Biesse Rover 346 Retrofit

It might be easier just to buy another smaller VFD for the saw.

jazial wrote:

Hello,

on the 346 I'm working on, I have 2 ISO30 spindles, which have the same specs. But the circular saw motor is smaller and slower. The original config switches parameters for number of poles, max current, max speed, etc on the fly at each toolchange. I'm not sure it's safe to run the smaller motor with parameters for bigger ones. If the smaller motor fail, the vfd will trip an error when current rise bigger motor current limit. At this time I plan to wrote a component which switches the parameters using modbus.

RIGHT! I dont have the saws. I forgot about those....

Just in case someone is retrofitting a machine with the older IO modules, I made a PCB to interface those with Mesa 7i90 cards. Kicad source and gerbers are here bitbucket.org/rmu/iorack-input and bitbucket.org/rmu/iorack-output.

The design more or less follows the interface circuit on the original CNI boards, one PCB is good for 24 inputs resp. outputs. You can connect 3 PCBs to one 7i90. The PCBs should fit in standard DIN rail mounting adapters.

PCBs can be populated and soldered by hand, smallest components are 0603. For size reasons, the output PCB has components on both sides.

Hi there. Thanks everyone - this thread has been most helpful.

Had a Biesse 336 standing in the corner for a year gathering dust. Got the machine on an auction and first tried to get it working with the original CNI control, but quickly gave up because of lack of Biesse documentation. Sol I got my mesa cards 2 months ago (7i92-7i77, 7i84-7i70,7i71) and started with the project.

It took me a while to remap the wiring as we had no electrical drawings, but finally got most of it done connected up to the mesa cards.

So far I got the drives running (Yaskawa CACR-SR) and encoders working and tuned. And yesterday got the VFD sorted and running.
The Biesse 336 has very much the same setup as your 346 Bevins - 2 Spindles and one saw on a single VFD with a 6 Tool station on the side.
My next point of attack is the tool change and the M6 remap and this is where I lack in skills. Still a lot of research and trial by error to do, but it would be a lot of help if you guys can share your files.

I have been studying most of the files posted in earlier posts but I am still learning python and it is taking a while.
Any ladder logic, python, xml files would be a great help and shave months/weeks off the time to get this machine back into production.

Thanks again

9thraven wrote:

Hi there. Thanks everyone - this thread has been most helpful.

Had a Biesse 336 standing in the corner for a year gathering dust. Got the machine on an auction and first tried to get it working with the original CNI control, but quickly gave up because of lack of Biesse documentation. Sol I got my mesa cards 2 months ago (7i92-7i77, 7i84-7i70,7i71) and started with the project.

It took me a while to remap the wiring as we had no electrical drawings, but finally got most of it done connected up to the mesa cards.

So far I got the drives running (Yaskawa CACR-SR) and encoders working and tuned. And yesterday got the VFD sorted and running.
The Biesse 336 has very much the same setup as your 346 Bevins - 2 Spindles and one saw on a single VFD with a 6 Tool station on the side.
My next point of attack is the tool change and the M6 remap and this is where I lack in skills. Still a lot of research and trial by error to do, but it would be a lot of help if you guys can share your files.

I have been studying most of the files posted in earlier posts but I am still learning python and it is taking a while.
Any ladder logic, python, xml files would be a great help and shave months/weeks off the time to get this machine back into production.

Thanks again

I dont have the saw but yours should work the same basic way i have mine configured and the saw should be considered a spindle. Basically remmapping m6 so that in the code first thing to do is raise all spindles and disable spindle slections. Then lower spindle selected. You know which spindle to select by which tool you are asking for with Tx M6. Then select spindle which will route the selected spindle to the inverter.

Spindle 1 is the only spindle that has access to the complete 4x11 cutting table. So i removed my other two spindles. I had them working with my remapping but i didnt want to have to deal with
"Spindle 2 only cann access this amount of table and spindle three access this amount of table" so i removed them. I use the tool changer and have enough.

But you will need with the saw. I use spindle 1 as the only spindle that changes tools. Spindle 2 allways has tool 30, and in your case spindle saw is tool 40 or whatever you want but is codded in the remap.

So when you get a T30 M6, it raises all spindles, then lowers spindle 2 and slelects spindle 2 in the code so it routes the correct
Spindle wiring to the inverter. And finally you have to deal with the last epilog in code because linuxcnc wont run three python scripts in a row, so you have to run a function epilog that does the same thing as the change epilog. I have issues with this but it is what it is.

Thars your spindle 2 and 3(saw).

Your spindle 1 does tool changes, after you have the tool_selected, spindle_selected you run change_tool function which will change the tool.

I have spent countless hours and a few months figuring this out along with removing any folicles i have left in my head. You can choose the high road and try and figure this all out, or you can try the way i did it. I dont know if my way is the best way to do it, but it works for me. One thing to remember is if the interpreter doesnt like what your doing, it will simply ignore your commands and will go on to the next command reeking havoc on your hardware. Just ask me how i know. One thing to remember is code it simple. Dont go ,three functions deep or the interpreter wont go there.

Simply select spindle (depends on tx) which spindle to select, for example t3m6 will select spindle 1 then check which tool pockets are empty, the way i did it is the freepocket is tool_in_spindle. So if pocket 3 is empty, it assumes tool 3 is in the spindle. And it carries on and starts running gcode after the spidle starts up and get to speed. If free_pocket does not equal tool_in_spindle then it places the tool in the free pocket and then get_tool_x runs and picks up the new tool.
You should have a pickup tool function for each tool and drop tool function for each tool that you intend to use in spindle 1.

A little long winded, but thats the basics i use on my machine.

I have recently moved my shop and all my machines so i am busy getting everything back up again. Plus i have a brisgeport to finish retrofit and a vm40 control panel to build for a client.all that in my spare time along with getting contracts done on the machines that are working.

I can share my files but beware you really need to understand them completely and make sure you have the inputs and outputs correct or bad things can happen to your hardware.

Done for now.

The only issue is i use a xml class and have an xml with all settings and delays in it, but it is for a three position tool changer. It would be alot of work to add three more tool positions, so you will have to either add the three extra positions to the class or hard code everything which i should have done in the beginning. I regret but its working, maybe ill change later but for now it is running.

Thanks Bevins

It seems like I really need to dive deeper into this. I was hoping it is much simpler. Might rather then go the route of plain g-code subroutines and do all the error checking via ladder logic - I have 2 NUM systems (SCM and IMA) that have gone the g-code/ladder route although trying to copy their ladder logic is going to be a pain because they are fanatic about safety logic, but will let you know how it turns out.

My machine has 2 spindles, 10 place toolchanger, one 4th axis that can be fit with a circular saw, and an additional horizontal spindle intended for manufacturing doors ("Schlosskasten"), all on one VFD.

The machine is running more or less, but I haven't figured out/implemented tool-change yet, and communication with the VFD (a control techniques model) doesn't exist yet.

I figured one option would be to declare one spindle the "main" spindle and that would be the only one that could change tools with the toolchanger. Each of the secondary spindles would get a fixed tool-number. Changing tool would either switch to the respective secondary spindle or to the main spindle and make moves to actually exchange the tool.

It would be nice to be able to automatically change tools on the second spindle, but it seems there is no straight forward way to achieve that.

rmu wrote:

My machine has 2 spindles, 10 place toolchanger, one 4th axis that can be fit with a circular saw, and an additional horizontal spindle intended for manufacturing doors ("Schlosskasten"), all on one VFD.

The machine is running more or less, but I haven't figured out/implemented tool-change yet, and communication with the VFD (a control techniques model) doesn't exist yet.

I figured one option would be to declare one spindle the "main" spindle and that would be the only one that could change tools with the toolchanger. Each of the secondary spindles would get a fixed tool-number. Changing tool would either switch to the respective secondary spindle or to the main spindle and make moves to actually exchange the tool.

It would be nice to be able to automatically change tools on the second spindle, but it seems there is no straight forward way to achieve that.

There is a way to do it using the same principle that I did mine with. I felt I did not need to since the second spindle couldn't access the full table nor the third. But to do it you need to allocate using allways a block of tools for spindle 1 say tools 1-19 and tools 20-30 spindles 2. Then you can stipulate which spindle depending on which tool was selected with TxM6. However, if you only have a 3-6 position tool changer, it doesn't make sense to do it this way because you need to allocate tool pockets to spindles.

There is a way to do it using both spindles with whatever tool you want but it is very complicated and alot of programming code.

Just my thoughts.

I don't really like committing half the tool pockets to one spindle, but it certainly seems possible, and should be better than nothing. Should be a useful next step after getting the tool changer to work with one spindle. Thanks.