I have been reading up on lots of different DIY projects for CNC Mills and i just finally got the one thing thats going to make me do it.

Any way in one of my electronics classes in my school i found this weird black acrylic box.

http://fearstyle.com/cncMillProject/001.jpg
http://fearstyle.com/cncMillProject/002.jpg

Sitting there collecting dust they said if you want it take it so i did, knowing its either a stepper motor controller for a CNC or some sort of Mocap. Well inside i found this

http://fearstyle.com/cncMillProject/003.jpg
http://fearstyle.com/cncMillProject/004.jpg

Three IMS IB 462 (http://www.imshome.com/ib_46x.html), 3 of them. So now i have what looks like the makings of a DIY now trashed CNC Mill and i want to salvage what i can and set up a small mill.. So i was wondering if you guys can help me figure out what i got here and perhaps point me in the direction to get this baby started.

Being i all ready have IMS Stepper motor drivers maybe i should stick with the brand and use IMS motors (http://www.imshome.com/step_motors.htm)?

Problem here is i dont know where to go from this point. This thing just landed in my lap and now i need to figure out what to do with it. Maybe you guys can point me in the right direction

oh man what a find!!! i wish someone would drop that kind of goodies in my lap.. well not literally, it might make me sing soprano for a while, but you know what i mean... anyway.. i dont know anything about ims as im building my own drivers, but congrats!!!

I wouldn't bother trying to find IMS motors, they bought them from somebody and re-branded them.

Looks like you have to figure out how to get rid of some of the input circuit that's there and come up with a parallel port breakout board. Doesn't look like you have a power supply. I forget what IMS wants you to use, 48v? Don't know what all those relays are for, maybe limit switches. See what is hooked up to the enable lines on the drives.

I like IMS, never used these particular drives though.

What if iwas jsut to keep the drivers and trash the circut compleatly would it be any easier to work with that way?

Trashing everything but the drives might be easiest. The one board with the relays looks like it might possibly be useful. You need some sort of breakout board.

Now that I look at it again, it looks like the two blue connectors may be for a parallel port. You should try to figure out if that's true or not, in which case you may be pretty much set.

Tomarow im going to rip it apart carefully and photography every thing... there is two cords coming out of the box that have no end one that looks like a power cord for a 2 pong wall outlet but i could be wrong. I will post all the photos soon as possible ill keep you guys posted, im defnetly going to need some help figuring out whats what.

One of the cords (yellow) you can see in the above photos i have no idea what that can possibly be for as well it looks like just a cut off end..

Ok so this is what i am see'ing

http://fearstyle.com/cncMillProject/003.jpg

Ok the 3 IMS Drivers with: Enable, Logic, Ground, H/F, Step, Clock, CW/CCW, Current, pins run to that top left white circut board in the orignal photo, most of the liens run trough a resister and into a TI 339 4 H 2k and a TI 47 A3 F 0K chip and than to the bottom left board that seems to go to 2 parelelports (blue connectors).

The Current adjust conector on the IMS goes to a transister than a large Purple cap solders the the ground pin (cap and resister) and the other side of the cap goes to the V+

Now the Ground and V+ has wires going out to the power switch that than goes to the bottom right board with the 5 relays amd seem to go out to a cord labeld +v and groundthat is cut with no end on it. also coming off the board with the relays is a home made serial cconector

Theres also this yellow wire that comeso ut of the housing as well and no clue what this ones too but it runs to the bottom left boars that goes out to the parelel ports

I took some close up pictures of all of this and ill post them shortly....

Does any one have sugestions where i should go from here? What are my options if idecided to scrap every thing but the drivers?

the drives are step/direction just like you need for almost any software out there, turbocnc, mach3, EMC. If you trash everything but the drives and want to use a pc to control, you need to come up with a parallel port breakout board or 2 depending on how you want to do limits and home. As I said in my previous post, it's possible what you have there is essentially two parallel port breakout boards in one. Hard to tell without the pinouts.