retrofit on EMCO PC turn 55

bobinater wrote:

Thanks Chuck


I will have to dig a little deeper and see if I can figure it out , or do the discount sale to get rid of it

any idea what they are worth, probably alot less than I gave for it:angry:


Bob

Functioning with the original software, the PCTurn 55 is worth 5-6K. Without, it is worth about 2K, as it is only useable with an electronics retrofit which is a good-sized project.

If it's a hardware problem, the turret shouldn't be too hard to fix--much easier than converting the machine to LinuxCNC, if I may baspheme in this forum. If it's like the 55, there should be 2 LEDs on the main controller board which flash when the turret is on. One will flash when each tool goes by, and the other will flash when the turret does a full rotation.

In my machine, there is a 5-pin connector from the main board. The rightmost line takes 24v, and when activated, this switches the turrett on. When the 24v is removed, the turret will reverse direction, backing up until it is limited by a ratcheting mechanism. The other four lines are gnd, 5V, and the two output lines.

In any case if one of the signal lines has gone bad, doing a retrofit won't fix it. So my first step would be to check to see if it works by itself, both in terms of input and output, and fix it if it doesn't.

If one of the two outputs has failed, you can probably fix it. There is no separate fault line--the main board only knows what the turret is doing through those two lines. So if the changer runs at all, I would guess one of them must have failed, and the main computer detects the failure, generating the fault.

jrkeat wrote:

If it's a hardware problem, the turret shouldn't be too hard to fix--much easier than converting the machine to LinuxCNC, if I may baspheme in this forum.

I don't think that saying that apples = oranges is normally considered blasphemy. I agree that if it is hardware then you need to fix the hardware. A LinuxCNC conversion of a broken machine will still leave you with a broken machine. The only reason to covert in that case is to have full access to the underlying "stuff" rather than a baffling array of black boxes (literally and figuratively)

So far I have converted a Prolight 1000 and a Emco PCturn 55 to LinuxCNC. Both machines used antiquated hardware, PCs and software. I chose to learn something new and move forward rather they trying to learn something that was already obsolete and hard to maintain. I should add that I am an engineer so these kind of projects are fun and rewarding to me but might not be to others. I have also done a lot of programming and I really liked some feature like loops and named variables that LinuxCNC provides. The more I use Linux, the less I like Microsoft.

cs

actually the tool changer works in mdi . I can rotate the turret with the keyboard function


but when I use a tool change in the program it errors out,


if i am not mistaken the format for the tool change in the program is as such


t202 which would be tool 2 offset 2 is this correct for the emco and for linux as well.



Bob

bobinater wrote:

if i am not mistaken the format for the tool change in the program is as such

t202 which would be tool 2 offset 2 is this correct for the emco and for linux as well.

That isn't how it works in LinuxCNC, though someone is working on making it an option.
In LinuxCNC there are a number of steps.
T3 sets the "tool prepare" pin to 3 so that the tool changer can get itself ready. (you might actually do this after a tool change on some machines, to get the carousel into the right place).
M6 starts the tool change process, including moving the axes to the tool change position, it sets a tool-change pin in hal, and waits until the tool-changes pin is set.
G43 applies the offsets for the currently loaded tool. G43 Hn applies the offsets from a different tool number.

So, a typical tool change line in LinuxCNC reads T4M6G43,

But see: sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&ati...539522&group_id=6744

In LinuxCNC the maximum tool and pocket number is 99999. I wonder how they plan on making that work with the Emco option?

John