tormach 1500mx modifications, 4th axis, fast I/O expansion, auxilary spindle.

I just went ahead and ordered the 1500mx. I had to get things rolling. It's gonna be an adventure!

As I said in the top post, my fallback is to use the same yaskawa PLC I did last time as a control. Last time it was a purpose built machine, this time I would have to rewrite my code to work on a mill layout. But I still have the backup of a simple UI coded for an automation direct c-more HMI. It has data entry boxes for operators to enter numbers for triming geometry. those get stored in memory and then applied to the motion control code in the yaskawa mp2300.

I just think it would be nicer and more dynamic to have a CNC control through. Hopefully I can make some flavor of LCNC work for me.

Well, that's one way to skin the cat.

If you struggle with PathPilot and the USB IO, maybe a combination with the PLC would be the best solution.  Use the last remaining high-speed input and output to trigger the PLC to do the automation stuff and report back to PathPilot?

I'd imagine the cut-off saw spindle motor could be triggered by a USB output, since that can just run all the time.  And the saw motion connected to as the "A" axis so you can control saw infeed speed.

Let the PLC handle the clamping/unclamping, stock advance, and remnant eject, and then signal PathPilot to continue the G-code loop.

Yeah, that's a good idea. I've been considering something like that. A simple auxiliary PLC to handle all the fast clamping stuff. It just gets a simple output pulse from the CNC that it follows like a metronome. It would need outputs connected to the E-stop and/or Feed Hold, in case it detects a timing conflict.  There is a good chance I will end up with something like that.

A complication is that the stock advance sets my length, which is one of the dimensions that must be adjustable. I'm thinking I'll use a servo to drive rollers to advance the part. But then I have to be able to adjust that servos movements somehow.

My first choice is to have it be a 4th axis so I can adjust it all in the CNC. A PLC could control it instead, some servo drives can store simple index positions in memory and cycle through them with simple inputs, but then I have to pass a variable from the CNC to the PLC/servo somehow. Or I have to have the operator enter that dimension somewhere else, which seems pretty clunky.

My wishlist for things I may want to modify in the control:

• Add a 4th axis. The fact that it's a feed axis might be weird, but I'm fine with having it "return to zero" between parts by just running the drive rollers backwards between loading the new material. if there is a software way reset to 0 that would be better.
• If the machine is not physically fast enough, I may want to upgrade with larger servos and tweak the acceleration.
• Possible I/O expansion though ethercat.
• A UI overlay. This isn't essential. But I would love to have a simpler interface for the day-to-day operation. Something that just shows the relevant details, has a counter, and a few input boxes for operators that would pass variables to the control that I use in my Gcode to make small changes to the geometry. I think i could write that in python pretty easily, but I don't know how feasible the passing of variables to PathPilot would be.  I would want to be able to exit to normal CNC UI easily. I'l save this project for last , after we are making good parts.

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