Build Thread- Bostomatic Controls Retrofit

[MattTheNoob]

Well, I have taken the plunge. Last summer I picked up a 80's vintage Bostomatic... 5000 lbs of beautiful 5-axis iron. I had planned on getting the original controls running, but realized that repairing the old components would be expensive.

Here is the lineup I have planned.

Mach3, Smoothstepper, Campbell Designs Breakout board, gecko 320's, Keling 7220 power supply.

Stay tuned... more to come.

[MattTheNoob]

Here is the update.

I have wires strung up all over my garage and I'm trying to get my first axis motor under control.

I have a problem with my encoder and or my G320. The Gecko manual describes a procedure of hooking your voltmeter to the test points under the hood and turning the motor slowly by hand. This voltage is supposed to represent the position error, and is supposed to start at 5v and work its way down to 0.4v as you turn the encoder in one direction, and up to 9.6v as you turn it the other direction.

Mine starts at 5.12v, and drops slowly to .3v in one direction, and drops much faster when turned the other direction. Nothing gets the voltage to go above the starting point. I figure this is either a problem with my encoder or with the Gecko.

I don't have a scope, so I put my meter between the A and B channels of the encoder and got a 0v, +5v, 0v, -5v, 0v pattern, so I think my encoder is good.

The other oddity I've encountered is my Sound Logic BOB. My x-axis LED's are on even when I unplug the parallel port. They also don't change at all when it is plugged in. Still a little squirrellyness to work through.

Stay posted...

[MattTheNoob]

My problem was I did not have the 5v neutral for my external encoder power supply attached to Term. 6 (Enc -) on the Gecko.

So with that done the gecko is now tracking both positive and negative error.

As it turns out it does look like I have a 1000 line encoder. I figured that to get from 5v to 0.4v in 0.04v increments that is about 115 steps. I made the drive fault and reset 8 times while turning the motor 90 degrees, so that means 115*8*4=3680 pulses per rev, which is probably actually 4000. Wow, 1000 line encoder. That is going to hurt my max speed.

Maybe I need to go the the G340's.

Now back to my BOB. Today I need to figure out why my led's are always on???

[MattTheNoob]

Let's see how I do at posting a photo. After weeks of gutting old, ugly and obsolete parts out of the old panel, I've finally started adding parts back in.

In the top left are 4 of my 5 gecko 320's, then by Keling power supply, a
Smoothstepper, Sound logic BOB (one of two), relay board, and spindle controller.

I'm currently debating (with myself) about what to put on e-stop vs. a "regular" stop. If anyone wants to weigh in with some suggestions, I'm all ears.

[LUCKY13]

Thats a nice looking box you have going there.
Its easy to see you have put a lot of time into it. Its a lot more work than expected thats for sure.

Here is a link to PDF that shows how Bob Campbell Design says to do it.


http://campbelldesigns.net/files/EPO.pdf


There site is slow so give it time to download when you click it. It would be best to just right click and save as incase you need it more than once.


I am running the Combo board but I have the two circuits on two different switchs. ALthough I havnt got to run my setup on the mill yet, so I am not sure how I feel about the way I have run mine. The way the PDF shows would be the safest way I would guess. There way shuts down every possible way at once so its a guaranteed shut down. You cant be to safe with these things thats for sure.



Jess

[MattTheNoob]

[upon edit, I see that the link to my pic is brokes, and I can't edit the post... so here is the original layout of my bobs and stuff.]


Somewhere along the line I went from "this panel is 10 times bigger than I'll need" to "holy crap! I need more space". So I've stacked my breakout boards and relay boards and tucked my smoothstepper under the relay boards. I offset the two breakout boards so I would still have direct access to the terminal blocks without having to uninstall anything.

Next I need to move that last card, the spindle speed controller up a little. Then I'll have room for a whole din rail full of interface relays and terminl blocks.



I made standoffs out of some 2" aluminum channel. The short standoffs are actually roll pins. Use whatchya got, right?



I'm not, in any way, implying that this is the best way to do it... or even a good way to do it. Hopefully the pics will generate a better idea for your own panels.

[RICHARD ZASTROW]

Are you going to use all 5-axis? I'm contemplating a project to use a 5-axis BD 405 with a PC/Deltatau controller. But I must confess I don't do the electronics.

Dick Z

[MattTheNoob]

Hey! I was beginning to think nobody was interested in my project!

I'm going to set it up for 3-axis first, but I'm leaving space for the 4th and 5th. I'll need to expand my IO, probably through one of the available modbus ModIO boards. I just didn't want to go too far with bells and whistles before making at least some of it work.

Do you have the BD 405 now, or are you considering a purchase? I must say that in my opinion, this thing is built like a tank.

[RICHARD ZASTROW]

Matt, It's one of those "if we get the job we'll build the machine" things.

We're quite capable of doing this. "We" is me doing the mechanical stuff, cohort "M" doing the electronics and cohort "J" doing the business stuff.

We generally stay in the gear hobbing, grinding, shaping and related industries. Our little group typically works in 6-8 axis CNC machines. Usually "M" uses DeltaTau boards with PC's and proprietary software. He says 42 axis is possible????????????

Keep us up to date.

Dick Z

add: Matt, what model did you buy? picture of machine?

[MattTheNoob]

42 axiis of ANYTHING makes my brain hurt!

It is a bosto 400 with the tilting rotary table.

Here is a pic of the machine in it's original home...


Well, I hope you get the job so you can buy the machine.

[MattTheNoob]

I've been wiring my fool head off in every spare minute I can manage. There aren't many original wires left in the panel. I have both BOB's wired up, three servos, servo power-dump relays/resistors, and all of the ac control relays. I'm about half way through the 24v system, and decided to rewire all of the 24v commons, as it was zig-zagged all over the panel.

Here is what she looks like now.


I recently purchased a VFD from CNCZone member jsheerin. If you need a drive, you'd be well served to drop him a line. Excellent communication, he fires up and tests the drive, photographs the test, and ships lightening fast.

Here is the new 3HP spindle drive in its new home (amongst the clutter collecting at the bottom of my panel).

[CNC-Joe]

Hi Matt,

Great job on the conversion -and you're wayyyy too neat on the wiring (ok - I just am not very neat with that sort of thing).

Is there any possibility of you posting some wiring schematics of what it is you're doing? What is the 24 V stuff for? Why 2 BOB's? (I guess for the 5th axis). What software will you run to ToolPath and create G-code for 4 and 5 axis machines?

Very interesting what you are doing ... keep posting and taking more pictures.

Joe