Light Machine Corp. Benchman XTr (retrofit)

Pegasus,
The attached file shows how to connect the motor to the speed control.
Pin 1 is the inboard-most location. It is the WHT wire in my previous photo.
The motor connects to pins 8-10 of the big orange connector and to the 3 male spade connections on the speed control.

The hall cells connect to the connector you show on pins: 24, 25, & 26. They are used strictly for determining spindle speed; whether it is turning or not and if it is at speed.

I am also attaching a copy of the schematic for your main control board (with the cuts and jumpers identified).
I drew this back in 1999 to develop a universal control board for next generation machine (Benchman XT).
I believe it is accurate, but please use it as a guide and not as 100% guaranteed fact.

Please let me know what else is needed.

Thank you, X. That it going to help a lot. It might be a week or so before I can get back into the machine but I will let you know how it turns out. Thanks again.

X-Intelitek Engineer,
Thank you again for your help. I have been able to figure out most of the wiring based on the schematics you gave me but I still have a couple of questions. On the larger orange connector with 12 positions I've been able to figure out that position 1(Common) goes to J109-18, position 2 (Enable) goes to J109-15, position 5 (Vssc) goes to J109-2, and Hall A,B,C correspond to J109-24,25,26. But on position 3 you list as (Brake) I can't find a corresponding J109 pin in the schematics, similarly with position 4 (Fwd/Rev) and position 7 (NC). Would those terms correspond to other terminology in the wiring schematics, I noticed you listed "Sig In" for position 6 on the orange connector but I think that it is called "V_SPDL_CMD" in the schematics at J109-2? And do you have any idea what wires from J109 would go to the spindle's vref and common, pins 11 and 12 on the orange connector. Thanks again.

Position 1 goes to J109-18 - Correct
Position 2 goes to J109-15 - Correct
Position 5 (Vssc) should go to J109-12 not J109-2
Hall A,B,C go to J109-24,25,26 - Correct
Position 3 (Brake) should go to J109-4 I believe.
J109-4 and J109-15 should be inverted from each other. In other words: Enable=no Brake, Disable=Brake.
You should to check the polarity.
Position 4 (FWD/REV) should go to J109-7.
J109-7 and J109-10 should be inverted from each other. In other words: FWD = not REV, Not FWD = REV.
You should to check polarity.
Position 7 (NC) is No Connect - Do not connect anything to this location
Position 6 is called "SIG IN" by the speed control, it is called "V_SPDL_CMD" on the PCB. It is J109-2.
J109 should not connect to the Vref and Common (pins11 & 12) those only go to the spindle to power the internal hall circuitry.
I think that is correct. 95%+ confidence level.

Thank you, X.
We will get this figured out!

Hey Guys,

Newbie here but I love this forum. A few years ago I stumbled across a craigslist auction for two of these machines and have been tinkering with them ever since. After a couple of new parts to the old PC and some practice learning g-code on Youtube, I've been able to sling pretty steady aluminum chips from one of the machines so it's been a pretty cool project. I've attached a couple pictures of the machines with some upgraded aquarium lights below.

The one issue that I have is that it seems like my tool holders are struggling to repeatably get all the way up inside the drawbar. I've tried to do some aligning and re-homing of the ATC following the instructions in the manual but I still see anywhere between 0.004" and 0.020" variation between tool changes. I'll probably need to do some heavier dis-assembly and re-assembly of the ATC one of these weeks but I haven't made it there yet. Recently I've become pretty curious about the possibility of adding a tool-length offset probe inside the machine to verify the offset after a tool change but I'm not sure if my machine has the right main board to support a probe.

I've attached a couple picture that show the setup inside my control panel because it looks quite a bit different than the other posts in this forum. It looks like my main board on this machine is very similar to that of the ProLight machines and I have ASI motion controller card inside the PC rather than and PCI cards.

In looking I definitely don't have the wiring for the probe connector on the back of the front panel inside the machine like the probe-offset manual says I should. I can attach more pictures if necessary, but I guess my question is, does anyone know if this machine is capable of using a tool-length-offset probe, and if so, which pins input the signal from the probe?

Thanks, guys! This forum has been a huge help in getting my machines up and running!