Retrofitting an Ex-Cell-O Spindle Wizard from bandit to pc

[usfwalden]

I just got an Ex-Cell-O Spindle Wizard Series I. It came with a non functioning bandit control. The power supply in it seems to be functioning and 60V. The servos are Nema 42 I've found inexpensive Nema 42 steppers but I want to run servos. My understanding is that I can use pixie cards to interface between a pc control and the sumit dana drives from the bandit and the resolvers. I have the schematic for the motors/tachs/resolvers and the wiring between the motors and drives is simple enough but I don't have any documentation or knowledge of the wiring between the drives and the bandit motor logic card. The 3 drive cards all share a 16 pin ribon cable connecting them to the motor logic card. Each card has 4 unique pins. All the cards share 4 pins. The 8 pins that are unique to the other 2 cards are removed from the ribon cable connector for each drive.

Does anyone know what pins are what on these drive cards? Anybody have any better suggestions on how to retain the motors?

[usfwalden]

i guess i'm doing something wrong with my image insertions...

is the imgw wrapper the wrong thing to use to get the images to show in a post?

nevermind..I looked up posting directions and followed them to upload the photos here isntead of just inserting the urls

[HuFlungDung]

Sorry, can't help you with that. The ribbon connectors may be providing some signals from the resolvers....seems to me there was a resolver phase logic board in the old Bandit that actually figured out what position the table was at, because encoders were not being used.

Albright's CNC support service in Bozeman, MT, if he is still in business, might be one source of info. Wendland Browning Services in Gallatin Gateway, MT would be another possible source of info.

It might be worthwhile investing in some new drives, just so you know what you've got. AMC makes a nice standalone PWM drive that will likely power your motors. That was the route I took when I scrapped the Bandit. I still made use of the existing motors, just added in the encoders.

[usfwalden]

Ok, I'm finally getting to this.

I've decided to rip out and keep only the power supply from the control. I'm keeping my DC servo motors and replacing the tachometers and resolvers with encoders.

The set up I'm going with is:

US Digital H5MD-500 encoders http://www.usdigital.com/products/h5/
US Digital EA-R10-W5 differential receivers http://www.usdigital.com/products/ea/
GeckoDrive G320 DC servo drives http://www.geckodrive.com/product.cfm?pid=13
GeckoDrive Grex G100 http://www.geckodrive.com/product.cfm?pid=19

I'm using the G100 so I have enough I/O for all the relays and limit and home switches and to give me acurate timing--I'm thinking with the G100 handling the timing I may run the mach mill software on a laptop and not have a computer dedicated to the control of the mill.

[usfwalden]

Ok, been some changes.

I got a galil dmc-2160 control and I'm getting the galil amp-19540 amplifier
with the change of the control I switched the encoders to h5md-1000-I indexed 1000 line encoders

[usfwalden]

When setting up a rotary table what all do people consider when choosing their motors and encoders? Is the idea to match your resolution at the max diameter and the feed rate around the center of the rotary table with that of the rest of the mill?

I already have a large, brand new camco rotary table for the job. Right this second I don't remember how large since I've had it and the mill sitting while I've been busy finishing a couple masters degrees which I just finished (sitting somewhere else or yes I would go look, lol). I've been collecting up the parts the last couple weeks to go ahead with this project and now that I have the parts for the x,y, and z I'm starting to think about the rotary table.

What I'm looking for here is advice from people who have rotary tables or are very familiar with their set up. Hopefully someone can put me on the right track and tell me what I need to know to do it to full advantage. Precision and finish quality requirements on the parts I'll maching on the rotary table will be very high. The camco rotary table is set up to be able to be used in a gang set up so it has both a servo motor mount and an output shaft so I have plenty of places to mount encoders if they aren't integral to the servo motor.

I am using 110V 5.9A 1800RPM DC servo motors, 1000 line encoders with indexes, and 5 tpi precision ground ball screws on the x,y,and z. The power supply is 60V. Gears in the camco rotary table are 30 to 1. I'm going to guess my rotary table is 12" if not it's 10. What all do people consider when choosing their motors and encoders? Is the idea to match your resolution and max feed rate at the max diameter of the rotary table with that of the rest of the mill?

I know on the galil control I can set the home routine to look only for the index and not worry about a home switch. Is this how homing a rotary table is normally accomplished?