 on this machine and DC servos)
i did retune them also on drive side, then control (emc) tunes them further tightens up the loop even more
NOTE: the Servo motors tachos go through a encoder board on the mitts motherboard this gets passed through to the motor this is the only bit u need to rewire for the servo drives

for drive pin outs take a read here - a post imade about the pin outs, that i had to trace and figure out my self so feel free to use it & compare to your setup but plz do not rely on it 110%
http://www.cnczone.com/forums/showthread.php?t=77549

the spindle drive was also the standard (FR-SE 7.5KW (7.5KW spindle motor on this machine rated max of 8000rpm for30mins 6000rpm constant)
this is now replaced with a Invertek Optidrive Plus 3GV (hope to put it into closed loop when encoder add-on arrives)

[pimpbike]

I'm really interested in the EMC software. How stable is it? Have you had any hiccups while running it? How long did it take to fully configure the software? I'm not a computer programmer how doable is it? I am impressed with your retro! Hope to get your feedback.

[jmelson]

I'm really interested in the EMC software. How stable is it? Have you had any hiccups while running it? How long did it take to fully configure the software? I'm not a computer programmer how doable is it? I am impressed with your retro! Hope to get your feedback.

Stable??? I've been running it since 1998, and it is incredibly stable. I've had some "operator error" situations where I pushed the wrong button and at first blamed the computer/software, but in 12 years of use, I've never had a real situation where it can be said to have made a mistake. I have seen it misread the jog buttons once or twice and miss that I'd let up on the button. That one has finally been fixed, too. So, it really is just about the most stable system I've ever seen.

Configuration is not just clicking stuff in menus, so that may be a bit more complex than some other software, but then it can do more, and is more flexible than almost anything out there. You have to learn how to use the Linux text editor, but that is pretty easy. There is an automatic configurator for stepper-based machines that makes things even easier.

It is also free, and comes with its own OS, also for free.

Jon

[kudos]

I'm really interested in the EMC software. How stable is it? Have you had any hiccups while running it? How long did it take to fully configure the software? I'm not a computer programmer how doable is it? I am impressed with your retro! Hope to get your feedback.

Hi, glad you like what you see, we to are really impressed with the machine now. it was always "lazy" with the Mitts control, now with EMC the machine springs into life and moves and works like it should have. block execution time is very fast which makes alot of difference seeings as we now do alot of surfacing and complex shape milling.

Stable, well as jmelson very stable, iv never had it crash,fallover etc and i have run some very big programs through it now, leave control on pretty much all the time also.

setup software, a good few days to get it tweaked to how i wanted and like to use and wanted things to work. this is what is grate about it, if i want to edit the PLC or hardware configure to do something or tweak something i can for free, no call out just for a 5min job this is probably the best bit about it.

i would't say you need to be all that up on computers, if u can use a PC and are happy to read the manual (which are very detailed) then you should have no problem setting up EMC software.

as for the refit of the machine, this is a hole different topic , this took the longest part of the retrofit, using standard drives and motors and hardware. if you have all the wiring diagrams etc life will be easier.

See my Hardinge Superslant post on here for refit on a lathe also.

hope this helps some what, any questions feel free to ask away.

rob

[anitel]

Kudos,
Would you mind posting your emc config files for the Mesa 5i20's / 7i33?

I have purchased the same cards for retrofitting my (new to me) Tree Journeyman 325 mill w/ Servo Dynamics amps. I've built stepper based systems before but this is my first servo build.

Anyways, anything you can share would be much appreciated. I will return the favor by sharing my config once I get up and running.

Cheers,
Thomas

[kudos]

Kudos,
Would you mind posting your emc config files for the Mesa 5i20's / 7i33?
Cheers,
Thomas

Hi Thomas

no problem i will grab them off the machine today and send them over or something.

the hal file is quite complex now as Hal is also controlling the spindle orientation on the spindle drive but im sure you can weed out the parts you want to check and look on.

rob

[kudos]

here is a new little video i took today, to show of some of the tool changer and spindle orientation
tool changer is all controled in classicladder
spindle orientation is controled by EMC also in HAL

Spindle is running around 5000 & 6000rpm in this video, doing a spindle stop and orientation while going home in the Z axes.

as you will know, the CNC spindle drive that was on the mill packed up shortly after the retrofit, the spindle is now controled by an Invertertek VFD (Optidrive Plus 3GV) & brake resistor . EMC positions the spindle through the VFD for tool orientation letting the tool changer change the tool once rotated and held in position.

[video type=youtube]
[/video]

[Leblondmakino]

Hi Kudos,
Really impressed with the retro. Have you ever thought of having the 4th axis do turning functions too..? I've seen this done in mach using the swap axis feature (the 4th becomes the spindle axis), not sure if it can be done with Emc?
Like the look of the optidrive, are they reasonably priced?

I'd like to retro my Bridgeport BPC320 horizontal.
It's 4 axis but i'd like to add a 5th and maybe use the 5th for turning too on more complex parts.
The i/o worries me though! how hard is it to master?

Thanks,
John.