Retrofitting Prolight 2000 4-axis mill

[jskene]

The PL2000 just needs a serial port, running their proprietary DOS program. It's not like the earlier versions of ProLight mills that required an interface card in the PC.

It sounds like you may not have configured the serial port correctly.

I have a PL2000 running off a PC, and I can talk to it. I can't remember my port setting though, and have forgotten how to read them back from a DOS prompt. I'd be happy to send them to you if someone can tell me how to extract them from DOS.

Jerry

[jskene]

I just checked my PC's serial port, and it's set to:

COM 1 = 19200 baud, Data Bits 8, Parity None, Stop Bits 1, Flow control Xon/Xoff.

This differs from your settings. Try these out and see if it can connect.

Jerry

[Galane]

Old thread, but the PLM2000 connects via a single RS232 cable to a PC and its software runs in DOS. There is no license code or key or dongle. It will NOT work with any version of windows newer than 98. Forget it, don't bother trying. The DOS software must have exclusive access to and control of a serial port. Newer versions of Windows will periodically seize control of the port, which interrupts communication with the PLM2000.

The HAAS 4th axis used a different controller on the PLM2000. Without that option, a controller with only three outputs was installed so unless you can figure out how to control it with Linux CNC and operate and synchronize a separate 4th axis (which LCNC *can do*, if the command language to the Animatics control can be figured out), you'll have to retrofit a new servo control system.

If you cannot get the DOS software to communicate with the mill and you have the port settings correct, try this.

Turn on the PLM2000, then run the DOS program. When you see the error screen, turn the mill OFF, then hit retry and turn the mill back on. I have to do that with my PLM2000 every time to get it talking with the PC.

The PLM1000 is an entirely different beast electrically. It has stepper motors instead of servos. It also has a big black box containing the stepper drivers and other electronics. There's also an ISA or PCI interface card, which if you don't have, you can buy from Intelitek - or for that $$$$$$$ you can remove all the electrics and replace them with new stuff a few times over.

Intelitek still has some parts for the ProLight mills and lathes and they seem to be extremely proud of them, or so fond of them they can't bear to let them leave except to the shops of very well heeled machinists.

[psawan2]

I'm trying to retrofit my prolight 2000. It is missing the servo motors for the axes. Do you know which motors originally come with the machine or which ones I can replace them with?

Thanks.

[abeship]

I'm trying to retrofit my prolight 2000. It is missing the servo motors for the axes. Do you know which motors originally come with the machine or which ones I can replace them with?

Thanks.

I have a prolight 2000 with original electronics, I can look into this for you if you still need.

Thanks

[zero_divide]

I have a prolight 2000 with original electronics, I can look into this for you if you still need.

Thanks

I know it has been over 2 years. But can you PM me if you have a working Animatics control for PLM2000?

I just got one from an auction and the damn box smells like fried silicon.

[Galane]

I know it has been over 2 years. But can you PM me if you have a working Animatics control for PLM2000?

I just got one from an auction and the damn box smells like fried silicon.

If the Animatics box is fried but the XYZ servo motors and spindle motor controller are good I think it'd be easier to retrofit a Pico Systems Universal PWM Servo Controller and servo amps. The controller is $250 and amps are $125. Or perhaps pick up three used Moog SM1720M which are NEMA17 size and fit them in place of the original motors, using the original reduction belts. Several of those available for $200 or less on eBay but curiously mostly from Thailand.

Or find an electronics wizard who can figure out not only what is fried but what caused it to fry, and fix it all. This would be especially good if you have the rare 4 axis controller. The 4th axis parts were only installed when the 4th axis was ordered, making later upgrades requiring replacing the Animatics box.

It might be possible with both a 3 axis box and a 4 axis box in hand and an EPROM programmer to create a how-to on upgrading a 3 axis box, and firmware chips to support the 4th axis, but first one must have a 4 axis box and an electronics wizard handy. Someone who worked at light machines posted somewhere they might have sold around 50 PLM 2000 mills with the 4th axis.

[zero_divide]

If the Animatics box is fried but the XYZ servo motors and spindle motor controller are good I think it'd be easier to retrofit a Pico Systems Universal PWM Servo Controller and servo amps. The controller is $250 and amps are $125. Or perhaps pick up three used Moog SM1720M which are NEMA17 size and fit them in place of the original motors, using the original reduction belts. Several of those available for $200 or less on eBay but curiously mostly from Thailand.

Or find an electronics wizard who can figure out not only what is fried but what caused it to fry, and fix it all. This would be especially good if you have the rare 4 axis controller. The 4th axis parts were only installed when the 4th axis was ordered, making later upgrades requiring replacing the Animatics box.

It might be possible with both a 3 axis box and a 4 axis box in hand and an EPROM programmer to create a how-to on upgrading a 3 axis box, and firmware chips to support the 4th axis, but first one must have a 4 axis box and an electronics wizard handy. Someone who worked at light machines posted somewhere they might have sold around 50 PLM 2000 mills with the 4th axis.

It's a 3 axis version with a tool changer.
I guess it would be easier to rip out everything and replace with a G540 system and steppers.

Btw how can I check if it is really the animatics control fried? When you power the machine on should it power the servos and hold position?

Mine just shows red light under the power button and sits doing nothing.

I checked the control is getting power in. All fuses are OK.
EStop is released and safety shield is closed....
Played with Dosbox on windows 10 for a while day. Checked the cable with multimeter to make sure proper pins go in proper places. I think it must be the control

[Galane]

You 100% cannot run the DOS software for this in any kind of emulation. It has to have exclusive access to the serial port connected to the mill. Any interruption in the software's contact with the mill stops it. What I have to do is turn the mill on, launch the software, have it try to connect, it'll fail. Then turn the mill off and back on then try connecting again. Then it works.

It *might* run under Windows 95 or 98 but best off to just run it in straight DOS, with EMM386 set up to configure all higher RAM as EMS, with no XMS. This can be a problem with motherboards that have integrated I/O, video, and audio, especially laptops, with peripheral access mapped into the upper memory area. There has to be a 64K region of memory free between 640K and 1 megabyte. If there's no contiguous 64K there are 3rd party replacements for EMM386 which can use separate chunks, but they have to be at least 16K and total 64K. There may be a 3rd party replacement that can work with 8K chunks.

Why you must have EMS is the PLM 200 software is so old that's all it knows about. It uses EMS to load gcode files into. It can work with just the basic 640K but then you have to use the utilities to split and link the file into pieces small enough to fit into low RAM. It runs through one then dumps it and daisy chain loads the next part, and if your storage is slow the mill will pause with the spindle running (unless there's a spindle off command before the break) while the next section loads.

So the ideal PC would be an 80386 with no peripherals built into the motherboard, able to take at least 8 megabytes RAM, a basic ISA VGA video card, and a 16 bit ISA multi-I/O card with IDE, floppy, serial and parallel ports. Also usable would be a bare bones 80486 with PCI slots to allow for better I/O cards and up to 32 megs RAM to take full advantage of EMS 4.0.

Another option would be a 80286 or 8088 or 8086 with a hardware EMS card (those will also work in a 386 or 486). I used to have a 286 with 12 megabytes total RAM. 512K on the motherboard in DIP chips and three Micron RAM cards. The first one backfilled low RAM to 640K then all the rest of it and the other two were split evenly between XMS and EMS, with EMS used for old games that couldn't use any form of XMS. The other 5 slots had EGA video, Covox SoundMaster II card, serial/parallel, dual gameport, floppy and MFM hard drive controller. Dual half height 360K floppy drives and a massive FIVE MEGABYTE hard drive. Wooo! (Massive in that it was 5.25" full height.)

Whatever you end up doing I'd keep the original servo motors with their encoders. May cost more to do the electronics refit but you'll have a superior mill with closed loop position control.

[markotime]

I know it has been over 2 years. But can you PM me if you have a working Animatics control for PLM2000?

I just got one from an auction and the damn box smells like fried silicon.

I've asked my friend whose mill i retrofitted, should hear shortly. Also another friend whose router came with animatronics stuff, has since converted to generic. I'll let you know. markotime shaw ca
You may be better in the long run converting. A Gecko G540 or 3 gecko G3X for steppers or for original servos, respecively. More reliable than animatronics. A DOS machine running cncpro (parallel port,,
old style disk drive) does great (both mine and my friend's) or Mach3/4 and a USB box on a more modern PC. I use Mach3/Win2000 on my Emco lathe, and CNCPro / Win98 (DOS) on my prolight.
Does everything I ever needed, including 4th axis for rotary table. /mark

[zero_divide]

I've asked my friend whose mill i retrofitted, should hear shortly/mark

Thanks. Never mind though. I went with full retrofit with only original motors and new g320x drives, C11G Bob and uc400 motion control.

Almost got everything figured out and hopefully will be putting all electronics in in a couple of days.

[Galane]

Should be a very nice mill with keeping the servo motors. The 100 pound working load makes these old blues the superior benchtop CNC mill.

Would love to see a build thread on this forum.

[c384id70]

I'm tracking down how my proLight 1000 limit switches work. My mill has a red and a black wire heading to all six switches plus a proximity switch that forces to operator to close the clear plastic guard. I'm guessing that probably the red wire SB caring a low voltage DC current and when any limit is tripped that power is transferred to the black wire. Somewhere in all these wires I need to trace where these two wires exit the mill. If a limit switch is tripped, how do you force the mill back off the limit? Also any ideas on tracking down these two wires?

[c384id70]

My 1000 servos are Superior Electric M063-CS06.