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Oh Blimey I bought a CNC Lathe !!!!

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awemawson:
Well so far no drama. Wired it up to a 32A 3ph socket, made sure estop button was on, closed my eyes and switched on. Fans whirred, relays clicked, leds illuminated all over the place in the control cabinets. Pressed the 'nc on' button (power to the controller) and sure enough the control powered up, blinked a few leds on its cards then sat there. Nothing on the monitor, blank, zilch, nowt! So now I need to pull out the monitor and scope its drive signals to see if it's being spoken to, or if its rudely ignoring the controller!

Sort of progress as we had no slamming around of the axis drives or spindles going into warp drive.

Time for lunch and a bit of thinking  now- extracting the monitor looks to be an adventure.

 :beer:

DMIOM:

--- Quote from: awemawson on February 28, 2013, 05:40:33 AM ---...he...he  415V three phase at 160 amps per phase here with the 11kv to 415v transformer in my wife's vegetable plot !......
--- End quote ---

Ah - this makes sense now - there was some confusion as to why OFGEM reported a looming power crisis for Britain
 

awemawson:
Well DMION you should be ok on the Isle of Man - after all you have that huge overshot water wheel  :med:

So I managed to extract the display without too much hassle and scope its interface. Usual issue of cables not long enough to put is somewhere sensible for test. Two connectors Mains and a modular one with 10 poles - no active signals on any of them, so as the cathode heater is glowing gently, and there is a red led gleaming on the main board I reckon the problem lies with the controller.

I desperately need to make friendly contact with someone with knowledge of the Mitsubishi 320 controls. Really need to get it put on a test rig. Traub would do it but my pockets are not deep enough for that !

awemawson:
Well, major progress on the documentation front: I've managed to get manuals for most of the elements of the control as installed allbeit as installed in more standard configurations. Also got fairly detailed manuals for the main (18Kw) and opposing (11 Kw)  spindle drives and the axis drives.

From this I've managed to work out in my mind which bits do what (it's an odd set up with bits of rom and ram dotted all over the place). The main CPU board as well as its 32 bit microprocessor has a dedicated subservient cpu dedicated to servicing the axis and spindle drives - and has shared ram through which they communicate. On board this cpu board is ram that holds the users CNC code. There is a ram card with battery back up that holds all the parameters specific to the machine tool. There are a pair of rom boards that give the controller its basic personality, and one of them takes an extra chunk of rom plugged into it that sets up the onboard PLC (Programmable Logic Controller) used to establish the 'ladder logic' for controlling the various functions such as tool turret rotation, parts catcher in or out etc. Masses of digital inputs and outputs on this controller.

I have a very strong suspicion that one (or both) of two cards in the control are faulty and at huge expense have sourced some in America that hopefully will be arriving in a few days time.

In the mean time while I'm waiting I'm doing a 'physiological tidy up' getting the wiring back into its correct trunking, sorting out loose wires and this evening actually giving it a 'wash & brush up' . I find it far more motivating working on a clean machine than poking around muck and grime.

What fabulous stuff Sugar Soap is. The cabinet paintwork was covered in years of baked on grime, but is cleaning up a treat with a bucket of warm sugar soapy water and a bit of elbow grease. Never used it previously on machines, just prior to painting and decorating - definitely stuff to keep in the workshop.
 

Pete.:
It'll be very satisfying to hear that puppy power up when it does. Cheers for posting it up.

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