[ts4tomh]

Hey, folks, I'm new to CNC machines, but hve been around electronics for a long time. I have acquired an Eagle 400 mill with Anilam 1400 CNC. I have prints for the wiring, but nothing at the board level. This is the later version 1400, with saddle bag control boxes. The machine is wired for 5 axes, but has only three installed. The Anilam takes a rotary encoder to control position. On the Eagle these are attached to the ballscrew drives, rather than to the table itself.

I want to add a fourth rotary axis. Anyone have experience with this? There is a spot for another Westamp servo card, and the wiring harness is in place, but no card. Anilam doesn't support this machine directly anymore, and the local rep doesn't really have the time to help, though he is a nice fellow.

[Al_The_Man]

As long as the control has the ability to control a fourth axis, it may be just fitting and tuning an amplifier and motor.
If it does, I would look at fitting a modern amp such as A-M-C etc, these run in the more modern Torque mode so the motor does not need a tach like the Westamps. It is usually fairly straight forward to sub. one over.
Also you would need to know if the fourth axis encoder input is fixed resolution or configurable.
Al.

[gearsoup]

congrats on the purchase. I've only run Anilam 3200's, and they are a fine piece of machinery

[ts4tomh]

Thanks, it was a good purchase. The table trams within 0.0005 extreme to extreme, and just needed some cable repair to clean things up.

Thanks for the advice so far. I would love to hear from anyone who has done such a modified upgrade. The machine is wired and programmed to use 1000-line encoders to locate position. The encoder input can be reprogrammed, and it it couldn't, I could easily build a circuit to adjust (done that before). The encoders connect to a distribution board that talks to the motion control boards in the PC that runs the software.

[Brayden @ FPE]

Digging up an old thread here.. Just purchased the same mill with the same controls. Any more news here on the 4th axis upgrade?

First post by the way.. great site!

Thanks,

Brayden

Here's a link to what we do.

www.fleeceperformance.com

[ts4tomh]

Well, if you have the passwords to get at the "back office" of the control, it should not be too tough to add a servo-driven rotary drive with an encoder, by adding the necessary Westamp servo board, and cabling to the already-installed connector... assuming yours is built like mine.

In my case, I found a good deal on a very beefy stepper-controlled rotary unit, and decided to put a new control on the mill to support it, rather than attempt to retrofit the rotary table with a servo/encoder arrangement.

I haven't finished that project yet, but I have all the parts on the shelf now.

*******

Schematics are available for the control, although a bit sparse on detail.

I recommend you make a good copy of the hard drive, to protect yourself from an expensive event if the hard drive gives out. I removed it from the chassis, plugged it into another PC as a secondary drive, and used Norton Ghost to make a full image copy of the drive. You don't want to lose those card drivers and proprietary software....

[Brayden @ FPE]

Do you think it's wise to just ditch the existing controls and use a smoothstepper and new computer setup? I like what I'm seeing on Machmotion.com

I haven't used the machine yet.. Just got delivered last Friday.

Thanks,

Brayden

[ts4tomh]

If yours has the nice encoders and servo motors mine does, they are pretty beefy, and I would keep them. I'm still contemplating using the new drivers I got elsewhere, and putting a servo motor on the rotary control.

The control itself is another issue. With a servo drive on the rotary, it seems pretty robust, even if you have to feed programs to it via the floppy drive. And it's a lot of work to rewire all the e-stops and such. So I guess it boils down to whether the Anilam software is sufficient for your requirements, and how much you can recover selling the components on ebay.

Power it up and see how you like it. Did you get manuals with your machine?

[Brayden @ FPE]

No I don't have manuals, just the schematics. Do you have them?

I'm really leaning towards what Brian Barker did with his Eagle. I think that the mach3 interface will be much better, and I'm already tired of standing there trying to learn the conversational programming language with no manuals

Brayden

[ts4tomh]

No I don't have manuals, just the schematics. Do you have them?Brayden

Yes, I do. It's a lot of pages, complete with tutorials and videos. Want me to get a quote from Kinko's (next week) for making a duplicate set and sending them to you Fedex/Ground?

[Brayden @ FPE]

Yes Please!

Thanks,

Brayden