Proprietary- ooh I hate that word

[mikkojay]

Hello All,
Here is my situation at the moment-
I just picked up an item that I won in a sealed-bid university auction. The item was described an an "Invision 3d scanner". I bid on it sight unseen, except for a small thumbnail photograph. Once I got a good look at it, it turned out to be a Techno-Isel gantry table 33.4" x 29.4" with servos & a controller. I have scoured the web for info on these, and it looks like 99% of them get used as CNC routers, but they do mention that a 3d scanner can be attached and used (which is what this one's only function appears to have been).
Here is my question- If I wanted to get this thing going in the form of a CNC router, what are my options as far as making the servo controller that came with it work? The scanner also came with a PC that contained a Techno ISA card that has a parallel cable attachment to the controller. The only thing that resembled a program that would control the servos was an old DOS program called SAC. Has anyone had experience with this?
It all looks like a bunch of nice drive electronics, but if it is not compatible with modern software, does this render the controller useless? I hope not!
If anyone has any info they could share, I would appreciate it.

One last note- there was another PC that the "maintenance guy" said did not go with this thing when I picked it up. After reading thru the install manual for the scanner, I now see that there is a proprietary PC card that must have been installed in that other PC. I need to go back there and kick and scream to get that PC! If I don't, I am afraid that the scanner head on this thing will not be worth 2 cents. I was hoping to sell the scanner part to help finance some other stuff, so hopefully it will all work out and I can at least score the card.

I have a feeling that this model of scanner may not be sold/supported anymore, so who knows. I did find an article about the setup here:
http://archive.metalformingmagazine....10/LAWFORD.PDF


Thank You,
Mike

[ViperTX]

Get more info on the Techno Isel ISA card....I'm suspecting that the steppers and the driver card are much too small for actual use as a CNC router.

[Al_The_Man]

Techno-Isel use some nice hardware, BTW Viper they appear to be servo's fitted with encoders, Looks like a fairly large amplifier/drive chassis. It depends on what kind of drive the servo's have, Reduction etc, as to how they would perform as a router, I suspect that was one of there basic router machines that was adapted. Maybe try and get hold of Techno to see if they can offer software and or upgrade.
That could well be the proprietary controller card that you are holding.
It looks very similar to this current model http://www.techno-isel.com/CNC_Routers/CNCRouter_B2.htm
Al.

[ViperTX]

mikkojay....you're really hurting us here....you show us some pics...can't make out any of the P/N's of the card....a little more information....the card appears to be Techno-Isel.....I think that's what I see is the P/N is something like H20T43-xxxxx then it's a servo card make for the PCI bus....but since you mentioned ISA then Techo-Isel P/N for that is H26T55-PCMAC100A......also the controller box should have some P/Ns both inside and outside.....

[mikkojay]

Hey Guys,
Thanks for the feedback thus far-
Here are the numbers I have at the moment:
ISA Card = h20t43-srv400
controller = h26t56-srvbox2
Servos = E242 (or) 0242-02-008

I think that the size of the table may be dwarfing the size of the servos in the picture. They are nearly the size of a Coke can in length, slightly less in diameter. I have some MCG servos rated at 440oz in that really aren't any bigger.
A Google of the servo's part number of E242 (or) 0242-02-008 did not find anything.
I did play with the DOS program, and here is what I saw so far-
When I had the ISA card hooked up and launched the software (controller disconnected) the program told me that the gantry had hit a limit switch and the program basically locked up. I tried it again after removing the ISA card, and the program complained of an IRQ problem, then let me in. I mean by let me in it allowed me to check out the choices on the drop-down menus, etc... There was even one that said "Import G code". Pretty interesting. It was strange navigating thru a GUI Menu of a DOS program- I haven't done that in so long I can't remember!
Thanks, Mike

Thanks, Mike

[Al_The_Man]

They are most certainly Reliance electric (Electro-Craft) servo's, they often put a OEM part number on their standard motor for customers.
The dia and length from front mount to motor brushes could pin it down from the cat. I have.
Personally I prefer a good DOS GUI than running Windows.
I would certainly try to get some help from Techno, if you have a motion card system, its going to be a better system than going through the parallel port.
Al.

[mikkojay]

Hey Thanks Al-
I have some good news on the scanner front.. I copied the MS DOS "SAC" program files off of the old Gateway PC, kept the Techno ISA card, of course, and took it back to the school this morning. I found the guy I had dealt with when I picked the item up, and I told him that the PC I was given did not contain the PC card for the scanner head, nor the software mentioned in the operator's manual. I told him I would be happy to give the Gateway back if I could pretty-pretty-please have the other PC. We found the other PC in a room that looked like a PC graveyard. After a couple minutes of drama, he let me take the IBM Intellistation (that contained the scanner's interface card- yes!). I'll mess with it some more tonight when I get home from work.
Thanks, Mike

[mikkojay]

Holy crap now the software won't run because a parallel port dongle is missing! The folks in charge of the department most likely knew very well that this package would be useless without the dongle/key.
Anyway, I did get the scanner's isa board, so perhaps the software they were using is not the only solution. I plugged the scanner head's cable into the board & powered up the PC- this made the power lights & the laser come on. At a minimum, I got a killer gantry table, servos, controller, and a cool paperweight. Another reason that I am not too upset over the deal is that the second PC I picked up today had autocad 2002 installed on it along with some other autodesk things I need to explore.
-Mike

[mikkojay]

I went by the university this afternoon, and wouldn't you know it- they found the dongle! Not only the one I was looking for, but also a second one that I hadn't even figured out that I needed yet... I can't believe how lucky I am- I promise I will take things in stride from here on out.
I believe that this setup used 2 main PC's- one running the CNC control program to move the Techno-Isel table, and one to run the scanner software. The machine running the scanner software is connected to the other box via serial cable. The scanner program appears to operate the other box via a 9600 baud connection. Pretty new for me, but I am figuring it out as I go.
If I get this rig to scan something, I will be sure to post a picture.

Thanks for all the feedback.
Mike

[Al_The_Man]

Lucky You
Al.

[joejared]

Originally Posted by mikkojay Hello All, Here is my question- If I wanted to get this thing going in the form of a CNC router, what are my options as far as making the servo controller that came with it work? The scanner also came with a PC that contained a Techno ISA card that has a parallel cable attachment to the controller. The only thing that resembled a program that would control the servos was an old DOS program called SAC. Has anyone had experience with this? It all looks like a bunch of nice drive electronics, but if it is not compatible with modern software, does this render the controller useless? I hope not! If anyone has any info they could share, I would appreciate it. Thank You, Mike

I've been working with the controller you referenced, in a linux environment. While the interface is not yet complete, I have accumulated documents for development of it as a subdirectory on my site For programming purposes, the Dac is an 8 bit dac which means when programming the lm628 do NOT use the port12 command as that command is designed for a 12 bit DAC. I've managed to turn the motors on and am in the beginning stages of actually telling each motor to do something, but the first thing you'll really need to do is upgrade the motherboard to something more modern to get away from the memory limitations. SAC code is very limited, and the original program, based on Borland's Turbo vision was grossly inadequate to suit my needs, and although I do have another controller I use commonly, I thought I'd explore the original card first, using an Ampton PM-598LMR motherboard and 512MB memory before abandoning the card. I'm also using the Hitachi M12VC router adapter as my router and a standard SSR to turn it on and off but have yet to implement that portion. I'm confident I'll have a working router package for Fedora 10 in Text/network mode shortly. Images of development are in the most recent folders of my images directory.

[joejared]

Using the same card you are using, I now have a working interface to this board, which means with a simple change in IO ports, I also support the newer techno-isel cards as well for Fedora. In the coming month, I'll also be using the same machine on another customer site, for both my proprietary code for OreTek and for the micromill machining codes as shown here. For my own board, I discovered that one of the opto isolator chips was bad, causing spindle output to not function, so I swapped it temporarily with the one corresponding to the shutdown optoisolator bit 4 to continue, and as the auxiliary I/O is also fragged, I didn't have it as an option. The edge finder code will be based on axis A overtravel and the proximity sensor code will be based on Axis A home, as it's only a 3 axis CNC. In the future after I've obtained a fully functional version of this card, these inputs will be drawn from the auxiliary I/O and likely, my command language will be further enhanced. The only important difference between the older ISA and newer PCI cards I have found is that some of their cards use a 12 bit dac for pwm resolution, which is a simple 1 line of code, axiscmd(axis,port12) so I'm fairly confident I'll have usable software for your machine within the week, but code designed for a machinist, not the primative G-Code. Your machine will need to have 512 MB of memory and the current machine is 450 Mhz. running on Fedora 10, but the code was compiled on a fedora 4 system, which limits its backwards compatibility to Fedora 4.