My Boss 5 Retrofit - Jderou

[jderou]

I finally have just about everything working. It was a Boss 5, now it is running on Mach 2 with the original drivers and steppers. The old tape drive was torn out and a modified pc put in its place. Eventually I am hoping to get the old door back on to cover up the pc, I have to come up with more clearance though. The lower part of the cabinet was gutted, removed the old computer and power supply, replaced it with a card and a few relays. Whole lot more room in their now.
All in all I am VERY pleased with this set-up. It has allowed me to do things I wouldn't have even considered with the original system. I have run through 10,000 line programs without a missed step. Paid $3500 for the machine (probably too much) and maybe $300 for the retrofit (and a WHOLE LOT of head scratchin).
Now to figure out where to put the keyboard and mouse!

[Lasershop]

How was it the retrofit was only $300.00?

[jderou]

Copper clad board - 5$
Photo transfer paper - $15
The right photo transfer paper - $15
Etchant solution - $5?
IC Components - $50
500 mhz PC - free
2nd parallel port - $15
LPT cables - $30
misc relays & stuff - ? already had them
Watching something you spent hours and hours and hours on come to life - Priceless

Actually I can't make it add up to $300, but I had a lot of stuff already. I would say if I had to do it again and had to buy everything (not counting PC and software), I could probably do it for $200

[damae]

Hey, that's impressive! I was too intimidated to try and make my existing BOSS3 stepper drivers work with a modern interface. For instance, I didn't realize the big power supply (lower right when you're looking into the cabinet) and other components in the lower section could be eliminated.

Do you still have the original power cabinet, running off of 3 phase? Or did you find a way to eliminate that too?

I gutted my BOSS3 control and ended up with the same long rectangular hole you have, where the power supply heat sink used to be. How do you plan to patch that up? I'm thinking of welding a plate over it and caulking it with silicone to keep the metal chips out.

[jderou]

Yeah I wasn't sure about anything when I first started gutting it. I had the drives wired up before I removed anything, to test it out. Then it went like - remove this wire, does it still work? OK that can go. Its funny how that big old power supply was only used for the computer. I'm trying to figure out what it would be good for. Wish I knew the max amperage it can handle, might be good for running my homebrew router steppers.
I still have it running off 3 phase, need to figure out how to convert all but the spindle over to single. Really shouldn't be difficult, maybe machintek can offer some input?

The pcb is mounted on a piece of lexan, I am thinking about cutting another piece to cover up that hole. I could probably just use double sided tape all the way around it and stick it on. Thinking about it I don't know why I didn't just put the board over the top of the hole!

[creep_pea]

jderou

I'm interested in doing the same as you to my Boss 6.1 series 1, it uses different logic cards to yours but I don't think this is a problem.
Been reading braidmeisters questions to HillBilly here Need Help Boss5 to Gecko/Mach2?

I see you made your own opto-isolating board and I have a few questions for you.

Did you use the circuit HillBilly posted here? http://www.cnczone.com/forums/attach...achmentid=8239

If so what do TBA, TBB and TBC refer too?

Been looking at the schematics for the XDI as attached below, the bottom half of this is the same as HillBillys but the top half is slightly different.

Any help appreciated

Chris

[jderou]

Yes, that is basically the circuit I used, not exact though. He used TBA, TBB, and TBC as basically different groupings of outputs.
See my machine wiring diagram below. Don't follow the board layout exactly though, I made a few mistakes. For one thing I attempted to control everything from one parallel port, this would have worked but Mach2 in Maxcl mode doesn't allow you to specify output pins. I ended up installing a second parallel card and then making a Y adapter for the input to the card (see pic above). Would have been much simpler if I would have just ran the drives off one port and everything else off another (two parallel conectors on the board).
Not sure if 6.1 uses the same wave drive signal as the Boss 5 and earlier. Do you have a maintenance manual? Somewhere in mine it gives the signal form that is output by the XDI card. Is yours servo driven?
I'll try to help you if I can, not sure how much changed on the 6.1 though.

[creep_pea]

I have a Maintainance manual but unfortuneatly its for Boss levels 4, 4.1 & 5 so it doesn't really help.
The 6.1 uses ZDI card instead of the XDI card and also uses stepper motors but with 0.0005" resolution.

Can I have your circuit diagram in it orginal state i.e. not as a PDF as it quite hard to see where stuff goes.

Thanks

Chris

[jderou]

Will .dxf work?
Another note about this board: the pinout on the parallel connector ended up being mirrored after I assembled the board (in other words I have the pins numbered backwards, had to mirror wires in the ribbon adapter). Hey don't laugh, its my first board!

Not sure how the .0005 step works, maybe the signal stays the same and the drivers interpret it as half steps? i.e.
Boss 5.0:
a change from
L L
to
H L
is one step (.001")

Boss 6.1
L L
to
H L
is one half step? (.0005")??

I guess what you really need to figure out is what kind of signal the ZDI board is sending the drives. If it is the same form as the XDI of the previous models, you are good to go. Find the connector that runs from the ZDI to the drives (K8 on Boss 5), are their 10 wires? If so then we can go from their.

[creep_pea]

I'll have to ask machintek as he seams to know everything BPT (thankgoodness).

The K8 plug is still there and there are 10 wires which go off to the ACC and SMD cards as on your I think.

Do you know if it is possible to assign pin on Mach3 using Max CL? I'm guessing not as you would have gone that way instead of the Y connector

Thanks again

Chris

[jderou]

All outputs are used up when you use the Max CL option, and you can't change them. It would be easiest to just use port 1 for motor outputs, and the inputs (you CAN assign input pins). The motor output pins are 4 & 5, 6 & 7, and 8 & 9 (Y,Z,X respectively, if I recall).
Is your Boss operational? If so one way to check would be to attach led's to the ZDI output pins and step it in .0005 increments. You can find the pin numbers on the pdf I attached (from hillbilly). The TBA numbers reference his other drawing that you posted earlier.

[creep_pea]

jderou thanks for the cad drawing, a lot clearer.

Been tracing the pin numbers through on HillBillys diagram on to the XDI opto isolating schematics diagram and I recon LPT-1 pins 6 & 7, 1 & 14 and 3 & 2 control X, Y, Z respectively and the same with K8 pins 1 & 2, 3 & 4 and 5 & 6.

Cheers

Chris