Category: General LinuxCNC Questions
Dear members,
I would like to say hello and introduce myself. I'm a 66 years old Chemist and since 2 years retired from the industry. I am living in the northwest of Germany, near to the Dutch border and the city of Münster. One of my hobbies are old watchmaker machine tools.
I am grown up in an analog environment. I can not program any computer language (but I have a son, who is capable).
I understand pretty well electrics & electro-mechanical matters. I understand electronic circuits up to a level of using components with a maximum of four soldering feet (eg. bridge rectifiers).
All other components, like IC or even EPROM are a "mystery" to me.
I own a small coordinate milling- and drilling-machine. A Leinen FM1, which is equipped with controls from the mid 80s of the last century.
It uses Heidenhain glass scales on the x-, y- and z-axis and ESCAP 12 V DC Tacho-Servomotors for the movements of these axes.
The indication of position and the positioning to a set coordinate is done by a Heidenhain TNC113 unit, connected with an analog control panel. Furthermore there is a dividing unit with a rotary axis, served by a Heidenhain rotary encoder.
The unit is fully functional. But I`m fearing electric defects in the control panel, without having in hand any documentation of the board layouts, the circuits and the connections. If, after 40 years, a capacitor or a diode would become defective, I would be lost. If needed, the Heidenhain TNC113 can be still repaired by specialists, but a repair is very expensive.
My idea is now, to buy 4 Heidenhain EXE610 on the second hand market and connect them to a newly built LINUX CNC.unit. Could somebody be so kind and advise me, which boards I would need to buy for:
- the INPUTs from the four Heidenhain EXEs
- the INPUTs from the five DC motor tachos (4 from the axes and 1 from the spindle)
- the OUTPUTs to the DC Motors amplifiers/controllers(I have already a second set of amplifiers for the spindle motor of 66 V and the axes drive motors of 12 V).
- some other INPUTs (digital and analog) like limit switches on the axes, emergency switch-off etc., potentiometers
- some other OUTPUTs for indicator lamps/LED
What is the target of this excercise:
- preserve the existing controls in original condition
- plug-in of the existing connectors/interfaces (between the machine and the control panel) to a new CNC unit
- the new CNC unit does not need to be highly sophisticated. I would be happy with a program, which activates the 4 axes in sequential mode. I would guess, that high precision, when running several axis simultaniously, would be impossible to realise with DC Tacho-Servos.
Any feedback is highly appreciated.
Thanks a lot and best regards
Hartwig