Pete's Cincinatti Arrow 500 Retrofit...

Thanks Pete,

That did it and we were able to get linuxCNC to load up. Then we were able to get the estop reset and enable the drive. The motor locked down but when I tried to move it got an error. Probably because our PID settings were complete guesses ... Trying to sort it now. Any suggestions would be appreciated. EXCITING to see the motor with power and ready to move for us LOL...peace

Pete

AWESOME!!! that is all.....

great news Pete , keep the updates coming

Thanks guys,
I know it is no big deal really but for me this whole retrofit has been a dream for awhile and I have wanted a full blown VMC here in the shop for years. It is FINALLY coming together. I honestly feel that despite the increased costs, getting all brand new components was the right decision. It is making all of this go very easy for the most part. I had hoped I could find a way out of soldering those CN1 connectors but after doing it I was really worrying about nothing. It was not that bad. Finally seeing motors turning with those same connectors and the system all setup the way it will be was a nice sight. It just means that we are on the right track here and that I can move onto limits and home setup and getting the rest of the system wired up. I am waiting on some 24v din rail mount relays and my new power distribution block setup here so I can finalize the input wiring and the e-stop circuit. Again we decided to go with the traditional relays and contactor setup for removing power completely from the system in the event of an emergency. The Mesa cards and setup are awesome and very simple to understand and after going thru the basic configuration yesterday I can find my way around in the software I think. I must say that after building a completed retrofit in Mach3 and now doing it again in LinuxCNC initially I was thinking things would just be easier in Mach3 but now that I am using linuxCNC and see how things work my initial impressions are that I should have absolutely gone with linuxCNC on the first machine. It just seems to be so much more capable and professional in the layout of things and Ubuntu is actually quite interesting. I will say that it took me a bit to realize that the tiny icon up in the top left of the ubuntu main screen brings up other menus and that it was less than obvious to me somehow. Once I realized that I could move around pretty easily so far. I also like how you have the sudo setup in there and I would think that will keep the system safe from anyone who does not know what they are doing who might be using it. This has been an interesting learning experience so far and with any luck we will have a basic three axis mill with spindle and limits/homes working in the very near future. Thanks for all of your help guys....peace

Pete

Okay guys,
The last week or so has seen some excellent progress on the machine. I received my new power distribution blocks and the relays I ordered. They came missing the hold down brackets but they are on their way apparently. However I got them all installed into the machine and started wiring up everything permanently this time. I managed to get my seal in relay and the entire E-stop circuit hooked up and ohmed out testing everything. Then I proceeded to wire up the Home switches for all three axes. That went very well and I gotta say the power distribution blocks were a must have purchase. They just made hooking everything up to power a simple task. Now I have all three motors, the power supplies, the coolant pump VFD, and the computer and monitor etc. etc. all hooked up to power permanently. Last night I finally had the brass to test the servo on button and hoped to hear the contactors fire and apply the mains power to the individual drives for the motor power. The drives already get power to the logic side of the drives upon main power on in the machine. The contactor removes power via a mechanical relay during an e-stop condition or a limit condition to the motor side of the drives. Anyways, it did not work last night and I could not figure out why. Then this morning my pal Art went over the circuit with me and realized I had not put the ground lead to the ground bus for the 24v relay coil. Once I did that the E-stop system started working and the servo on button fired the contactor with a satisfying clunk sound from the back of the machine. NO Smoke was released and no alarms or other similar drama thankfully. Pushing in the E-stop button or any limit switch removes the contactor and power to the drives so that is exactly what we wanted here.

We did run into an unforseen problem tho, it seems that when the power is removed from the drive side of the servo amp in an estop condition I get an error 01 from the drive and it will not simply re-engage once e-stop condition is cleared. This may be because I have not yet configured the LinuxCNC E-stop input into the mesa card. I am HOPING that once I figure out how to do that It will just give the drive an instantaneous servo on signal removal taking the drive out of servo on status and hopefully allowing the power down to NOT affect an error code. I was just out there trying to figure out how to do this. It is simply an input on the 7I77 that will be high (24v) whenever we are NOT in an E-stop condition. Still pretty green with the LinuxCNC stuff here and I also have the same setup for my three home switches here and need to configure those in the software as well. Any tips or suggestions would be appreciated.

So as of right now the BASIC system is entirely wired up and running. It is AMAZING how much less cluttered the wiring is with this setup over the original control. The Mesa cards and the more compact drives leaves me TONS of room in there to do what I need to do.

My Coolant Pump VFD is powered up but it does not currently work due to some kind of configuration issue. It is a very small Hitachi model from driveswarehouse. It is model NES1-004lb. It only has one button on it and apparently you need to hold it down to enter the function menu but it did not seem to work for me. I got on their website and apparently there is a frontend that is supposed to come with it and I cannot seem to find it in the box or anywhere. Would like to see that thing come on to know my coolant pump is gonna work properly.

So far everything is working on the basic machine all the cooling fans, the three axis drives, homes, limits, etc should be working once configured so I am very happy to see all of this. Now I just gotta work out the bugs and get it all configured and I can start hooking motors to screws very soon. Thanks for all of your help guys, peace

Pete

Okay just got off the phone with the fellow from Driveswarehouse. Really cool people over there by the way. He told me how to configure the drive to take just a 24v output from the mesa card to turn on and off the drive like a switch. He also told me how to configure it with a jumper to allow full throttle control all the time. He then realized that my unit did not come with an optional OP panel that allows more easy parameter changing and is apparently sending me one for free!! Awesome service over there. I also called Galco Electronics back about the missing horseshoe clips that were supposed to come with my new relays but I only got three when you apparently need six. They said they goofed and are also sending me the new ones in the mail today. Again very good service from those folks.

So after playing with the machine in PNCconf I realized how to configure an input for the estop as well as the Home switches. RIght now I am getting servo on and off with a linuxCNC e-stop and when I hit the big red button the contactor drops out like it should. When you push the E-stop physical button back in the contactor fires back into place and I can then hit system on in linuxCNC and regain control of the motors. No error code like before so that is really awesome. I have now instituted the wiring setup that Driveswarehouse told me about in the Coolant pump VFD and I am gonna try to configure a 24v output from the mesa card to turn that thing off now and see if I can get control of the coolant pump. I am truly amazed at the adaptability of the mesa cards and linuxCNC. It really can pretty much do anything you want and I could not be more pleased. Once I get control of the inputs and outputs necessary for the safety circuits and feel good about them I will probably do ANOTHER bench test using all three motors and testing the Z axis motor brake setup to ensure that is all working. At that point I will probably try to do some initial tuning of the system and run a simple program on the bench test setup. If all that goes well I will probably start plugging in motors to screws and test movement. Things are REALLY getting interesting now guys...This is awesome. Peace

Pete

Well fellas,
Today was a big day for the machine build, I finally got all three motors setup in the software and physically hooked up to the power and encoder leads. I am still in the bench testing stage and here but my pal Billy came over who is a LinuxCNC and Linux whiz and he was able to configure my MPG for me and even setup a GladeVCP setup with X,Y,and Z zeroing buttons and also toggle buttons for selecting the MPG axis active setting. That all seems to work well now and he is actually working on my setup at home trying to make the VCP panel look a little nicer. I was able to test the Home switches and found that they all work but I have the X and Y switched in the machine so tomorrow I will swap the wires on the Mesa card so the right axis looks for the right home switch LOL.. I also tested some more the limit switch circuit and the E-stop circuits. The Physical E-stop circuit takes linuxCNC into E-stop also so that is good. System on or servo on works in LinuxCNC and everything basically else seems to work as it is supposed to. I HAD setup the machines native units to Standard over metric but my friend Lee in England has the exact same machine with the same control stuff using Mesa cards and LinuxCNC and also has some similar servo motors on his machine and his setup is all metric of course. We are now planning to change the native units to Metric and use most of his Hal and INI setups in my machine to get a baseline setup that will be something that will work while we fine tune it to my machine. Tomorrow I am going to be making some connections modifications to the Y axis motor so I can hook it up without obstruction inside the column. I will also be wiring up the relay for the spindle motor cooling fan tomorrow as well. Right now we have all three motors working and responding on the bench so once we get a preliminary PDI setup in place we can hook them to the machine and start to do the final tuning.

MY Z axis is equipped with a brake and that was also hooked up today and tested. It APPEARS to work perfectly and there are settings inside the drive that allow us to control the duration between power off or servo off and the brake engaging. Have not played with those settings but they should be simple to do once we hook the motor to the ballscrew.

I have been considering the OPTIONS I want for the machine. I worked for a short period of time for a shop that had all HAAS machinery. Those machines worked really nicely and had a lot of interesting features. Some of them I would like to incorporate into my build as much as is possible. One of them is the spindle load metering. It was really nice on a long parts run to be able to gauge tool wear by the spindle load. I am not sure how to incorporate this into the mesa cards/linuxCNC setup and would love to hear ideas or suggestions. I have the Hitachi WJ200 spindle drive. Also the Haas Machines had considerable ability to count cycles and actually each tool had a cycle counter setup. So on a long parts run you did not have to try to remember when you changed out the tool last time. It also helped to allow you to track how long the tool SHOULD last during subsequent runs. I am not really sure how much of this if anything can be done in LinuxCNC but it is something that would be excellent. Other things are the ability to turn coolant on and off outside of the program which is already in LinuxCNC as far as I can tell so that you can setup a hose to washdown the encosure after a run. The machine did not come with this feature as far as I can tell but I will be installing it.

I am also interested in hearing ideas for another feature that came on my machine. The machine runs entirely with electronic and pneumatic control systems. Therefore since the toolchanger and the tool power drawbar are pneumatic it is IMPERATIVE that the machine has a constant supply of air at a specific pressure. On the back of the machine there is a air inlet setup with an oiler and a sensor for the pressure as well as a regulator. The sensor must be hooked up to the control to monitor the pressure and if it drops out SOMETHING must happen to ensure the toolchanger is not able to be used so that nothing crashes. I was going to install this sensor into the LIMIT/E-stop circuit so that it kills power to the drives if the pressure falls. However I am not sure this is the best solution because sometimes my Compressor has a tough time keeping up even tho it is fairly large depending on what I am doing in the shop. A better solution would be if the program could be momentarily stopped in the event of a low pressure situation to alert me to check the pressure or address any problems. Suggestions on this would ALSO be appreciated. Thanks for all the help guys. Peace

Pete