heideinhain encoder sine outputs, conversion?

hey all,
i have had good luck with my first retrofit of a manual bridgeport, but some changes have been made in my workshop and i took all that stuff off and made it manual again. i bought a mid 80s bport cnc with a heidenhain control and sem servos with heidenhain encoders. The machine is in great shape and the heidenhain control works, but damn i miss the axis interface and unlimited file size of emc. so i want to retrofit it! i would like to use the existing hardware in this bridgeport, bosch drives, sem servos wiring, relays switches etc. i have the pico systems motion control interface from the other machine. my problem lies with the encoders., they are analog sinusoidal outputs, which i believe are 1v peak to peak. the pico boards only accept a square wave, and i dont have the quadrature option so i would only have a b and z., unless i talk to jon elson and upgrade that. does anyone know of a card that i can wire my 3 axis encoders to that will convert the signal to square wave, then i can breakout of that to the pico encoder board? i dont know how easy it would be to find an incremental encoder to retrofit onto the motors so thats why i am asking.

thanks

steve

ISTR the someone doing a Heidenhain control retrofit was able to get quadrature outputs from the original Heidenhain
encoder interface portion of the old control.

You probably dont want to just square up the sine/cos Heidenhain encoder outputs as you would lose resolution, since the original interface does interpolation

Heidenhain sells converter boxes. You can find them on ebay.
Which one you want depends on what type of signals the encoders produces and how much interpolation of the signals you want.
EXE converters are for current signals
IBV are for voltage signals (much harder to find on Ebay)
You can usually find 0, 5 fold, 10 fold,and 25 fold multiplication factors (interpolation) on Ebay with a little patients
What is the model number of the encoder?
Chris M

Hello!

I just started my first retrofit and have run into the same issue with Heidenhain scales. I has a LS 503 on the Y axis of my machine (haven't yet checked the other two), and I have a separate LS303 that I would like to use to build a network-attached tool presetter.

I have seen the Heidenhain EXE boxes, but they seem to be very specific to the scales that each model will work with. Has anyone have experience with these ?

I have done a bit of research about this the other night and stumbled upon a company, Data Device Corporation, that makes both a configurable PCBA and an IC so you may 'roll your own'. They also seem to have a good bit of info about this - seems with out type of scales you need to feed them a sine wave supply, and use a pre-amp on the lines. Maybe I will find more info tonight. I also found that Analog Devices makes a similar IC, and was able to find pricing of about $15 each. Attempting to build one is tempting ..... has anyone tried this?

www.ddc-web.com/Products/99/Default.aspx

Terms that will help you on your search: Inductosyn, Syncro, Resolver, R/D Converter

Thoughts?

I'm no expert but have researched and used EXE boxes.
EXE are specific to encoders that use 11 micro amp analog signals. Lots of older heidenhain encoders are in this group as mell as some acurite encoders.
the major difference between the different models is the amounts of interpolation. 0 and 5 fold is common on Ebay , 10 and 25 are also available.
I'm pretty sure 503 and 303 are 11 micro amp signal encoders (the zero seems to usually indicate this).
I have a pdf file from heidenhain that explains some of the different models.
The simple answer is as long as the signal is 11uA analog the EXE will convert to TTL square wave signals.

Chris M

i found two rsk elektronik converters, and they work at 10 fold interpolation. my ero 115 encoders are 11uA sine output. i have the specs on the encoder from heidenhain now, if anyone needs the pinouts or signal data send me an email. cant post them because they are .tif.

i bought cui encoders from digikey, they are modular, come in a kit with bushings for different shaft sizes. 30.00 each., and cables too. they are so small it should be illegal. im going to remove the heidenhain encoder from my z axis motor, make a mounting plate and mount this in place. there is a 10mm shoulder with a thread after that holds the heidi encoder disk onto the motor shaft, if you take this off, the cui encoder has a 10 mm bushing to fit. if you need to this adapter can be removed and there is a 6mm ( i think) pin that this adapter is set screwed too so it lowers the assy height a little if you can get that bugger off of there. check them out at digikey. i dont have the numbers in front of me, email me if you cant find them i will do the leg work for you.

I think im going to preserve the original end cover on the encoder housing so it should be pretty easy when i get to that point. still messing with getting the new comp linuxed up and im almost ready to get one axis moving.

steve

you wouldnt want to just square up the sine wave, the encoders i have are only 125 ppr, you need some x factor. im not an electronics guru, but i thought that i could just op amp it, lot more complicated though. i opened up the rsk box, (they look just like the exe probably made by the same people) and there is is a ton of circuitry in there.

well im off to bed. im studying the man pages so my kung fu will be strong when i need to get stuff working.

big jon t, glad to see you are still on here.

that guy is so helpful!

steve

One way to use the heidenhain encoders is to take the encoder board out of your Heidenhain controller, if that is what you have. That is what I did: See www.machineability.com/Bridgeport_series_II.html

This board resolves the sine and cosine inputs to finer steps and outputs the A quad B and Index pulses for each axis.

John F

Thanks for the link ! I think I will do that - makes it easy! Now all I need is to figure out my servo (axis)drivers and main spindle drive. You don't happen to have any information about Intramat TRM2 ?

Thanks again!