[awemawson]

I have a cnc lathe equipped with an ancient Numericon 850 control which I am resurrecting. Long term my goal is to put MACH3 on it, but initially I want to get the 850 running so that I can poke arround the existing set up to see what I have.

It was tripping my main RCD (neutral - earth leak) which I traced to supression caps on a power supply (now replaced) and it started up and was ok for 30 mins, but developed a fault with '@' signs everywhere, now we just have random characters on the screen and no response to keys. There was a fair amount of dust build up on the cards, which I've now cleaned but to no avail.

Ideally I'm after an 850 for spares, and or any circuit diagrams of the 8085 based control

[awemawson]

Well, loads of progress. I've spent weeks mapping out the circuit boards of this controller and generating circuit diagrams. Of the 11 cards I've now done 6, which has allowed me to work out the address map of the RAM, ROM & I/O for the 8085 processor. I've acquired an HP logic Analyser, learnt how to use it, and followed it through it's start up sequence, and have so far found 6 ic's faulty. Having changed them, I now can talk to the controller from it's keyboard and get sensible responses.

No idea if it's i/o to the servo system is working, and the next step is to put it back into the lathe and start the serious stuff

I'm rather nervous powering up the three phase to the servo side of things, as it's been sitting idle for several years. I'd like to bring it up to full volts slowly to give the various electrolytic capacitors a chance to re-form. If it was single phase I'd do it with a variac, but not so simple being three phase. Any suggestions?

[awemawson]

Has anyone any information on the Memtec 250B cassette tape deck? This controller uses one, and I have an issue that may be the deck or it may be the controller. Memtec will sell me the complete 60 page manual on the deck for $250, but all I want is the pin out of the interface - anyone know?

It's illustrated at the bottom of this page:

Products

BTW I was suprised they still had gen, but apparently these things are used on Patriot missiles!!!!

[awemawson]

OK I think I can now put this one to bed. Micon controller now back up and working (8 ls ttl i/cs replaced) and I have acquired a replacement cassette deck. I now have a few Micon 850 spares, and circuit diagrams of most of the controller including the cassette deck. Heck it's only 28 years old !!!

[valys99]

Hi,
Recently I bought a lathe NUMERICON 850 interface but has some problems and fail to turn it on. We saw that in 2004 you fixed one like that. I don't have any documentation on it. Can you help me with documentation, wirring digrams... or anything you have.

Green CNC lathe - 1st Machinery THIS IS THE LATHE I BOUGHT.

Thank you.

[valys99]

Hi,
Recently I bought a lathe NUMERICON 850 interface but has some problems and fail to turn it on. We saw that in 2004 you fixed one like that. I don't have any documentation on it. Can you help me with documentation, wirring digrams... or anything you have.

Green CNC lathe - 1st Machinery THIS IS THE LATHE I BOUGHT.

Thank you.

[awemawson]

Un-named person from Romania,

I spent months reverse engineering the Micon 850 and produced circuit diagrams, however they are in 'Altium Protel' format, so you will need to load Protel to be able to read them.

What you have there is an 'Eagland Chipturn' cnc lathe, which is a Colchester Chipmaster bed and headstock manufactured by a chap called Eagland in the mid 1980's.

I can put you in touch with two other owners, and also a man who used to repair them, but not on a public forum. PM me your email address and I will put you in touch, but please use your proper name - it is only polite when asking for help.

<<<Meanwhile here is a document that I wrote for the tool turret that happens to be in MS Word format >>> ** sorry it's too large to upload to the forum **

Regards,

Andrew Mawson

[valys99]

Hi Andrew,

I try to send you a PM but i can't "awemawson has chosen not to receive private messages or may not be allowed to receive private messages. Therefore you may not send your message to him/her"

Thank you

Valentin Sandu
e-mail:[email protected]

[awemawson]

Valentin,

I've emailed you directly. Odd about the pm's - I've just checked my settings and they seem to allow PMs so goodness knows what's going on there

Andrew