Gallery, Projects and General > Project Logs
Oh Blimey I bought a CNC Lathe !!!!
philf:
--- Quote from: awemawson on April 24, 2013, 04:50:20 AM ---Some picture to hold your interest :wave:
--- End quote ---
You've got my interest! :bugeye:
I thought setting up Mach3 to work with with my mill was hard enough.
What are you planning to make with it when it's finally fixed?
:beer:
Phil.
loply:
awemason, maybe you have already addressed this in an earlier post, but I'm wondering what the advantage in retaining all of the original control circuitry is, as opposed to replacing it with a modern solution (whether LinuxCNC or some other 'drop in' replacement)?
It seems like a lot of effort and expense and I can't help but feel... what if it breaks again?
awemawson:
PhilF : Make - good heavens man I'm not going to MAKE anything - it's the journey I enjoy :clap: Well perhaps the odd run of a few hundred thousand widgets. :clap:
Loply: partly answered your point in my comment to PhilF - but actually the TX 8F is a very capable controller, and on this machine the spindle amplifiers and axis servos are not interfaced in the conventional way, but are driven by a scusii like 50 pin interface proprietary to Mitsubishi - not saying it's not possible but not just 'step and direction' or '+10-0--10' that can be bought as a comodity.
Spent a bit of time this evening gluing the Optical Tool Setter box back together - looks ok in the picture but in fact obviously has been dropped - diametrically opposite corners broken.
Still not found an MC465a - ordered a few ics today and will start replacing the buffer logic that it talks to the bus with. A couple of standard through hole DIL SN74LS645-1N octal bi-directional bus drivers which I know I can cope with, but eight SN74ls244 SOIC chips as well. Never worked with tiny surface mounted components before so this will be breaking new ground for me.
This is the card I'm working on:
awemawson:
Fortunately I think I've proved the two custom Programmable Logic Arrays to be ok as I've swapped them between the two faulty cards that exhibit distinctly differing fault symptoms, and the faults remain the same. Not absolute proof that they are ok but they probably are.
awemawson:
Quandry Quandry: :bugeye:
Chips arrived this morning, and I started on the 'easy' through hole SN74LS645-1N - as there are a pair of them I am assuming that they are the 16 bit wide data bus buffers. First one wasn't too bad, but the power pins were a pain as the board has a ground plane and a power plane so it took a lot of heat to suck out the solder. Changed the first, put in a 20 pin socket, whacked in a replacement chip, tried it - unchanged symptoms :( - anyway onwards and upwards, went ahead and removed and socketed the second SN74LS645-1N. Tried it - symptoms have changed to EXACTLY the same as my other board (which was already packed up to be returned as faulty!). I can only presume as both boards now give the same symptoms the fault lies elsewhere. Looking on the bright side it does look as though I have probably fixed one faulty board to chip level. :clap:
Meanwhile they've cut our water off due to burst pipes on the main road and are bringing a bowser round for our livestock, and bottles for us, so probably little time for progress this afternoon due to water carrying.
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