Need Help!- Almost reverse engineered the SpectraLight 0200 ISA controller card

[shannon_haworth]

I have a working SpectraLight 0200 desktop mill. This mill is based on the Sherline 5400 mill with custom electronics. The electronics utilize a custom ISA bus card to interface between the PC and the controller (a black box that includes a PCB board and a power supply). This card is only supported by the SpectraLight software (which is very, very limited). I desire to control this mill using EMC2.

My goal is to interface the existing SpectraLight controller box to the PC using a parallel port and bypass the need to have the custom card.

These mills appear on e-bay all the time without their controller card. From what I understand the controller cards cost a couple thousand dollars to replace. Finding a "controller card-less" way to run these mills would make these mills accessible to hobbyist.

To accomplish this I have reverse engineered the connection between the ISA card and the controller box.

Details on what I found here: http://build.spaceopera.org/site/spe...col/index.html

Using this information I made a simple cross-over cable (Documented on my page) to connect directly between the parallel port and the controller.

It almost works.

The spindle works perfectly. All three steppers make their distinct chatter noise when I activate them. And if I hold the shaft with my fingers I can feel the pulses, however the steppers don't exert enough force to move the leadscrews.

I need help. I'm a software engineer and have only owned a scope for a few months. And I've been using EMC for less than 24 hours. I don't know if my problem (weak steppers) is the result of an incomplete cross over cable or a configuration issue with EMC. I've exhausted my knowledge and rather than guess I decided to solicit help here.

Anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks,

Shannon

[shannon_haworth]

This appears to be working! I have not tested extensively, however I seem to have eliminated the need to have a PC interface card to control these mills.

Here is how I did it.

Would some brave soul attempt to replicate my results and report back?

I will post my EMC2 configuration shortly.

Thanks,

Shannon

[cncargentina]

I´ll start working tomorrow in the same project (with two friends of mine). I have the same machine and I´m interested in making it work with EMC.

You´ve done a great job so far, it helps a lot.

We are studying Electronic Engineering here in Argentina. And we HAVE to make it work haha. Tomorrow I´ll open the controller and try to see what´s inside.

If you have any updates please tell me. I´ll keep in touch.

[shannon_haworth]

Originally Posted by cncargentina I´ll start working tomorrow in the same project (with two friends of mine). I have the same machine and I´m interested in making it work with EMC. You´ve done a great job so far, it helps a lot. We are studying Electronic Engineering here in Argentina. And we HAVE to make it work haha. Tomorrow I´ll open the controller and try to see what´s inside. If you have any updates please tell me. I´ll keep in touch.

Great news, the more eyes on this the better!

I have found a problem. The spindle has stopped responding to on/off commands. I am certain it was working earlier, so I'll have to dig in and determine what changed.

Update: The spindle was just fine, I had pushed the big red "stop" button on the mill. Oops.

Also, I'll post screen-shots of my EMC2 configuration soon. FYI, I am running the EMC configuration that is included with this ubuntu CD image: ubuntu-8.04-desktop-emc2-aj13-i386.iso

[shannon_haworth]

Now that I've got this working the title of this thread is incorrect. I've started a new thread. Please post there.

[shannon_haworth]

Moved post.