Retrofitting an 89 Chiron FZ12W aka Igor

Hi after getting much help here in this forum I think I should show what my linuxcnc project is.

I am retrofitting an Chiron FZ12W from 89. I call this machine Igor. It came to me a while ago when I was actually searching for a small mill like a decker fp1 or so. A friend of mine bought this machine from his employer where is was used for testing Drills in a laboratory.
He had it stored in barn and the needed to free up the space, so I bought it knowing, I have no Idea how to use it.

so one day Igor was standing in my shop:

so It took me I think a year to get it running again with it's old control, cause some parts of the machine like filters and chip transport were simply cut of, so the emergency stop was open and Igor didn't power up. It Took me a while to fix this cause many changes this machine has seen over the years were not documented. Also some switched were not working. But after a while she was running. at first I was hoping that which old sinumerik was able to reload data via a serial connection, but the control was to old. This was the point were I realized 28Kbit of memory is not much and I decides to give Igor a new brain.
After some research I settled for Mesa cards and linuxcnc. So I made me a documentation of all the IO's and other interfaces an began with my work by setting up the computer and the Mesa cards:

After this I removed the old control and was starting to install the Mesa cards and did a bit of rewiring:

I managen to get the first movements of the machine two years ago, when I was about to relocate an Igor was coming with me, so he was moved on an truck:

So Igor arrived in his new Home:







So when I was not working or spending time to refurbish my new home. I was spending time in the shop getting it usable and when ever there was time I took care of Igor.

It began with some leveling feet:



and finishing the control panel:





This was my first temporary setup with gmocappy. Now I was able to beging working on getting Igor finally running again.



then it was time to get the tool changer running:





and I also got the table working:



so I was able to make the first chips

but the turned display was not working as I hoped especially when accessing Igor remotely, so I made some changes to the control panel:



I also made some changes to the rest of the machine I added an extra 24V Powersupply for the Mesa Cards so I can power them up for testing without switching on the main machine Power.



Then I began with using probe_basic and tried to use most of my scripts I used with gmocappy.

and it all seems to work after a litte bit of try and error

Then I updated qtpyvcp without a making a backup first, so I had to restart and I used this opportunity to really adjust to probe basic
I also used the time to make some further changes on the machine.
I got the cooling system a temporary fix, but it is really working well, so it might stay longer than expected:





since I am using probe basic it seems only right to use probes. I will start with a tool probe but I added enough wires to the gantry, so I can add a 3d touch probe later:





The distance between my table and the lowest point of my spindle was always a little high:



so I build riser table out of aluminum profiles. this as also the place where my tool probe will sit on. and I can use it for funny work holding.






I also used new setup the probe_basic to adjust my tool change script to work with the dynatc widget:



and I modified the tool measuring script to take my table into account:



many thanks for all the support I got here.

cheers Patrick

Yeah looks proper good work. Igor lives again

Latest mod to Igor is a wireless hand wheel:



I think for hardware I am done. Now the enhancements of the gui can start. There are three things I want to improve right now.
I would like to be able to calculate and enter values for setting the wcs. I have made me a button on the hand wheel for setting 0 and diving the value by two. This is handy when the wcs is in the middle of a part. But I would love to have a more flexible way of setting it in the gui.

A bigger and customised table.

The last thing is to improve the setup process.
I have a setup sheet shown in one window, but I would like to improve it by also showing it in the atc section and the offsets page. Or maybe make a dedicated setup page.

That is awesome!! Are you happy with that wireless handwheel? I was thinking of getting one.

Yea the wheel is cool I don’t use the keyboard or touch screen for jog anymore. Also I use that macros for setting the wcs

Do you have your config files for qtpyvcp or the whole machine somewhere? I am very interested in the customization you have done - it looks great - some of the most polished interface I have seen.

Maybe could put them in a github repo for our benefit and your archiving as well? If they aren't already.

I'm converting a Fadal 4020 from 1988.

Cheers! Chester