Retrofit of 2 Messer Cortina DS Plasma cutting machines

Here we go again, two retrofits at once:
-both are Messer Cortina machines made in 2000 and 2004 respectively,
--one is 4X2 meters that has another 3 meters added so now it becomes 7X2 meters, last two pictures, it was bought as non working so everything is yanked out already, retrofitting it with Mesa 7i95, 3 of Gecko 320 DC servo drives and a stepper drive and motor for Z axis, will try to use encoders for both the drives and Mesa and report back how that works out. It had a Hypertherm 3070 Plasma system with O2 and N2 that will not be used, instead a Hypertherm PowerMax 45 will be installed with a Mesa THCAD.
--The big monstrosity is also a Messer Cortina that was 12X3 meters but 3 meters of length went to the first machine so now it is 9X3M, it has a 400 Amp Hypertherm HT4400 that can not be used at full power due to power grid, also has Oxy Acetylene cutting, has at a guess about one metric ton of cabling and that is not exaggerated! It is in working order, it was fitted with a new Hypertherm PowerMax 45 lately ( imagine that ! ), old software and hardware causes more trouble than it is worth, so everything will be yanked out except the drives and motors. Will be retrofitted with Mesa 7i92 and Mesa 7i77 and THCAD. The first picture is just the main control box where the drives are, there are another 6 or more boxes of stuff around it. Oxy everything will also be removed. The PowerMax 45 will go to the first machine and this one will be fitted with PowerMax 65.
Both will be used for cutting 3mm thick sheets, and with those heavy gantries that will be quite a challenge! Will be removing everything not in use any more to lighten up as much as possible.

Pipes, some cabling, the O2/N2 equipment and valves, torch cable and torch, from the smaller one are alredy in my shop!
Hypertherm 3070 will come at a later date.
Not the machines though, both of them will not fit in my new shop even if it was empty!
Anyone interested in the Hypertherm HT4400 ? It is a 400 amp monster, probably weighs a ton.
I will try to take some pictures of the cabling and pipes just for gigless, it has half a meter wide cable chains, filled to the brim.
Gona have a blast removing all that!

Edit:
Attached configs for both machines, both use LinuxCNC 2.8.4

The encoders are A/B/Z incremental ones with diferential outputs, so that made wiring to both Mesa and Gecko very easy, one side as single ended to Mesa, the other side has to be single ended to the Geckos, and left the indexes as diferential to Mesa 7i95, just in case.
A bit of tuning and all 3 joints/both axis are moving and tracking perfectly. This also helped with tuning Geckos better using the scope after setting feedback to encoders, one of them had a tad bit much Damp.
On to changing the Z motors on both machines...

I was told by the owner both machines have the same Z axis and same motors, they do not!
Big one has two Z axis that i have to yank out tomorrow to check what is inside, making reduction and mounts for new motors takes a lot of time, time i do not have.
Sorry for the lack of pictures, but the lighting conditions are pitifull there so everything looks terrible.

Yea, these are going slow for my liking as i can work only 2 to 4 hours a day there.
Just removing cables took 5 of those short days, another day to tidy up the remaing ones.
The small one is fully installed, both axis tuned, loop closed in LinuxCNC as i never trusted Geckos G320 with their 128 encoder counts error bandwidth.
Limit switches are wired but i have to add some load to them, they are 2 wire ones.
And Z axis, mount a new motor or add an encoder to the existing motor.
In a few days, the work on the big one starts, way more cables to remove!
More fun!

tommylight wrote:

Big one has two Z axis that i have to yank out tomorrow to check what is inside, .....

Surprise, surprise, both have what look like rolled ballscrews, 16mm ones! Daymn, those just have the chance of being very easy to replace the motors.
On the smaller one, took the Z motor out, removed the tacho, adding a 100PPR encoder, and installing another Gecko 320, tomorrow, had a headache today, i can not do complicated stuff while head is hurting.

How the hell is Samsung Note 20 Ultra able to take such good pictures, it was to damn dark there.
I took the fist picture in the original post at day time with a Note 9, they look like cr@p.
Got the sensors wired today, homing, tandem axis/joints, limits, all done. Work area got to be 2450x6550mm with the extension they did.
Also mounted the existing servo motor on the Z axis and added an encoder, it was a very tight fit, but we did shoehorn it there!
They were extremely happy today jogging the machine around, had to drag the younger one from the machine just to take pictures.

The first/smaller one is almost done, need to add voltage dividers and zener diodes to newly installed encoder on Z axis, and add 2 of 1MOhm resistors for THCAD.
All the sensors are wired and tested, float, breakaway, both Z limits, both X limits, both Y limits.
Hypertherm is also wired, torch on works, arc ok works, but some dumb a$$ yanked out the divider and wired the torch voltage, i have only THCAD 10's.
There were sparks as we tested arc ok by holding a plate near the torch, so the only thing left is more sparks tomorrow!
Regards,
Tom.