Hi,

A guy called me to get his cnc lathe working. It's a retrofit. He got no paperwork with it at all. It has a driver board in it that runs two Bipolar steppers, one for x and one for z. It's a parallel interface. No matter what I tried I couldn't get the axis' to move. The chips that are connected to the parallel port pins are some sort of programable i/o chip. A search on google came up with nothing. The driver is made by a company called "Micro Systems Research" made in 1990, and the board is called "Optidriver". I am not even sure if it works on step/dir or some kind or poropitary software or what.

I will probably replace it with a Xylotex board, but I thought I would try here first.

Eric

Eric,

Does the lathe spindle have an encoder? If it doesn't you might consider one so it could be used with TurboCnc.
Outside of identifying and testing the chips and drivers it might be simpler to just replace the board.
Does it have a good power supply?

Chris

No spindle encoder. Its a wood lathe. I plan on using turbocnc.

I tried identifying the chips but as I said they are the programmable variety, so who knows what they do in the circuit.

It has a good powersupply but it's 40 volts, so I would need to replace that with a 24 volt supply.

Eric

Hi Eric,

There is a diagram on the DAK Engineering site for an encoder. It makes threading possible.
Here (http://www.dakeng.com/threading.html)

Chris

Yes seen that encoder. The guy is going to use it for stair spindles.

Eric

Looks like it got taken on by MicroKinetics. No longer listed, but there's a picture of it here :

http://www.microkinetics.com/stepmd.htm

I'm sure their technical support would help.


Richard

HI BALSAMAN.

I FOUND A 1999 CATALOG WHICH HAS A SCHEMATIC

OF A SIMILAR DRIVER. IT SEEMS THAT PINS 9 &10

(ON THE DB-25 CONNECTOR) HAVE

SOMETHING TO DO WITH ENABLING THAT DRIVER.

YOU SHOULD TRY GROUNDING ONE OR BOTH OF THOSE PINS.

GOOD LUCK!

LEN :)

I found Microkinetics. Thanks for all who replied. They sent me a manual for the board. The guy who's lathe is comes from also ordered thier controller that fits in the computer and the gcode software they sell, so we are all set!

Thanks everyone!

Eric