7i97 + 7i76D with Mesa Configuration Tool

Agreed. The 5i24 wasn’t available when I did the retro on my now scrapped Brown and Sharp. I find the 7i84 to be much easier the the 7i37 due to the screw type terminal blocks. Seems like I used a 5i23, 7i49, 7i44 , 7i33, 7i84 and a 5i20. I had 3 axis of resolvers and 4 of encoders. The 5i20 handled the encoders and opto I/o and the 5i23 the resolvers and serial I/o. It would have been easier to use the 5i23 with the resolver board, encoder board and 7i44. Patch the 7i84 for the pendent to the 7i44 and use a 7i90 in “ just I/o “ for the opto racks. Lesson learned.

pulled for encoders, these resolvers are a bit nonstandard, so instead of wasting a ton of time, I am putting encoders on as we speak

I have been struggling to figure out exactly which drives my machine has, operationally they look identical to the gettys drives. However getting them to work is looking very difficult.

Also the reliance V*S spindle drive is bonkers. this thing is doing way more stuff than I need it to do. I just need it to go forward and backwards, that is all I need it to do

If you have any input on how to actually get this stuff to work, that would be phenomenal. I am at the point where it is do or die, I either make this garbage work or I replace it all. Financially at the moment that would leave the machine sitting for a extended period of time doing nothing but eating space.

this manual is all I have been able to find regarding the arcamatic 900 type systems, but it is light on explaining exactly how the driver interact with the control system

drive.google.com/file/d/1ljKkqcASbKIMjf9...mM4/view?usp=sharing

by lookin at the schematics and what's on the drives themselves, the circuits do not actually match up.

Lets look at the slide drives X and Z

we have 120vac on terminals 1 & 2 check

tach on terminals 3&4 check

we have our velocity commands on terminals 6 & 7

No here's where things get really fucking stupid

10 and 11 are motion enable per the drive labeling on the housing, those are wired to constantly be enabled btw, I am not sure this was a good design choice on the part of cincinatti if the following things are true

things are about to get VERY DUMB

terminal 13 is essentially the emergency braking function, is is controlled by a coil relay which is illustrated as being normally closed, if you bring the 24v of NC voltage to terminal 13, the drives go full power and the braking resistor takes a bunch of heat. I suspect that this is either part of Estop OR the controls were using this to decelerate the machine. not really sure why the hell you would do this with a normally close relay however. Seems like you would risk destroying the drives if the wire for the power supply got loose. ohhh, but that wire from the 13-cr doesn't go directly through the relay, it goes to other contactor relays, yay, not documented

even dumbers

terminal 9 is most definitely not a drive permit afaict, and when it gets power then the contactor close for 1-con, if I bring power to terminal 9 the motor hum, and show voltage. that power being 24v from closing the contactor to enable power to the RCS

it was at this point, one of the RCS in the Z drive failed, despite me verifying the voltages are the tach input were correct and the inputs were at 0v. I have a spare RCS so I can repair it

the problem is that whoever designed this machine, was either a genius, or the most incompetent electrical engineer in history. I lean towards the ladder. This thing has no less then 100 points of estop connections. First off, if you actually need the Estop, shits already in too late mode, secondly, the correct way is to watch for deviation from commanded motion. third the estop circuit should turn off the contactors and enable any braking in the machine, the spindle and the X have brakes, it didn't need to be the type of circuit it is, a simple relay to shut off the contactors and turn on the brakes would have been more than sufficient. it would have also been safer and more reliable to build the Estop this way. Very much has a design by committee look to it where legal was obsessing over imaginary safety concerns or the engineering team was exceptionally paranoid and there was poor leadership. I suspect a mix of both.

Lastly and most importantly, it looks like whoever did the engineering work, basically tried to design a analog switch gear driven CNC machine, and this thing had a very powerful for it's time intel based computer with a gui and a monitor. It wasn't lacking for computing power.

This machine was definitely in the class of what I would call electrically /functionally fragile. Meaning it had far to many places where failures even benign ones would cause the machine to be inop or cause it to have catastrophic malfunctions

I gutted ALL of the controls wiring last night, time to start over. I think I can get the spindle drive to work, maybe, it is a reliance drive, the documentation is kinda sketchy, I will attach that PDF which is again, not exactly related to my drive but it is all I have. I am going to just rebuild the entire enable circut and put a 500 ohm 10 resistor across the drive outputs, that should get the RCS transformer to balance and show voltage so I can test it without damaging the machine.

Push comes to shove, I am all about replacing these drives, the motor look very robust however. but if I can't get these drives working soon, I will be looking to replace the drives and if that proves undoable, AC servos it will be.

spindle documentation, I have a V*S drive in the 30hp or 200 amp range, I am shopping for the exact manual, unfortunately the model and serial number info appears to be missing from my drive. 

drive.google.com/file/d/1pYF7jGFJXQZDkMJ...vvs/view?usp=sharing

afaict, they are PM not shunt wound. I did find a set of DC drives that look as if they will work. I am digging further into this shortly. I believe I can make the reliance spindle drive work, but Cincinnati didn't even follow the documentation from Reliance on how to make that work either,

Honestly, I am going to beat this thing into submission enough to get it producing parts and as fast as I can afford to, replace ALL of the servos and drives in it with modern AC stuff. thankfully nothing I am making will have a tolerance tight enough to be to worried about it.