Light Machine Corp. Benchman XTr (retrofit)

Steve,
Contacted Intelitek re:recent findings. Below is that correspondence.
TG

MSG>>>I have gotten some help with trouble shooting have we have made the following observations;
The Copley controls are not getting power and there is no power getting to the J9 plug.

Is there a chance that the K4 relay has gone bad that switches the high voltage AC to the transformer?
If so, how difficult is that relay to swap out of the board?

REPLY>>>The copley controls are enabled by the software. It's unlikely that K4 is the culprit. Are yoi still getting the ENC S error?

REPLY TO REPLY>>>Yes on the error…so the Copley controls are not energized until directed by the software?
So the software is prohibiting the Copley’s from getting power until the error is cleared?

Final Reply>>>Correct, please see the schematic I send you and make sure the encoder circuit is working on your machine.

steve_a,
That's a nice piece of work!
What are the bearing ID/OD dimensions? I'm trying to get an idea of the size of the part.


Rex

Tommy,
E Stop appears to be functional as I get indication on the PC when I press or disable the estop button. have not put tested otherwise to verify.

Intelitek did not offer any input as how best to test the encoder circuit. Lots of tiny little wires buried in the machine on 3 seperate axis.
TG

Thanks Rex, The small bearing hole is .87" diameter and the large bearing is 1.120" diameter. The attempt was to make the interference about .001" I think the bearing was measured and that is the number we got. They are pretty common China (what isn't?) so not sure what kind of precision but it all seems to work. The maximum dimensions are 8.25" by 4.75"

tommylight, Good thought! The EStop looks like just the EStop switch passing 24V but you are right, if that switch is flaky or bad, nothing will work. I totally forgot about that. TGTROPIC, you should check that. (J34 pins 1 and 2 ... the cable that connects should show a short on those two pins. ) If Intelitek is saying the software is seeing an encoder error, then that would be the encoder_err signal being low. The encoder LEDs are on and that should cause the proper state so encoder_err is high. HDR2 has a jumper and that should be on the left two pins. Pin 1, the left most pin, should have about +24V DC. All the machine can really know is that there is power to all the encoders. It could only know there is a signal error if something moves and nothing can move without power to the Copley Servos.

Azik1 - when I pulled the head off, it was held in place with 4 pins plus the 4 hex socket cap bolts, so there is not much adjustment there. How much is your head off by?

Steve_a - Are you still using the Copley controls and Litton motors for the axes? Also, were you able to access the VFD thru the software? If so, what PID settings were set for the default velocity mode.

Overall, I am having a hellova time trying to get the 4th axis to tune properly. If any of you guys are pros at PID tuning, I would love it if you would remote login to my box hand give me a hand getting it to run properly.

Also, since there are so many people now working on getting LinuxCNC to run their Benchman XT, lets do some group discussion/work on getting these dang ATC working with Classicladder!

Mac, i found only 1 pin and 4 hex bolts to attach spindle, trammed with mallet rotation over Y axis, but still getting 1mil over 3.5inches inaccuracy in rotation over X axis. Looks like shims need to be inserted between spindle and plate, i dont see any other method.

What is do you have for 4th axis ? ATC ? This thing has tons of slop and difficult to tune, although i run it with kflop.

Regards!

Mac,

Yes, I am using the Copley controls and the Litton motors. All those are still originals. I was able to access the VFD and looked at the PID tuning for my unit. It is set in Velocity mode with a P = 632, I = 210 and no D. So it is configured as a PI system. Those might be a good starting point for your unit. They should be similar but probably not the same. I was going to attach the entire PAR file but it is not an accepted format for the forum software. I could change the extension to DOC if you think you need it.

Azik1 - at the moment, I am having to remap some of the wiring to the 7i77 and 7i84 because when my system crashed this last summer all the excel files with the data were lost. The expectation is that it will 1) help with future retrofits and 2) aid my understanding of how to finish up some of the incomplete functions (ie broken sensors, non-interfaced hardware, etc...)

As for the ATC: I am talking about the automatic tool changer, which should have the same components across the board. The idea is that if we all use the same HAL and classicladder nomenclature then the only remaining variable is networking to the controller signals.

Steve_a: do you have any thoughts on this part? Should we start a separate thread in the classicladder forum?