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  1. #1
    Join Date
    May 2006
    Posts
    107

    EMC gets fitted to a Leadwell CNC VMC

    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.

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Mar 2006
    Posts
    304
    Looks very nice - keep the pictures coming

    Another wonderful EMC example fitting.

    Greg
    Every day is a learning process, whether you remember yesterday or not is the hard part.
    www.distinctperspectives.com

  3. #3

    Smile EMC rules

    Come Rob and K its about time this was finished

  4. #4
    Join Date
    May 2006
    Posts
    107
    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


  5. #5
    Join Date
    Jul 2003
    Posts
    1754
    very nice work! that has to be the quietest machine I have heard.


    Any gotchas?

    sam

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Oct 2006
    Posts
    323

    Looking/sounding good.

    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.

  7. #7
    Join Date
    May 2006
    Posts
    107
    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

  8. #8
    Join Date
    Apr 2008
    Posts
    23

    Circular roundness?

    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

  9. #9
    Join Date
    Jul 2003
    Posts
    1754
    Come on now - don't leave us hangin!

    sam

    Quote Originally Posted by kudos View Post
    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

  10. #10
    Join Date
    May 2006
    Posts
    107
    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

  11. #11
    Join Date
    May 2006
    Posts
    107
    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


  12. #12
    Join Date
    Aug 2005
    Posts
    158
    Hi, great work on the retro! Maybe I missed something but did you reuse the original mitsubishi servo drives?

  13. #13
    Join Date
    May 2006
    Posts
    107
    Quote Originally Posted by pimpbike View Post
    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)

  14. #14
    Join Date
    Aug 2005
    Posts
    158
    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.

  15. #15
    Join Date
    May 2006
    Posts
    107
    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]

  16. #16
    Join Date
    Oct 2007
    Posts
    179
    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.

  17. #17
    Join Date
    May 2006
    Posts
    107
    Quote Originally Posted by cnc-it View Post
    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.
    Hi john

    4th into a spindle, sure would be no problem that i can see, as long as u had a good size AC servo on there or sorts and a quick one. u could just command the speed let it do it. just use HAL and a Mcode maybe to switch between each mode.
    just like im doing on spindle drive to postion with.

    Invertertek are well priced against the others out there for sure.
    we brought ours from Betch we looked at all the other before going with the invertertek unit.


    the IO is same with any control if u have the wiring manual wouldt take you long todo just need to see how to talk to your drives etc, drop on EMC mailing list plenty of people on there who have dont bridgeports now.

    rob

  18. #18
    Join Date
    Aug 2005
    Posts
    158
    Kinda off topic but take a look at this video on youtube. He's using Mach 3. The setup is jerry rigged but it works. The guy has a few vids worth taking a look at.
    [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0kIWpylrqk&feature=channel"]YouTube- MIni Machining Center does HARD TAPPING in steel part using new 4th axis[/ame]

  19. #19
    Join Date
    Mar 2007
    Posts
    574

    Re: EMC gets fitted to a Leadwell CNC VMC

    hello,

    We are with Linuxcnc and we have made a retrofit of a laguna FTV2, we have find a tool changer aerotech 25 tools, we have the same optidrive with a electric brake than you et we manage to put an encoder+index
    Our problem now is the spindle orientation routine.

    If you can give us the HAL file we will be very happy.

    I am working on a laser tool setter(at least 3µ precision and hopefully better) and when completely ok I will be glad to share it with you
    Lucien

  20. #20
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Posts
    1189

    Re: EMC gets fitted to a Leadwell CNC VMC

    Hi use the New 2.6 linuxcnc a Lot changed to Good for atc and Orient i used the examples on my bridgeport 412 retrofit it worked well ,..


    Gesendet von iPad mit Tapatalk

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