Biesse Rover 346 Retrofit

 Greetings.I work in a woodworking shop where we have three CNC's. Two of them are older Biesse's, one of witch is the Rover 346.


This old machine is having some trouble running the programs we need it to. The controller is too old and can only handle programs of a few MB.Im wondering how difficult is it really to retrofit a new controller? How well is it documented? Are there documents showing what cabels go where, or atleast what type of signal things should be hooked up to? I have a wiring diagram from when the machine was delivered here allmost 30 years ago :)I am allso wondering what cards i would need. A complete list would be very nice!And again, before someone comments "This is harder than using the original controller".... No.Some pictures of the insides of the machine.imgur.com/a/c2kVEzg 

Properly retrofitting a machine like that is not a small task. Program size limitations on most controls can often be worked around by drip feeding the program to the existing control rather than loading the program into the machine memory. Unfortunately I don't think I'm familiar with that particular control to tell you how for that particular example. Another program size limitation that can rear it's head on many controls is Nxxxx line number size limits. This may not be a real program size limitation. I often run into it with the NUM 1040 on our SCM Routomat. You can usually work around this.limitation by either leaving off the N line numbers completely, or if they are required, starting over from N1 in the program when you reach the limit.

Running a control in DNC (drip feed) mode, will often come with some program limitations. such as not being able to use goto statements or some sub program limitations.

Usually using DNC mode will require using a PC connected to the control in some way. Such as via an RS232 cable. But if the control uses a PC front end (HMI) there are usually provisions to load and run a large program via DNC directly from the HMI PC's harddrive.

To retro fit that machine you would need to identify the servo drives and VFD that control the servos and spindle in the control cabinet. (I don't think I see them in your above photo). Then determine what kinds of control signals those components use. If the servo drives are tightly integrated to the control (In other words inside the control box in the photo) then you might be forced to replace them with more generic stand alone units.) This would be much more difficult than if the drives were separate items. Finally you will need a count of the required IO bits (how many inputs and outputs) and their voltage levels.

From that info you can build the shopping list of what Mesa cards (or other io hardware) you would need to replace the control using Linuxcnc.

This isn't a project you are going to be able to do in a week, especially for your first time.

As someone who is currently doing a retrofit on a Homag P110 I can tell you it is quite difficult.   My machine is 2021 vintage so has Ethercat drives, VFD, and lots of Beckhoff I/O including IO-Link...over 200 I/O.  At the moment my retrofit is kind of stalled out on LinuxCNC and I'm considering using Beckhoff due to the time and cost constraints of getting the specialty stuff like IO-Link and EoE working under LinuxCNC.

Your machine being 30 years old you can likely can get away with Mesa cards which will be somewhat easier in my opinion especially if you have wiring diagrams.  It will still be a large undertaking.  There are a lot of great people here that will try and help.  Good luck with your conversion!

PS:  I think those Yaskawa SGDB drives probably support step/dir and/or quadrature.  I have used a Mesa 7I95T in the past and it worked well.  I'm sure others can make better recommendations when they have more details on your setup.