EMC gets fitted to a Leadwell CNC VMC

Hi all

i had this posted over at CNCzone but i throught it should have a home on linuxCNC website also, so here we go.

i throught i would come here and share some photos and info etc on my conversion project we are doing right now involving fitting EMC to an old 1985 Leadwell machine.
has 550mm of X travel
16 ATC
10M rapid

this machine had an old mitsubishi control fitted to it but we deemed it was time to change it over to something else for our needs. as we needed a control to do 4th axis work, as well as process blocks quicker many other things, As well as refitting the machines control we have also been bussy giving it a good well needed service on slides,ballscrews etc.


For the PC we have gone with Mesa 5i20 card setup, two cards infact due to IOs and 5 axis A-D control (at time of buying hardware EMC did not have the 5i22 support unlike now)

PC specs are
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-P35-S3G
CPU: E4600 Core 2 Duo- 2.4GHz
Memory: 2GB DDR (cheap as chips these days)
Hard Drive: Mtron solid state hard drive 32Gb plenty of room for emc and cnc programs (will be installing linux file server into office to access all programs over later so storage space will be no problem ever )
GPU: Asus GeForce 8600GT 512mb graphics card
Motion Control: 2x Mesa 5I20 Cards with 4x 7I37 I/O cards & 2x 7I33 Analog cards

(see wiki if intrested in the Latency test results)

here are a few early on photos, we have been doing abit on and off over weekends and spare time (im sure you know how it is)

Few photos from when work started



as you can see, guards still on machine, the old brain is on the table on machine, control interface is mounting on the arm hanging over the machine table.


These photos below show guard taken off, many things stipped of the machine, ball screws taken out so we can take the slides off and fit encoder to end of the ball screws (fitting 2500PPR encoders using Quad), to check oil lube lines & restrictors and also replace some slide matrial ( turcite little like PTFE matrial but many other additives with in it) on bottom Y slide





Here are the 3 axis drives for the axis motors, they are mitsubishi drives and motors fitted to this machine, as they use resolved for feedback we will be fitting incoders to the ball screws.


Here are some quick snaps of the mother board mouting to alli sheet plate which will mount where the old control once was.




Hope to update with some more photos soon, as machine is now repainted and the slides are back on ballscrews back in, and most of messy wireing pulled out for new to be installed.

here is a quick video of the machine in action, showing cutting some splines on some shafts on the 4th axis, and quick show of the axis interface in use.

the guard on table is to come off once we get the rest of sheet metal done as machine will be fully inclosed then.
next video will be of some real milling,drilling, rigid tappin etc.
for now injoy

i was using the mill the other day and was doing some rigid tapping, so throught id better make a video to add up on here.
so here we have it

Rigid tapping M3x0.5 at 1500RPM in the video. tapping 8holes in total
i did try 2000rpm but found on way out most time was spent waiting for spindle to wind up so no real advantage but still worked grate
once i get the encoder board for the VFD ill try little faster as hope to ramp/accelerate spindle up quicker

here is a new little video i took today, to show of some of the tool changer and spindle orientation
tool changer is all controled in classicladder
spindle orientation is controled by EMC also in HAL

Spindle is running around 5000 & 6000rpm in this video, doing a spindle stop and orientation while going home in the Z axes.

as you will know, the CNC spindle drive that was on the mill packed up shortly after the retrofit, the spindle is now controled by an Invertertek VFD (Optidrive Plus 3GV) & brake resistor . EMC positions the spindle through the VFD for tool orientation letting the tool changer change the tool once rotated and held in position.

heres a quick new video,

just of the spindle orientation on the VFD fitting to the machine.
working a on longer new video of some machining hope to get this up also soon to.

for now enjoy.

Here a new video i did the other day