Supermax KMC-40 w/MicroPath Series 40 control

[Verell]

Hello,
Yesterday I lucked into a SuperMax YMC-40 CNC mill in near mint condition. The COMPUMATIC MicroPath Series 40 controller is flaky. At what I paid if I can't get the controller fixed I'll replace it with a Mach3 setup & still be $$$ ahead.

It'll be a week or so before I receive it as I have to make space in the garage & schedule the riggers to deliver it.

The spindle is a 3phase 3hp motor & I've got the usual 1 phase 220V. Will this VFD/Phase Converter handle the spindle motor: Hitachi VFD. 3HP 200-240 volt, Rated 2.9Amps/10A overload , three-phase. Part#X200-022NFU.
http://www.hitachi-america.us/produc...200/index.html

NEED DOCUMENTATION:
The system came w/o any documentation. Any chance that someone might have documentation on the MicroPath controller?

[radioactive]

That's the same convertor I bought for my mill as well... it should work great.

I should have my YCM-40 here this weekend to start my conversion. Going to Mach 3, getting rid of the Anilam controls...

[Verell]

The riggers just left. Still a lot to do before it's usable, but now I can start!

INTERSTATE RIGGING ROCKS!!!
It was delivered by Ed Wallace, owner of Interstate Rigging LLC in North Andover, MA. Very professional & well equipped outfit. The delivery & placement went extremely smoothly, the team did it smoothly, & quickly due to no waste motion. Everytime one guy needed something, the other had it ready to hand to him.

They suggested a couple of small position changes to avoid me having problems down the road. Made sense, glad I took their advice. They placed the machine by eye & when we measured for final positioning it was only 1/2" out of square, a small tweak with a prybar & it was perfectly positioned!!! I highly reccommend them if you're moving machinery in MA/Southern NH/Southern ME!!!

Next steps:
- Install motor & draw bar
- Install VFD/3 Phase converter, s/b delivered tomorrow
- Run a power line from the breaker panel.
- Begin debugging the controller.

Some pix:

[helixcnc]

Hi Verell,

I am happy to see that the riggers got the machine in with no problems. See I told you they were the best. I called an old friend today to see about info on the control and he said he would talk to the engineer to see if he has or knows anything about the MicroPath control. If I find any information or find any manuals I will let you know. Good luck and I hope you get it to run.

[Verell]

Thanks Tom,
Anything you can come up with will be a BIG help.

[Verell]

I've been poking around & looking at things before powering it up.

It turns out the main control PC card is a PMAC of some kind (I think a PMAC-Lite) built by Delta Tau Data Systems. This card handles all the servos, taking the encoder outputs & generating the input signals to the servo amplifiers!

Delta Tau is still around & from their web site they're still making varients of the PMAC cards!!! From their descriptions, the new cards are still heavily derived from their initial designs. This is extremely encouraging as it means that there's a good chance that if the card is bad I can either get them to repair it, or I can locate a good used one!!!

[Verell]

Today I reinstalled the spindle motor & power drawbar that were removed for shipping & delivery.

The spindle has a Bridgeport style V-belt variable speed drive. I was expecting more of a battle with the spindle V-belt, but it actualy wasnt hard at all. I tilted the motor a bit & slid it forward so I could get one side of the V-belt up into the pulley. Then with 1 hand I pulled down on the bottom part of the pulley opening it up & pushed the belt up into place. Once I had the belt in the pulley I just moved the motor around untill I could get 1 bolt in 3 or 4 threads, then could shift the motor until the other bolt went in. Torqued the motor bolts to 18 ft-lbs & that was done.

The Kurt draw bar was easy, just oiled the mating gears, slipped it into place, installed the 3 hex cap screws & the air lines. Verified that when the drawbar mechanism was down it engaged the mating shaft, tightened the 3 cap screws & it was done.

Somehow the 3 screws for the cover got misslaid. They're not metric threads, probably 10-32, so a trip to the local HW store is in order.

It turns out that the entire control mechanism has been disconnected from the 110 volt transformer output & a dedicated AC cord installed. Apparently this was done so a UPS could keep the controller running once it came up working. After supper I'm going to plug it in, turn the controller on & begin troubleshooting...

Anyone know if the PMAC firmware normally gets automagicly gets reloaded from the PC if the PMAC's backup battery is discharged(which I'm pretty sure is the case)?

[Verell]

I took pix of all the cable connections, then pulled the PMAC cards tonight.
It's a PMAC-Lite #602399-100 card with the companion DPRAM card. There's an EPROM with a white label that reads:
PMAC
v1.15G
1-12-95
DELTA TAU
I presume this is the permanant onboard firmware EPROM with V1.15G firmware.

The backup battery is definitely gone, not surprising as the mill was stored for about 3 years.

What is the battery's purpose? What happens when the battery dies? Is firmware or settings lost, or will the host just reload it?

I powered up the controller tonight, but not the servos & spindle. The controller is Win32 based, came up & seemed to be happy. Does this mean that the PMAC subsystem is also OK, even with the battery dead?

Tomorrow I'm going to disconect the spindle motor & connect 120V single phase to the transformer that provides 120VAC to the controller & 65VAC to the servo subsystem.

[jalessi]

Verell,

Here is some home work for you.

See attached files.

Jeff...

[vger]

I pulled this out of the manual for mine...

Option 16: Battery-Backed Parameter Memory
The contents of the main flash-backed memory (components U7, U10, and U16) of the PMAC1.5-Lite are not retained through a power-down or reset unless they have been saved to flash memory first. Option 16 provides supplemental battery-backed RAM for real-time parameter storage that is ideal for holding machine-state parameters in case of an unexpected power-down. It can only be used when the main memory is flash-backed. Option 16 provides a 16k x 24 bank of battery-backed parameter RAM in components U6, U9, U15 (smaller than the full footprint), with the battery in BT1.

Steve

[Verell]

I'm sorry, but I've already read those documents, they aren't too helpful, they assume at least a PMAC 1.5 lite, which has flash and also they assume you know what's being stored in the 'active memory'.

My board is an 1995 vintage 602399-100 which does NOT have flash memory. I've found a HDW manual for the 1992 vintage 602274-102 which I hope is pretty close to the '602399 board. The '274 manual states that it has:

ROM: 128 Kbytes EPROM for master control program

RAM: 384 Kbytes(128k 24-bit words) for active memory battery -backed-- Est. battery life 2-3 years.

EAROM: 2kBytes EEPROM for setup parameter storage.

I am NOT trying to program this card, just trying to find out what the 'active memory' is generally used for, and if it's commonly reloaded when the Windows based control program is started up & finds that the battery backed up memory has lost data.


Unfortunately, I've been unsuccessful, but am still trying to locate some Compumatic manuals that might help me.

[vger]

Ok, The PMAC is a computer in itself (albeit a very dedicated one) and has the program code that runs it stored in ROM. The code (program) in the ROM is executed when power is applied does it's houskeeping, allocating a section of active memory for it's own use and the remainder for whatever program (gcode or other) is to be run. The active memory is used for anything that may be changing while the machine is running... like...
Current postition of axies (in encoder counts), Spindle speed and wheather it is on or off, Pointer to the address in active memory containing the current block of code being executed, and lots more. Part of the active memory will be reloaded when you power on the controler. More will be filled when you transfer a program to it. And some will be altered when you home an axis. Part of the reason for the battery backup may be so that you can stop at the end of the day, turn off the machine, and come back the next day and find it still knows where it is. If the 1992 vintage board used EEPROM for parameter storage then yours probably does too, or at least something that does not require a battery to retain it's values. There are utilities to allow you to read the parameters, and a cursory look at a few will tell you if they are intact.

Steve