Retrofitting a 1986 Maho MH400E

Hello people,greetings from Bulgaria.Five months ago bought Maho MH600C with idea to retrofit it with Linuxcnc . It was in not working condition because of spindle drive failure. There was some dead operational amplifiers and capacitors in the TRK6 drive, but after their replacing spindle (and the whole system)works properly. Yesterday arrives the mesa set 5i25/7i77/7i84 .And now -the first problem:the linear measuring scales are Philips. Can someone give me solution how to adapt them to mesa 7i77 ?Or just to replace them with new ones? I found a some kind of converter offered from local engeneering company ,but i dont know will it work? www.bulgarianindustry.bg/assets/cms/Imag...verter_datasheet.jpg
The topic is very helpful ,and is one from the reasons for buying MAHO!

Hi,

Sascha (linuxcnc-ethercat) has done this a few years ago with an MH600C.

github.com/sittner/lcnc-mdsio

unfortunaly the used fpga spartan 3 board is no longer available.

But depending on your electronic skills, you can use or mod the "maho-encoder" board and implement the
phillips interpolation with an mesa fpga. (i am not firm with the mesa boards, but if there is acces to enough analog pins in theory this should work)

The function of the scales is documentaded and also the vhdl files for phillips are on github.

not all docs online, but our server doesn't forget things....

Issyvarsano is in Bulgaria and makes his own LinuxCNC boards based on the Mesa firmware.
imgur.com/20vh4rr
Is an example.
Whether it is him making the Maho boards, or someone else, I wouldn't know.

Hello from Romania , very interesting and inspiring post , i own two Maho , one is 500c model ,this one can be retrofited with LinuxCnc  , but the second is 500W cnc 132  , point to point straight cut control , heidenhein ,  but  the model uknown ,  with  single servo  and 3 cluctch for each axis, 
question is : can be retofited with LinuxCnc?

Best regards 

Yea ans No, cause you on can move on axis at the time and you have quite a backlash in the spindles.
So a simple retrofit is not possible. But If you change to ballscrews and a servo for each axis you can retrofit it.
ThisOldTony did a Mac3 retrofit on a 400p there you see what I am talking about