Emco PC turn 55 upgrade..

That would be remote viewing not research...

I'm still undecided, (I mean I don't want to gut the machine unless I need to) but I'm trying to figure out if this would work as a drop in replacement for the Emco Driver board. I would assume it's compatible with LinuxCNC.

www.leadshine.com/UploadFile/Down/3DM683m.pdf

These are like 60$ new.

Turbo,

I don't recall seeing that error. I don't know whether WinNC and WinCAM would show all errors in the same way, though.

Re: the driver: I see in your picture that there is a label saying "3 phasen" so in theory the leadshine driver you are looking at may work. It would be consistent with what I remember learning when I was researching the project about Emco having at some point gone from using 5-phase steppers to 3-phase steppers.

However, If you look at the wiring diagram, you will see it shows 5-phase steppers and that (I think) was consistent with the visual identification I did of the motor on one of the axis.

You definitively need to confirm whether they are 3 or 5 phase. If they are 3, the leadshine driver (or any other driver including gecko) should work. If they are 5, you can buy Vexta drivers off eBay or decide to ditch the 5-phase steppers and replace with 3-phase ones.

I think you already know all of this, but hope this helps

The vast majority of stepper drivers are 2-phase.

I've ordered the 3 phase Leadshine drivers but I think it will be a few weeks to get them. I'm thinking I'm going to do the complete retrofit now. After spending another day reading through forums and product manuals I think I'm getting the 5 or 6I25 and 7I76. I think that just leaves the computer as far a hardware. The monitor on the machine has VGA or DVI no HDMI or display port.

I've got a modern computer that I've given up on due to Gigabyte setting the ram and processor voltages too high and locking them that way, so I don't know whether to pull the good components out of that or buy an "embedded solution." So I've got 16gb of Ballistix DDR3, a Geforce 750Ti and possibly an A10-5800K that have been sitting unused for almost a year and could be used in the project.

Why dont you try and get what you have working?
Maybe you can fix the driver card that is damaged?
Call emco in Austria on the telephone. Ask them what drives are in your machine if you cant determine this yourself.
The documentation that came with my machine was not what was in the box.

You need to actually do stuff not just read forum posts i.e test components, look at waveforms and see what it is doing.
You need some test equipment, scope, multimeter at a minimum.

A mesa 5i25 card is all you need.
If you have never used linux cnc before or set up a cnc machine it is a learning curve.
Use any pc you can put the mesa card in. To get you started it makes no difference.

Start at the beginning, it will help you get to the end....

To do:
Find out exactly what you have (motors, vfd controller type, etc)
Look at all of the system carefully.
Analyse and act - your damaged driver card - try and fix it
Use the system as designed - is it suitable for you?
Retrofit if not.
Keep what you can use, discard/change what you can't

Learn to use linux cnc on a working lathe.
Play with a mesa card and linux cnc.

Last but not least Retrofit your machine....

That is how I did it. Maybe I am not as clever as you. It took 6 months and I had help from friends. Linuxcnc is great. Get Started!

Cheers, james