HURCO BMC-20P retrofit

Here we go, again !

Another retrofit, this one on a HURCO BMC 20, something like 1990 or therein, in pretty bad condition.
Had to clean up a mess of detached wires and remove the 2 monitors as they were gone totally, checked and rechecked all the wirings, powered it on and 2 servo drives work ! One complains A03 something to do with torque problem, and the spindle drive has F600 on screen so it does not work....yet.
All drives are Yaskawa CACR SR10BE12G, spindle drive is CIMR-VMS27P5.
Due to lack of documentation took a while to figure out the control wiring for the drives, gona take much longer to figure out the tool changer, 16 station SK40 tooling on it.
Using MESA cards as usual, namely 7i92, 7i77, 7i74, 7i70, 7i71 and maybe another 7i84 and 7i73 for pendant. Ordered from EuSurplus as usual. With some left over from the Elumatec retrofit i now have 2 of all the above mentioned cards except the 7i92, that i have only one. Mental note, order more 7i92 !!!
Attached are some pictures of the ongoing work.
Regards,
Tom

We have movement on X and Z axis !
Y axis drive is non functional, will have to investigate more.
Spindle turned on and was spinning for some 20 seconds and stopped again with the "F600" error, so it looks like it has to be replaced and that will cost a fortune. Also finding out what each of those 20 control wires do will take some time and reverse engineering.
On the subject of reverse engineering, same goes for a bunch of wires, valves, sensors, pneumatics etc for the tool changer, also figure out the correct procedure for changing a tool and implement some interlocks so it does not mess up something.
Tuning the drives took almost 5 minutes, as the encoders are wired to the drive so the loop is closed in the drive, and encoder outputs from the drive are wired to mesa 7i77. Had acceleration set at 750mm/s/s and it works perfectly but it accelerates way to hard and shakes the whole machine, so lowered it to 300. Velocity should be 24meters/minute but i did not push it over 9 as there is no lubrication yet.
Tomorrow will wire the "drives on" relay, coolant and lube relays, maybe pneumatic valves or something else, depending on the mood, like figure out the signaling for the tool changer.
To be continued .....

let me know if you need manuals . Is you NC running ? I have oslo the drives manuals .

Salve Aventini,
Molto grazie.
Thank you very much, i have everything already wired and programed and running except the tool changer, that is what i am working on right now. Next week i will have to order 1 servo drive and the spindle drive as they are both not functioning, one has the A03 error and the spindle drive has a bad case of F600 error, should be something with input voltage but all tests with different input voltages failed, hence need a new one.
here are some pictures of the current state of the machine.

Regards,
Tom

Those look like CACR Yaskawa AC servo drives.
I have the manuals for those drives if you need them.

Let me know,
Bob

Bob, thank you very much. I think i have them somewhere on my laptop, but since i did not need them till now i am not sure. When i change the failed drive i am going to need them to set up the drive so i will check. I know for sure i have the manual for the spindle drive as i neede to control it manualy to see what is going on.
So the drive has regenerative problems ( A03 ), checked the resistor it is OK, that means that the regenerative rectifier or regenerative transistor inside the drive are faulty. Fixable most probably, not mine so changing the drive and the spindle drive. Not sure but i think i can get the drive for 350 and spindle drive for 1500 euro, will have to check.
Regards,
Tom

tommylight wrote: Bob, thank you very much. I think i have them somewhere on my laptop, but since i did not need them till now i am not sure. When i change the failed drive i am going to need them to set up the drive so i will check. I know for sure i have the manual for the spindle drive as i neede to control it manualy to see what is going on.
So the drive has regenerative problems ( A03 ), checked the resistor it is OK, that means that the regenerative rectifier or regenerative transistor inside the drive are faulty. Fixable most probably, not mine so changing the drive and the spindle drive. Not sure but i think i can get the drive for 350 and spindle drive for 1500 euro, will have to check.
Regards,
Tom

Oh that sucks. Spindle drive and CACR drive bad..... Not lucky. I have three drives that have issues here and there. Let me know if you need parts for the CACR's.


With that said, I have have three AC Servo Motors that go with those drives. 1.8KW AC servo's. I am going to try and use the 8i20 mesa cards for them. I think it will work. I have to ask Andy and Peter, but it should work. Dont have to deal with those cylinder block size drives anymore. I just replaced one two months ago and it cost 1500.00. So if a 239.00 mesa card will work then thats a bonus.

Last night ( or this morning, have not slept yet, 6:18 AM here ), when i was writing that reply i was thinking of geting 3 or 4 of those drives for myself, at 350 euro a piece not a bad deal as they are very good and reliable.......and then you mention Mesa drives, darn it i had forgoten about them. I had my eye on them for some time but as usual life got it the way. Those mesa drives are niceeeeee and come with the best technical support on the planet ( hi PCW ). Making a mental note on the next order to include those, thank you for reminding me.
Also a big thank you goes to eusurplus as i odrer all mesa stuff through them.
Regards,
Tom

bevins wrote: With that said, I have have three AC Servo Motors that go with those drives. 1.8KW AC servo's. I am going to try and use the 8i20 mesa cards for them. I think it will work. I have to ask Andy and Peter, but it should work.

It might be non-trivial to use the Yaskawa motors if they use a proprietary encoder interface.
Another option might be the STMBL which does support (some) Yaskawa absolute encoders:
github.com/rene-dev/stmbl/wiki/conf

But getting an STMBL assembled and in your hands isn't that easy at the moment.

andypugh wrote:

bevins wrote: With that said, I have have three AC Servo Motors that go with those drives. 1.8KW AC servo's. I am going to try and use the 8i20 mesa cards for them. I think it will work. I have to ask Andy and Peter, but it should work.

It might be non-trivial to use the Yaskawa motors if they use a proprietary encoder interface.
Another option might be the STMBL which does support (some) Yaskawa absolute encoders:
github.com/rene-dev/stmbl/wiki/conf

But getting an STMBL assembled and in your hands isn't that easy at the moment.

They are using standard Quad 5v encoders.... A, /A, B, /B, Z, /Z so it shouldnt be a problem.