Is the Ecoca EL4610e a good candidate for a retrofit?

we talked with MulBe039 in email...
the machine has the MELDASMAGIC 64 control which runs on a windows PC with a ISA/PCI interface card. the manual lists
Spindle: MDS-A-SPJ2-75 / SJ-PF7.5-01
X-Axis: MDS-A-SVJ2-03 / HA33NT-A33
Z-Axis: MDS-A-SVJ2-06 / HA40NT-A33
drives and motors (though i suspect a typo and it should read MDS-B-...). those have SSCNET'ish serial interface like all other MDS-A/B/C series drives. -A33 are OSA253 25kcpr absolute encoders. so interfacing servos/spindle to the linuxcnc shouldn't be a problem. the machine seems to have a gearbox spindle and though the spindle drive mostly handles it transparently for the controller, i will probably need to add a few HAL pins to the driver for gear selection. and porting/re-implementing the ladder will require some effort... but all should be doable

MulBe039 wrote: Very interesting,
Out of curiosity: did you end up buying and/or converting that lathe? /quote]

Sorry no. It was too far away..

dm17ry wrote: the machine seems to have a gearbox spindle and though the spindle drive mostly handles it transparently for the controller, i will probably need to add a few HAL pins to the driver for gear selection

The gears are shifted manually via two levers:
one that has two positions H, ML
the other has three positions L, M, H

There are however only three valid lever combinations that are printed on the lathe itself.

With the documentation that came with this machine there was also a booklet called "Parameter List" - dm17ry indicated in one of his mails that these are needed to properly set up the servo drives. I will scan and upload this document as soon as possible so that anyone can acces it.

I also have mechanical drawings and a spare parts manual for the machine, however some of the drawings are a3 format and would be problematic to scan on my home scanner, so i will only upload those if there is real interest in them.

dm17ry wrote: and porting/re-implementing the ladder will require some effort... but all should be doable

I hadn't even considered that option, in my mind I was already preparing to start from scratch, pull out all the wiring and see what I could come up with myself. But this sounds indeed like the much more sensible option.

Do you have any links/information/documentation that I could check out to learn about how to do this?

Also, given that the controller in this lathe is currently in working condition, do you know if there is a way to maybe backup/extract the ladder from the machine? Is this worth doing? Would this help in any way with the porting? Do any of you think this information could be useful to anyone?

i have a very limited hands-on experience with actual mitsubishi controls. i borrowed an EZMotion-NC E68 lately and played with it for some time, but that's basically it. to edit the ladder i believe they use the GX Developer software. that's what i used to make some minimal op panel logic to get the E68 running.

i'm far from being a big fan of that ladder logic notation. it's far easier for me to rewrite everything in c or python. so i myself would definitely would start from scratch and won't try to port anything from the meldasmagic64 to the linuxcnc. but being able to look at what they have there would be useful.

and yeah, please post that "parameter list" tables - it should give a good idea about the machine configuration and i will probably be able to give some more specific suggestions how to get at it with the linuxcnc retrofit.

dm17ry wrote:
i'm far from being a big fan of that ladder logic notation. it's far easier for me to rewrite everything in c or python. so i myself would definitely would start from scratch and won't try to port anything from the meldasmagic64 to the linuxcnc. but being able to look at what they have there would be useful.

Yeah not a huge fan either. I get why the notation was invented and why it was popular at the time, but it really should have been phased out about 40 years ago. It is obviously good that the knowledge about this is still out there if you need it for working on old equipment, but I honestly don't get why we even bother teaching this stuff anymore.

So correct me if I got anything wrong here:

The servodrives and the encoders will be handled by your board&.software. These receive instructions from linuxCNC based on the entered gcode.

This includes selected gear detection, absolute position of the machine and the spindle index pulse as well as the pulse generation.

As far as operation-critical stuff goes, that leaves:
E-stops
safetyswitches on the Door and the Chuck-guard
Limitswitch on the tailstock
Coolant pump
Sensors for pressure temperature and oil level for the headstock lubrication as well as the associated pump
" " " for the ways lubrication " " "


I'd like to handle the E-stops outside of software, so that they work reliably even when the computer has problems. For this I will take a closer look at the relay board that they are currently wired into and see if I can't reuse anything around there.
Or is there a sort of 'standard procedure' here that is used with linuxcnc?

I will need to identify how these pressure- temperature- and oil-level sensors operate and figure out how to easily inteface these with the new controller. I'm assuming they're probably analog.

Do yo perhaps recognize in the parameter list (attached below) what the treshold values for these sensors are for which they trigger?


Then there are a few features that have proven to be quite useful on the physical interface and which I would like to preserve:

Two integrated MPGs and a Joystick to position the machine and do basic 'manual' operations
A selector for the jog increments of the MPGs

for this I have already seen tutorials on how to implement it around here on the forum, so figuring this out shouldn't be too hard.

A button which indexes the spindle and holds it in place
A physical button to stop the spindle

The rest of the I/O really is only is a bunch of buttons to facilitate operation in semi-automated mode and in manual mode.
It would be nice to maintain the functionality, but they are not very far on top of my priority list.

The way I currently see it, I think the most sensible way to go about this would be to take out the BASE I/O unit & the REMOTE I/O UNIT, hook up a step down converter to the 24VDC that energize all these circuits to prevent it from frying the control electronics and hook up all the buttons from the console directly to an I/O card or a parallel port.

If I understand correclty, what I would then need to do, would be to igure out how to add and configure the corresponding pins to the HAL and have them deploy macros when they are pressed.

Am I thinking in the right direction or am I making a major rookie mistake here?



Parameter list for the Ecoca 460 Series:
drive.google.com/file/d/1T9jkDEeHv4I-D1q...P3Q/view?usp=sharing


By the way, I had a look around in the usual places for used electronics, and found someone offering:

mesa 5i24-16 Anything I/O PCI card + MESA 7i42TA Breakout/Protection card

Apparently they are unopened, and the price was right, so apparently this is what I am working with now

MulBe039 wrote: The servodrives and the encoders will be handled by your board&.software. These receive instructions from linuxCNC based on the entered gcode.
This includes selected gear detection, absolute position of the machine and the spindle index pulse as well as the pulse generation.

servos are in position control mode. they accept a 32-bit position command and return a 32-bit feedback. plus a number of boolean flags. interfacing to linuxcnc is really straightforward, no linuxcnc's PIDs or stepgens are used. basically a few HAL connections like:

joint.x.amp-enable-out => nyx.0.servo-xx.enable
joint.x.motor-pos-cmd => nyx.0.servo-xx.pos-cmd
joint.x.motor-pos-fb <= nyx.0.servo-xx.pos-fb
joint.x.amp-fault-in <= nyx.0.servo-xx.alarm

the spindle is similar, but with a speed command instead. the driver also provides a spindle encoder interface in linuxcnc style with a index-enable pin. see sample configs...

I'd like to handle the E-stops outside of software, so that they work reliably even when the computer has problems. For this I will take a closer look at the relay board that they are currently wired into and see if I can't reuse anything around there.
Or is there a sort of 'standard procedure' here that is used with linuxcnc?

there're number of points where the e-stop can be wired... yeah, have a look first at the machine schematics and ladder how they do it.

I will need to identify how these pressure- temperature- and oil-level sensors operate and figure out how to easily inteface these with the new controller. I'm assuming they're probably analog. Do yo perhaps recognize in the parameter list (attached below) what the treshold values for these sensors are for which they trigger?

i doubt there's any analog sensors - pretty sure they all end up with a discrete 24VDC outputs

The way I currently see it, I think the most sensible way to go about this would be to take out the BASE I/O unit & the REMOTE I/O UNIT, hook up a step down converter to the 24VDC that energize all these circuits to prevent it from frying the control electronics and hook up all the buttons from the console directly to an I/O card or a parallel port.

i would definitely keep 24VDC circuits as they are and use compatible I/O cards. mesa or my YIO.

another compelling option i'm thinking about is to keep the base and RIO units in place and interface them directly. they use a half-duplex serial rs-485 interface, just like my YIO modules. i have an idea about the protocol used. so theoretically i can implement it in the card firmware...