Sodick wire EDM machine retrofit

Hi all
I have a Sodick A320s with a mark ex controll that I basically got for nothing.

Has anyone here worked on these machines?

I would like to retrofit this machine but I can see that this is not going to be as simple as the lathes and mills that I have done before.

I was lucky to find similar wiring diagrams. They are for a machine some 2years younger but it seems to be very similar to my setup.

Henk

Our fanuc wires have XYZ, UV which are the head angles for angle cuts.

There is a wire tension sensor.

Also a motor that creates the tension on the wire spool.

As well as voltage, amperage and ionization sensors for the tank.

I'm not sure if this will help you but there would be a few things to figure out.

Each material has different settings also

Thanks for your reply Leon82

Yes, there will indeed be a couple of things to figure out....

I studied the wiring diagrams in an attempt to figure out the control circuit of the power source. It seems that the voltage level is set by switching relays marked V0...V10, of which not all of them are used. The wiring diagrams suggest that there are a couple of settings (60, 80, 100, 150V) but my machine has only V0 and V1 connected, maybe my model only has 2 selectable voltage levels. Still checking that

The pulse frequency and length control is a bit more challenging. the wiring diagrams are a bit vague on that. I may have to strip out the hardware to figure that out. ...

Update.

I managed to get most of the easy stuff sorted out and working. XY and UV axes working, Wire run and tension working the way it used to with speed and tension adjustable with the original hardware. I am using moion.spindle-enable to start the wire run.

Im happy with what i have so far. Now i have to move on to the more difficult part, the spark source. I have researched a lot on this topic and i have a prototype design that i want to start testing sometime this weekend.

For this i think i will need a custom bitfile for the 7i76E. I am using a cheap 5 axis LPT type BOB connected to one of the expansion ports on the 7i76E and i would like to use two PWM channels on pins 2 and 4. These will drive the MOSFET gate driver circuit to control the spark pulse length and frequency from LCNC.

Is there already a Bitfile that can do that? I tried finding one but there doesnt seem to be any PIN files that is human readable on the download from the Mesa site.

Maybe PCW can advise?

If you download the firmware pack from Mesa, then expand the source code section, you can try to find a .vhd file that contains a PWM that matches an available 7i76E bitfile name.

It's a bit of a performance, it has to be admitted.

Hi Henk, following this with interest. I have a BF275 sodick with a similar era control but no AWT & is a dry tank machine, and while its currently working, I'd really like to add rotary axis/turn & burn and other more modern capabilities, and get away from the pc9801 gui control computer, and the even more weird and legacy main control computer.
I do have a set of the cutting condition tables detailing the original parameters to use with which material etc I can scan if that would help you at all?