Denford Orac ATC toolchanger component

Hi

After some prolonged testing and collaboration with cncbasher, I have produced a toolchanger component for the Orac lathe.

This is a 1980s college / school CNC training lathe, still quite readily available second hand in the UK and a popular conversion base.

The ATC is operated by a relay switched DC motor and detects tool position via a greyscale optical disc and 3 optical sensors producing an on/off truth table.
The component could be adapted for any lathe with a similar methodology.

The component works 'as is' on cncbashers lathe.

In development we discovered that the disc itself can be moved, completely throwing out any assumptions about which tool is the current one.
This means that the truth table used here may not match your ATC, especially if it has been dismantled at any time
You need to manually check what opto switches are true/false for each tool position.

Running the component as is, will quickly show a consistent over or under run of tool numbers which can be adjusted, if your
optical disc position differs from this one.

A full description and sample .hal file connections are in the header to the component file.

Downloadable via the wiki at
wiki.linuxcnc.org/cgi-bin/emcinfo.pl?Con...oolchanger_component

regards

I'll also add that if anyone has a problem , i'll be glad to help trouble shoot it ,

i'd like to publicy give my thanks to Arceye for the total help and support , and the numerous untold hours of his time
debugging this comp .

Dave

Hello,

cncbasher, ArcEye.

I saw your thread, and all the information they have. great what they've done.

I wonder if I can do the same with my lathe cincinnati, has two turrets, but no matter if I only work one. and is gain. I have a thread in classicladder.

www.linuxcnc.org/index.php/english/compo...ew&catid=25&id=24135

but I must be honest, I do not have any experience to do this. I'm lost. not know where to start, I received wonderful collaboration of John and Andy, but it's my fault, I do not understand very well even classicladder operation.

I hope you can give me their support.

Thank you.

Hi

Unless you have DC motor driven turrets using grey scale encoders like this one, I should think you are best sticking with the Classic Ladder / PLC solution JT and Andy are trying to steer you to.

I suspect you have lots of relays, solenoids, air or hydraulic actuation etc, which is all better suited to Classic Ladder implementation.

Unfortunately sometimes there is no short cut and you have to just knuckle down and read. I taught myself basic PLC programming by following various tutorials on the net including:-
www.plcs.net/contents.shtml
www.plcsimulator.net/plc.php
I bought a cheap PLC on Ebay and connected up various switches and leds to experiment with, however the simulator above removes the need for that.

The fact you have no previous programming experience, might help to an extent.
I had trouble getting my head around the fact that the PLC program runs top to bottom every time, being used to conditional loops, function calls etc.

regards