Noob 1st Post - EMC and Pneumatic Roboarm

OK this is my first post here so go easy on me

My buddy and I are starting to mess around with the software and trying to retrofit a couple old crappy machines i have

with our first project being an old parker schrader bellows motion mate pneumatic cylinder powered robot arm

He set up a breadboard to accept the outputs of the parallel port and got a row of leds to light from the step/dir signals
from the axis2 engraving example which loads with emc2

The robot arm is old school pneumatic cylinders for all axes - sort of a pick and place deal
with 120 volt solenoids on a manifold block - a row of 5v - 120v optoisolator relays will supply power to the noids

The control that came with it is pretty much shot - powers up but all light stay on and nothing happens lol

What im trying to figure out is how in gcode would i best go about programming actions for the arm? - user defined codes?

If anyone can give me some insight it would be much appreciated.

I will update this thread as i move along - maybe with some pics in a couple days or something

screenshot of manual i got parker to send me over net

hallllp

this is me and the robot

this is my dad and the robot

im just looking for some direction

why aren't there any responses?

someone could at least tell me to bug off or something

GMTG,

It looks like a interesting project, but I have no experience with such a device. How are moves made? Are there encoders for feed back? Once the geometry is set up g codes will probably work fine. I think the group just needs more info to help. That said it would be cool to see it work!

Rick G

Rick G wrote:

GMTG,

It looks like a interesting project, but I have no experience with such a device. How are moves made? Are there encoders for feed back? Once the geometry is set up g codes will probably work fine. I think the group just needs more info to help. That said it would be cool to see it work!

Rick G

hello sir
thank you for replying
ive been biting my nails and pulling my hair out trying to figure out why noone was talking to me lol

im going to attempt to attach the files parker shrader bellows sent me
which should explain its original operation

the control box and pendant which normally would control it are pretty much shot
it powers on but all the lights on the front panel come on and stay on
......and nothing happens

there are mechanical stops and magnetic limit switches
the control is some kind of simple computer
that shoots 120volts out to each solenoid to fire the pneumatic cylinder
so we figured we could eliminate the old one and just use a pc
and were originally going to try and write some kind of visual basic type deal
to recreate the pendant and its functions
but came across emc and figured it would be worth a shot

i paid 20 bucks for the thing at hgr
which would explain why the control is all jacked up

again im just looking for someone to shove me in the right direction

double tap sorry

O.K.

How many solenoids are there and what do they do? You can use EMC to turn a parallel port pin on and off. You can then amplify this 5 volt signal to activate a relay to turn the solenoid on and off. Typical use for spindle, coolant, mist on and off. You can also use EMC to read the output of the limit switches. You may be able to use John Thorton's popular Simple Remote Pendant to control it ,also if you need more options look at Adding more controls to the simple remote pendant.
wiki.linuxcnc.org/cgi-bin/emcinfo.pl?Simple_Remote_Pendant
wiki.linuxcnc.org/cgi-bin/emcinfo.pl?Add...imple_Remote_Pendant

Rick G