[pete from TN]

Wow guys, Finally able to post here again. Kept getting some kinda error message every time I tried to post.

Anyways, I am still here and working steadily on the machine. So far I have gotten the computer setup in the pendant and got the pendant panel setup with the MPG, estop, and three momentary buttons. I also managed to get all of the drives and cards installed in the electronics cabinet. I am now actively wiring everything up. The LinuxCNC setup is installed and I updated the firmware to show the 5i25 card and it has the 7i77 card setup in it as well. Yesterday I was able to get the system running and power up the 7I77 card. I spent the whole day yesterday and today working on soldering up the harnesses for the CN1 connections on my Teco servo drives. Basically I used some brand new SVGA cable to make the shielded harnesses and soldered them into the pins. 13 seperate connections on a VERY tiny high capacity 50 pin connection was a real pain in the keister but I bought a decent soldering station, some fine diameter shrink wrap, some quality thin solder, and a solder sucker and setup the connectors in my old dremel tool stand which is adjustable kinda like a fly tying stand. Everything seems to be wired up now on all three drives so I should be able to test motor movement on the bench this weekend.

I did actually move the thread over to the LinuxCNC forum where I have received a lot of help with the system setup. I have help from not only folks experienced with LinuxCNC but also from people like Pete from Mesa who knows the mesa setup thoroughly. It is really the best place for me to post this stuff since they are already on board with what I am trying to do and several of the folks there have done Commercial machines like my Cincinatti Arrow. I honestly will continue to post here despite the issues with the forum and the uber annoying advertising bars etc... I have received a lot of help and support from a lot of kind folks here too. It is just that for the direction I am going there are a lot more people over there that know what I am doing and are doing the same things. Anyways, that is what is going on here and I should be hopefully testing motors here very soon. I also received my dual disk motor couplers the other day. Peace

Pete

[pete from TN]

Here are some recent pictures.....

[Janice584]

Glad things are coming along for ya. Making chips soon hopefully???

[pete from TN]

Okay guys here's some progress for today.... I think we are getting somewhere now!! Peace

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_4tX...ature=youtu.be

Apologies in advance for the crummy cell phone video I was too excited to go grab the nice camera LOL...

[skray775]

Cool!!!! You should have chips flying soon!

[Fastest1]

You do know they make a pin crimping tool, don't you? So much easier than soldering and better resistance to vibration.

[pete from TN]

Thanks Kelley,
Yeah I hope you are right. I am waiting on some 24v din rail relays and my power distribution block I need for the main power setup. This test was a hardwired setup of the drive and temporary interface to the Mesa cards to test the basic system. It went perfectly and the servo locked down nice and tight and once I got the drive configured with the proper parameter telling it to look for the analog signal input we had control of the motor in linuxCNC. I gotta say that I am REALLY loving linuxCNC and the Mesa card setup. It just works so smoothly together and it allows for seemingly endless configuration. These guys really know what they are doing. I have always thought the closed loop control was cool but yesterday seeing the LED readout on the drive showing the encoder input with or without power applied to the motor was really cool. Then seeing the same thing reflected in the DRO in linuxCNC I could turn the motor shaft by hand with the motor power turned off and watch the encoder feedback in the DRO tracking it real time. That is REALLY COOL!! Honestly this system should be an amazingly capable setup once it is comepleted. I remember when I first looked at the retrofit of my RF45 I considered going with LinuxCNC/EMC2 at the time but went with Mach3 mostly due to the fact that I was not familiar with Linux at all and felt more comfortable in windows. Well now that I have actually installed a system setup in LinuxCNC on Linux/Ubuntu I should have done this the first time. It really is not a big deal moving around in linux at all, it really feels a lot like windows with some subtle changes and EMC/linuxCNC is just really cool. I am very happy so far with my choices for the direction of this build.

Fast,
Not sure what you mean by this, the connectors that come from Machmotion are solder style connectors with the solder cup style pins on them. They are high density connections which I honestly was dreading soldering but once I got it done It was not that bad really. If there was a crimp on connector I would have gone with that but it took a lot of searching on the interweb to find out just what kind of connector it is actually. It is quite tiny and apparently made for some kinda japanese camera/video equipment. Not a lot of them out there. Initially I had wanted to find a cable with these connectors on each end and cut them down the middle and plug one end into the drive and the other end tie the wires into the terminal blocks for the 7i77. We could not find one anywhere let alone be sure of the proper wire gauge inside of them and be able to plug them into the 7i77 card. We did find that they make the same connector in a ribbon cable setup but since we are only using a dozen pins or so on the connector and the ribbon cables are not shielded I chose to just bite the bullet and solder them to the connectors I got from machmotion. Besides even tho milling machines do create some vibration the way these are setup in the electronics cabinet they should be relatively isolated from that. Peace

Pete

[Maglin]

Pete that is some nice progress. I like the Drives you went with. I'm actually waiting for the exact same couplers to come in for a project. You should be pleased with EMC2. I put it on a few machines now and it's super stable. Are you going to run with an overload monitor? I didn't have enough time to read the entire thread but what HP is your spindle? I would assume it's a 10K spindle. I would like to chat you up again sometime here in the near future and just see how it's going. Anyways I've been away for ever and just dropping in saying great job on the refit.

[pete from TN]

Maglin,
Hey my friend, long time no hear from you. Actually the retrofit is coming along pretty nice so far. It sure is nice to be using all new parts here. Waiting on some 24volt relays and my new power distribution blocks to get here and then things will be really moving along. Hoping to have full 3 axis movement with spindle and limits/homes in the next week or two. Honestly I am VERY impressed with LInuxcnc it seems very capable and so far it has worked flawlessly and the pncconf worked exactly like I hoped it would helping me configure the machine for the motor test run before final configuration. Wish I had gone with it over Mach 3 with the RF45 I would have saved myself some cash and had a much better system. Surprised to hear you now have several linuxCNC systems running you've been busy!!! Yeah gimme a shout whenever you want. Don't remember if you called me before I got my new phone or after as the number changed. If not send me a PM and Ill shoot ya the new number...peace

Pete

[pete from TN]

Update,
Okay guys I have been kinda neglecting updating this thread but a LOT has been happening in the retrofit so I guess it is time to update all of you on the progress. As of that last video I posted I managed to get a single drive running. Since that time I have completed the entire installation of the power distribution network for basically everything in the machine. Then I hooked up the E-stop circuit and the limit which is an integral part of the estop circuit. Tested this thoroughly and so far everything is working as it should. Basically if any physical limits switches or Estop button is tripped the power is removed from the drive portion of the drives not the logic so we KEEP encoder feedback even in this situation. Next I hooked up the Home switches to the 7i77 card and tested them. Other than having the X and Y reversed all of them worked as they were designed. So today I was able to hookup the Y and Z motors to the drivers on the test bench and initially checked the Z without motor power to ensure the integral brake would work and it did. Then i was able to hookup the Z motor to power and had control and lockdown of all three axis motors. Connor came over yesterday and helped me with LinuxCNC and setup my MPG to work as well as fixing me up with a GLADEVCP panel that has buttons for zeroing all three axes as well as toggle buttons for MPG control of each individual axis or multiple depending on what you want to do. That all works great now. We are working on using Lee's Cincinatti Arrow 500 Hal and .INI files to get a baseline PID setting so we can install the motors into the machine and start doing our own real time PID loop configurations. Right now we have control and very quiet motors on the bench test and no runaway at all. The drives are supposed to be PRE-tuned from the Machmotion guys so that is not surprising so all we need to do now is tune the PID loop inside LinuxCNC to control the motors in the machine. To do that we will apparently need to change the native control measuring system from Inch to Metric so that we can use the same basic settings as LEE came up with to get close hopefully. Then we can fine tune from there. With the Limits and E-stop circuit working properly and tested for safety I feel better about actually installing the motors to the screws soon here as IF something stupid happens and it runs away it will only get as far as that limit and be powered down. We have a Limit override momentary pushbutton that should allow us to jog off in this event assuming we have control. This is where it starts to get real interesting now as we finally get to start moving the machine around. I have to still order my Spindle motor encoder to replace the Resolver that it came with so I can institute spindle feedback and we have to also hookup several spindle mounted sensors to the Mesa cards so we can monitor the spindle position, 180 out sensor, as well as the power drawbar sensors for tool clamp, unclamp, and tool present. This is all obviously AFTER we get the basic machine running without closed loop spindle feedback.

So far everything is looking REALLY good and working as expected. I gotta give a HUGE shout out to Art AKA CountryBUBBA and Billy, AKA CONNOR on here because without their considerable knowledge and expertise in all things electronic and LinuxCNC I would not be able to do any of this myself. These guys are awesome and great fun to talk to. They really know their stuff and if they don't know it they are resourceful enough to find the answers.... Thanks so much guys...peace

Pete

[pete from TN]

Well here's another update...

Been working A LOT on this retrofit out in the shop. Had a LOT of help from Billy and Art on it lately. Billy has actually come over three times to help me with setup and tuning. At this point as of today we have all three axes installed into the machine, cabling run thru the cable chains and inside the table permanently. Started to put some of the chip trays back on the machine and have now managed to get the homing, limits, and soft limits configured. Basically I can turn on the machine, home it in each axis and we have been working on the PID tuning a lot. That is rather complex and fortunately LinuxCNC has the Halmeter and Halscope features built in which lets you move and axis and sample the signals to watch the error and commands happening. Pretty slick really. So far the X and Y are working very well and are almost silent at idle. The Z is not so simple so far because it carries the weight of the millhead without a counterweight on these machines. It is also relatively quiet but has a constant low dithering sound that we have not been able to make go away so far. The Z axis brake and the estop is all working exactly like we wanted and I actually feel quite safe running the machine around. These servos are REALLY fast and without much tuning we are able to rapid the table at nearly 650IPM. It is CRAZY fast and in only 20 inches you had better be in control or inertia will run you into the stops real quick. Right now I have it turned down to like 330 or something like that which is plenty until I get things really wired here. The Z axis precision is REALLY SWEET. I got my MPG configured which incidentally is the original one from the machine and can bump in .0001 increments quite precisely and repeatably. It sure is nice to have an ACCURATE machine LOL.

Tomorrow I will be cleaning up the chip guards which are still dirty after tons of cleaning already. They were just nasty. Should have them all cleaned up and back on the machine soon. Then I will hookup the spindle drive a Hitachi WJ200 to the 7i77 and see how it works. It is already hooked up to the motor and power I just have to get control wired up. That should happen tomorrow and then I can maybe do some test cuts soon. So far everything is going as we planned and I cannot thank Billy and Art enough for all of their patience and support thru this adventure. Still a LONG way to go and I am going to order my spindle encoder tomorrow too so I can get feedback working soon. Then Rigid tapping is next once I get some test cuts under my belt. I ran the simple LinuxCNC engraving program in real life today with all three axes moving and it ran thru several times nice and smooth. There is a HINT of harshness in the direction changes so I will probably need to play some more with the settings of the PID loop as well as my accel and decell settings. Amazing how configurable LinuxCNC is. So far it is dead reliable and the soft limits are really sweet. Once the machine is homed you cannot jog or program a move beyond them or you will get an error or the jog will just stop at the soft limit. Pretty sweet.

I cannot wait to get the machine running so I can make some chips. It has been a LONG TIME COMING here to be able to make a simple part with this monster but now that it is getting nearer I am really getting excited about the prospects of having a fully functioning VMC in my shop. Oh I also got the Coolant pump VFD working and configured in the software. Gonna have to order some coolant finally so I can test it and adjust the flow rates to be most efficient. The Toolchanger I/O is all sorted out and I have started to hookup some of the leads to the Mesa card. Gonna setup the power drawbar pneumatics so I can change tools manually but I need the spindle motor driver configured so I can input the zero speed line for safety so the power drawbar does not try to fire while the spindle is spinning. Details man...Details....Thought all of you would like to know what the hell is going on over here LOL..


I am still posting in the LinuxCNC CNC machines forum and there is a lot of chatting in the linuxCNC ORC about my build. Some very smart fellows over there. So if you want more input about my build you can get it there. Peace

Pete

[bill south]

Great News Pete!
I kinda figured your absence was a sign of you being up to you neck in the conversion!
Keep us posted and we like pictures (when you have time)
Bill
:cheers:

- - - Updated - - -

Great News Pete!
I kinda figured your absence was a sign of you being up to you neck in the conversion!
Keep us posted and we like pictures (when you have time)
Bill
:cheers:

[pete from TN]

Bill,
Yeah man it has been interesting and so far not too difficult since I had a lot of help from friends like Lee, Billy,Art, Pete from Mesanet, Andypugh, and many others on the LinuxCNC forums and IRC chat. Those guys are what makes this possible for me. I need to take some pictures of the progress here it still needs some more tidying up but so far it is all looking pretty good. Went out there this morning and powered up the spindle drive, right now trying to sort out the parameter settings so I can try it out. These Hitachi drives are very nice....peace

Pete

[mike_Kilroy]

my inbox is cleaned out again if u want to send again

[slowlearner]

Glad to hear things are really looking up Pete. I owe you a phone call any way maybe I can find time this weekend.
I'm still buying equipment and trying in vain to get it all moved. I thought this was going very slow but several
people have told me you have done in 3 months what takes other people years to rebuild.
type later,
Scott

[pete from TN]

Scott,
Hey thanks man I appreciate your thoughts about my retrofit. Honestly I am not entirely sure who would say that about me LOL. I am just doing the best I can to make this machine work and work reliably. The thing that has made all of this possible is my friends. The other thing that I can say is that really at the end of the day doing this retrofit on my Cincinatti makes me realize how much MORE difficult it was to do the same thing to my RF45. At the end of the day the RF45 required TONS more fabrication and customization and had to be made into a CNC machine with Ballscrew installation and custom mounts for the screws as well as the motors etc. This machine was ALREADY a CNC mill and ALREADY has a toolchanger on it, it ALREADY has ballscrews etc.etc. When you start with that all in place and in this case it was all working well the job becomes much more simple. All I had to do is remove all the electronics and replace them with suitable replacements and make it work with the new control. So far that has been doable even for me with limited electronics knowledge and again as I said with the help of some very smart and talented friends.

If you want to call me this weekend to chat that would be fine I will be continuing with the retrofit I ordered my spindle feedback encoder today and it should be here probably monday. I have hooked up the spindle I/O to the mesa card and still need to get it configured. The spindle is powered and working and I am currently playing with the settings. Talk to you soon. peace

Pete

[overflowmachine]

Pete
I checked into this tread when you first started and the S%&t hit the fan around here. I have been so busy I just forgot about you. I am blown away by all you have gone through so far. I admire your no quit attitude and the lengths you have gone to in order to make this work out. You are truly a guy who wants the best life for his family and himself and I for one believe it's in the cards for you. I have two Arrow 750's only one is running and I may follow your lead. Heck you may just be able to make a Biz out of retrofitting Arrows once your done. Plenty of machines around gathering dust due to lack of support and people who know how to fix them. Bob Varney has been a great deal of help to us here.

Keep it up Dude

Ron

[mike_Kilroy]

Ron,

Hang around and keep watchin' this forum.... Pete has done great learning as he goes and doing with an attitude that if'n he wants to do it, he will and does!

There is also a SECOND Arrow complete retrofit that has recently been finished by a member of this forum.... He is in final 'machining hardest parts with most tool changes' run off now. When done, he too will have a complete retrofit 'package' approach available to share, complete will wiring diagrams like Pete will have.


These guys are AMAZING!

[pete from TN]

Ron and Mike,
Thanks so much for all of your kind comments. Yeah we are hard at work here on the machine. Managed to get a lot done today with Connors help. We got the spindle drive inputs properly grounded and configured in the software. The way we had it yesterday the spindle was going backwards and did not work in reverse. Today we got everything working and while we still need a braking resistor managed to get the drive to reverse and ramp up to speed as instructed. Still open loop as we are waiting to receive the new encoder for it probably on monday. We also hooked up a physical button for the power drawbar. We set it up temporarily with an And gate in the software with the spindle drives zero speed outptut so that it is impossible for it to work if the spindle is in motion. It is working nicely and now I can insert a tool and that is one step closer to toolchange. Also managed to get all of the solid state relays hooked into the Mesa card for all of the toolchanger outputs and hooked up the tool drum ram to two of them for extend and retract. We still need to hookup the toolchanger sensors and the spindle body sensors to the mesa tho. It all works fine now and we just have to start getting the Ladder logic setup so we can assign it to pins in the sequencing. Nice to finally see the spindle drive working and reversing and whatnot. At the rate we are going we still have some tuning to do with the PID loops for the axis drives and then we can probably start doing some test cuts with the basic machine. Oh yeah we also got the low air pressure sensor hooked up and configured.

I cannot thank Connor enough for his amazing skills with the LinuxCNC software. He makes all of this look just too damn easy LOL. He has even managed to make a custom GladeVCP that has MPG controls including MPG off and on and all four axes selectors with LED indicators as well as the DRO information output for the selected axis. He put a spindle speed meter as well as a future spindle load meter icon in there. The Hitachi drive has a special output and Mesa cards have the capabilty to monitor the inputs for a simple load meter. Honestly I could not be more impressed with LinuxCNC as well as the Mesa cards. Peter from Mesa is a freakin' genius and is helpful and available for ideas almost around the clock on LinuxCNC IRC.... Lots of really knowledgeable and helpful folks in there as well.

I plan to continue on this tomorrow and start really cleaning up and reinstalling the chip pans and covers tomorrow as all of the wiring and work with them has already been done. I have some more cleaning of the table to do before that tho or rather the underside of the table where chips have accumulated over the years. Kinda cruddy in there and want to really clean it because once it is back together it will probably not be taken apart again for awhile unless there is a problem.

This has been amazing and quite interesting and I am really glad I went this route. At least NOW if I do have a problem with the machine I can repair it myself. Still lots to do here and we are moving along carefully and one simple circuit at a time. Peace

Pete

[George604]

Pete that is some nice progress. I like the Drives you went with.