I80m repair or retrofit to PC?

[ka67_72]

Friday I sent my entire Yasnac I80 controller rack into Yaskawa. It's not seeing one of the cards. They'll fix the cards half the price of new. The suspect card is $1400 new, but they started thinking it was possibly the $3800 card next to it and said send the whole thing in. Not all the cards are bad but there are $23,600 worth of cards in there!!! Eventually I'm going to have to go with PC control.
My machine is a Matsuura MC-600VF, 5 axis with Yaskawa CACR-IR amps. I'm thinking of EMC2 with the Pico PWM cards. If it's a couple grand, I'm going to say fix it so I can get started making stuff. Should I stick with the Yasnac up to a certain amount, or just go for the PC retrofit? Will I lose any precision by going to PC?

Thanks,
Kevin

[DonnieET]

Check out this clip YouTube- EMC2 5 axis cinci at MPM
Check out the Mesa 5i20 with the 7i33 cards for the +-10 servo command.

If you system over 20 years old you will probably gain precision if the feedback has the resolution.

Donnie

[cnc-it]

Guaranteed they will charge you a lot more than what it actually costs to fix!
But that said to go to a pc control is a major learning curve and if the control already works well on that machine keep it simple and carry on making parts!!
John

[ka67_72]

They most definately will charge more than it costs to fix. I have a BP and a home built router running Mach 3, but this is an entirely different animal. I'm pretty confident I can get the servo amps and limits running with the Pico or Mesa cards. My concerns now are the spindle control, ATC, and everything else. Yaskawa recieved the computer last Tues. I haven't got a repair quote back yet.

Thanks,
Kevin

[jmelson]

Originally Posted by ka67_72 Friday I sent my entire Yasnac I80 controller rack into Yaskawa. It's not seeing one of the cards. They'll fix the cards half the price of new. The suspect card is $1400 new, but they started thinking it was possibly the $3800 card next to it and said send the whole thing in. Not all the cards are bad but there are $23,600 worth of cards in there!!! Eventually I'm going to have to go with PC control. My machine is a Matsuura MC-600VF, 5 axis with Yaskawa CACR-IR amps. I'm thinking of EMC2 with the Pico PWM cards. If it's a couple grand, I'm going to say fix it so I can get started making stuff. Should I stick with the Yasnac up to a certain amount, or just go for the PC retrofit? Will I lose any precision by going to PC? Thanks, Kevin

Precision is based on the resolution of the encoders, the quality of the leadscrews and things like that. Any competent CNC control will give pretty nearly the same results. The one area where differences might appear is if the machine has relatively low-resolution encoders and velocity servo amps with DC tachometers on the motors, and you go to a non-velocity servo system. When getting rid of the DC tachs, you may need to up the encoder resolution.

The older controls start to get crotchety with bad connections, mostly. Anytime you disturb the boards, things get flakey and you have to jiggle and reseat connectors until it works again. Eventually, it gets so bad that every time you fix one bad connection, you cause another one.

Also, as the components age, they start to wear out, and the board failures accelerate. $700 a pop (or worse) can quickly pay for an entire retrofit. EMC2 gives you graphical preview of the part program, which your Yasnac probably doesn't have, and essentially unlimited part program size. Also, you can use the computer and HAL to diagnose malfunctions and do some maintenance.

Jon

[jmelson]

Originally Posted by ka67_72 They most definately will charge more than it costs to fix. I have a BP and a home built router running Mach 3, but this is an entirely different animal. I'm pretty confident I can get the servo amps and limits running with the Pico or Mesa cards. My concerns now are the spindle control, ATC, and everything else. Yaskawa recieved the computer last Tues. I haven't got a repair quote back yet. Thanks, Kevin

Oh, ATC! Well, there's no doubt EMC2 can handle it, but it will take some programming, of a sort, to get it set up right. You have a choice of doing it in HAL with "components" that do small pieces of the task, or Classic Ladder, a ladder-logic program that is adapted to EMC2. There are a couple of examples of how to do this with Classic Ladder, such as the Mazak retrofit the EMC group did at Cardinal Engineering. One of the biggest problems is that the ATC logic is usually not well documented in the original control, so you have to feel your way through all the sensors and steps of the motion, all the time being careful to not smash anything.

Jon

[ka67_72]

The machine manuals included schematics and these are what I've found online:

Servo Drives:

http://www.yaskawa.com/site/dmservo.nsf/link2/TKUR-5VDJ3B/$file/IR%20Servo%20Manual.pdf

Spindle:

http://www.yaskawa.com/site/dmspindle.nsf/link2/TKUR-5EKT3N/$file/SIE-S626-2H.pdf

On page 9, it looks like I just send the pins to ground to set the spindle inputs.


ATC:

It looks like a combination of the factory cards run it but there are just 5 contactors, 2 3-way valves and 4 hall effects involved.

Kevin

[UWP_Wes]

I have a mill running a EMC2.

The honest truth is that EMC2 is a very powerful package and can do about anything you would want.

But you need to consider a few things first. EMC is NOT an industrial control. The interface is great for hobby use, but is not suited for industrial use IMO. You need to use a computer mouse for some things, and that is not ideal for a shop floor environment.

EMC is missing a few things needed for serious use:

No wear offsets
No spindle load monitoring
No direct tool table editing (you have to edit a text file or use G10)
Tool offsets can only be set relative to the work offset
There are only 9 work offsets
Mid-program restarts will not apply modal codes (you have to manually select the correct tool, spindle speed, coolant before restarting)
Rigid tapping is possible, but you have to make your own code (G33.1 no support for G84)
No 3D cutter comp (not a big deal with CAM, might be a problem with 5 axis)
No way to limit feed rate (if max rapid speed is 5m/min you can set feed to F5000, most controls limit feed rate to a fraction of rapids)


Retrofitting to EMC can bring your machine back to life. If you were using the machine personally, and you had some time to invest in retrofitting, it would be a great idea. If you need the machine working ASAP and you need to run the machine on 3 shifts, EMC would be risky.

I would look at some more industrialized PC controls like Fagor or even Centroid.

Cheers

Wes

[ka67_72]

Wes,
That's the kind of info I needed. I just have this machine in my garage at home but I intend on producing parts on it. It was working when I bought it but something has gone wrong in the move. Hopefully it won't be too expensive to repair and I can just stick with the Yasnac for now. I'll also take a look at those other controllers.

Thanks,
Kevin

[UWP_Wes]

Kevin,

You must have a huge garage. I don't want to dissuade you from using EMC2. I just wanted to explain some limitations. It is freeware, and there will be no factory support for it. The EMC community seems very focused on the esoteric aspects of the CNC control, and they have forgotten some very basic functions.

The other PC based controls will of course be much more expensive. The Centroid controls could be over $10k. Fagor is more for sure.

It is pretty amazing that those old hardware based controls from the 80's could do so much.

-Wes

[ka67_72]

The garage is only 26 X 28. I have the Matsuura, a BP, A Syncrowave 350, a foundry, a compressor, three cars, and all the other crap you'd expect to find in a normal car nut's garage. Somehow it's not as cramped as you'd expect. Hopefully I'll get it running with the Yasnac and make enough money to build that 100 X 200 secret underground garage I've been dreaming of digging out of my backyard. If not the cards that tested good can be sold to make back some of the cash used to convert to a commercial PC setup.

Thanks,
Kevin

[unterhaus]

there are certainly companies using EMC on production machines. A small personal company would have no problems.