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Reworking of a Denford Mirac CNC lathe.

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john11668:
Hi all!

Please excuse me . I am a total novice on the forum although not without experience .
This project though is going to be a bit of a challenge.

Bought as a machine which "was working until recently".    Yea  Right!!

So  A Denford Mirac but no Denford software,
Clear evidence of  messing about to try and make it work. Several PCs had been tried .
Chap was running a small commercial CNC  operation  and had a number of working machines.
Said that it had worked but just stopped loading part  programs. But no evidence of recent working
Coolant had all been drained but was well dried up.

No evidence of any action when powered up , and I seem to remember a Denford dongle was needed to make it work and there was none .
E stop was a key switch and locked out with no keys .

For the price though it seemed reasonable  so it has become my winter project.
Collected from the midlands and brought home, but had to disconnect and remove the panel to get it in through the shop door.
It became clear that the monitor was duff but am going to get that "looked at" although a separate monitor works at the moment.
Decided that redeeming the Denford slave board was likely to be hard work  so opted to add a later PC with  Debian 10 having run my smaller lathe (Boxford TCL) on that.
 So have added 3 Bobs and  3 parallel cards ,  and had spindle , and axes working.
Am now looking at Turret and getting to the point of needing more help which is why I am here .
Bedtime now  so more specifics soon!

awemawson:
I’ll watch this thread with interest having been there myself a few years ago.

john11668:
  So a pic of the Mirac as I first saw it.


Was claimed to have been working until recently, at which point it stopped loading code. I have to say I suspect that it has not worked for quite a long time. lots of PC boxes came with it and a handful of hard drives suggesting there had been some unsuccessful trial and error attempts to make it work.
Got it home using a mate’s pickup and successfully unloaded with a floor crane, but to get it through the workshop door the panel needed to come off (so all had to be disconnected)
Seen here looking forlorn after it was hoisted onto a trolley table. The “Dexion” version offered with the machine was just not going to do the job. And it needs to be on wheels for access to the panel when the job is done.
 




Panel was placed on the bench.
Whilst the Denford panel looks OK, I have no Denford software and am led to believe that a costly Denford Dongle could be needed to run Denford software.  I had already run a Boxford TCL machine using Linux so decided to do similar and Installed a PC with  Debian 2.8.4 and 3 parallel ports
Then removed the Denford slave board , (reasonable offers considered)   to make room for the new kit which includes 60v drivers ,  3 BOBs  and a 0.4Kw VFD.
 
 

A mate has done similar with a Denford Cyclone, adding a turret control board designed by a colleague, and sourced from China and he has made a successful conversion. His turret motor had been goosed so he had converted his to a stepper motor drive.

 We compared notes and it was decided to first try the existing turret motor and see if it worked.
 All of the turret connections are now identified and tie up with the manual for turret wiring of a six station model.
We tried to run the motor (free of the turret) using the 0.4 Kw VFD.   It stuttered and quickly overheated.  Tried another VFD which did similar, yet the windings check out and there are no signs of damage, so am now puzzled. The turret data plate is lost but it does look like your RH80 model Andrew.
So the question is now whether the motor is goosed, or do we need a beefier VFD??
What is the rated power of the turret motor and what VFD should drive it .
What did you use Andrew?

john11668:
post deleted

awemawson:
It’s an awful long time ago so memory is hazy, but I’d expect that I put all the details in my thread, I do tend to bore people with the minutiae !

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