Help with CNC Router Retrofit
- abcleanonme
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16 Sep 2020 02:29 #182315
by abcleanonme
Help with CNC Router Retrofit was created by abcleanonme
I was recently asked to take a look at a CNC router table that a friend of mine acquired on the cheap. I am more of an electronics/software guy than a cnc guy but I work in manufacturing so I told him I'd check it out.
I don't really know a whole lot about what I'm looking at so I'm going to include a bunch of pictures. I know that the router was in use until it was transported. It came with a PC running Windows 98 and it had a Galil DMC-1040 card installed. However, after booting the PC one time, the hard drive crashed and I have been unable to recover it, although I can read some of the files on the disk via an IDE to USB adapter.
My first thought as a software guy was "Can't we run this on Linux?" I pretty quickly found LinuxCNC but I need some help retrofitting this thing. Any advice or help would be much appreciated. I have been trying to study up on everything but it's a lot of information and I am only able to work on this project about 4-6 hours a week at the moment. I have plenty of spare computers and I am very comfortable in a Linux environment, I am just completely new to the hardware needed for this project.
Looking forward to hear from the LinuxCNC community!
I have included the pictures in an imgur album below.
imgur.com/a/Jbt9jqU
I don't really know a whole lot about what I'm looking at so I'm going to include a bunch of pictures. I know that the router was in use until it was transported. It came with a PC running Windows 98 and it had a Galil DMC-1040 card installed. However, after booting the PC one time, the hard drive crashed and I have been unable to recover it, although I can read some of the files on the disk via an IDE to USB adapter.
My first thought as a software guy was "Can't we run this on Linux?" I pretty quickly found LinuxCNC but I need some help retrofitting this thing. Any advice or help would be much appreciated. I have been trying to study up on everything but it's a lot of information and I am only able to work on this project about 4-6 hours a week at the moment. I have plenty of spare computers and I am very comfortable in a Linux environment, I am just completely new to the hardware needed for this project.
Looking forward to hear from the LinuxCNC community!
I have included the pictures in an imgur album below.
imgur.com/a/Jbt9jqU
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- tommylight
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16 Sep 2020 10:27 #182421
by tommylight
Replied by tommylight on topic Help with CNC Router Retrofit
There is a blown up voltage regulator on one of the drives, so i do not believe it was working for quite a while judging from the dust on that part.
I would proceed with caution and disconnect the secondary side of all the power supplies and check them to make sure they are no defective and are withi range of the output voltage.
Then connect drives one by one and test, fix the faulty one and test.
After all that it should be easier to find out the control wiring for the drives and use a PC with parallel port to make sure they move properly and in both directions.
From what i can gather from the pictures it should be a step/dir system so can be made to work with only a parallel port, but the spindle will most probably need some thing or another to make work.
After making sure the drives work you can spring for a Mesa 7i76E, it has full control for 5 axis and a spindle, 32 inputs and 16 outputs, should be plenty.
I would proceed with caution and disconnect the secondary side of all the power supplies and check them to make sure they are no defective and are withi range of the output voltage.
Then connect drives one by one and test, fix the faulty one and test.
After all that it should be easier to find out the control wiring for the drives and use a PC with parallel port to make sure they move properly and in both directions.
From what i can gather from the pictures it should be a step/dir system so can be made to work with only a parallel port, but the spindle will most probably need some thing or another to make work.
After making sure the drives work you can spring for a Mesa 7i76E, it has full control for 5 axis and a spindle, 32 inputs and 16 outputs, should be plenty.
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- BeagleBrainz
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28 Sep 2020 08:21 #184120
by BeagleBrainz
Replied by BeagleBrainz on topic Help with CNC Router Retrofit
A good de-dust & clean wouldn't go astray.
In a perfect world you would take each board out and throw it in a ultra sonic cleaner. It's amazing how conductive moist dust can be. One of the first things we'd do with EFTPOS terminals/printers that had dusty PCBs. If nothing had been "taken" out by the dust after a good clean we'd send then back out never to be heard from again. Every PCB had a serial # and was tracked, up to the point you could see the previous tech that had done work on that PCB.
In a perfect world you would take each board out and throw it in a ultra sonic cleaner. It's amazing how conductive moist dust can be. One of the first things we'd do with EFTPOS terminals/printers that had dusty PCBs. If nothing had been "taken" out by the dust after a good clean we'd send then back out never to be heard from again. Every PCB had a serial # and was tracked, up to the point you could see the previous tech that had done work on that PCB.
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