DM 4400 rebuild
Hello,
A few years back I acquired a DM4400 for an good price. However, it turned out to have bad spindle bearings and I had to do a spindle rebuild.
You can check out how I did that in this post.
I have to thank Dan ''drhanger'' for helping me with that repair! It turned out to be a lot of work and costed me a fair amount of $$$.
But after all it was fun and a great learning experience, so I am actually happy I got the chance of taking apart a spindle cartridge and making it work again.
The paint on the machine was terrible when I got it. It was starting to break off in large flakes. So I had to repaint it,
I used two part epoxy paint. (the type used on backhoes, tractors etc) I was afraid it might not hold up to the coolant,
but it shows no signs of that to this date. So far so good.
DM4400 was shipped with a SKIP controller, this controller does not take traditional G&M codes, so I knew when I bought it I was in for a rebuild.
I was thinking of what controller I could use, I had been using Mach 4 from Newfangled Solutions on a cnc bench top lathe, but I was not impressed with either the software or hardware (PoKeys57cnc)
I was thinking of going with Linux (mesa) but I am not all that good at programming (yet) so I went with the newly released (at the time) Acorn from Centroid. The acorn has preprogrammed I/O's that you assign. I am really happy with that choice.
The Acorn motion controller however could not controll the ATC or drawbar mechanism from their default settings. So I used an inexpensive PLC from Allen Bradley to controll the drawbar.
The ATC is not working on my machine, but I am not missing it for the type of work I do.
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Last edited by oscilloman; 12-29-2018 at 02:18 PM.
Re: DM 4400 rebuild
Awesome! Good to see another DM4400 resurrected! I did mine a few years back and used Flashcut. Had I known about Centroid then, I would have gone that route.
You will be happy to hear that an I/O Expansion module is planned for Acorn. It will then allow you to get the changer working again. I assume you left the stepper motor on the ATC? You could drive it with Acorn but lose the ability to have a 4th axis.
Regards
Marty
Re: DM 4400 rebuild
Thank you Marty!
I used your build log frequently while working on this machine, it was great resorce :-)
The ATC is left just the way it was under skip control.
I/O expantion module will make the acorn even more capable. Do you know more about it?
Not at this time. Monitor the Centroid CNC User's forum for more information.Originally Posted by oscilloman
Re: DM 4400 rebuild
Hello O'man---
Nice work, looks great with the electronics you did and the paint job. I have two of these with one in storage for parts and the other working one in my garage. The paint on the working one was done over by what looks like 'make-work' for some kid, you can see paint brush strokes all over, generally looks pretty bad. Not something I really care to tackle, though, so 'it is what it is'.
Did you do a build log somewhere? I haven't seen one here in this forum, I would really love to get some details on just what all you did with it, I might be able to pick up some pointers. I stuck with LinuxCNC for controller, I'd been using it for several years prior to this machine so I was okay sticking with it. I didn't use the Mesa cards so I'm still just using a single parallel port setup which gives me just enough I/O to do all the major things, but not the ATC, so that's not in working order on mine either. Anyway even if I did have enough I/O I'm not sure I would ever be able to put it all together. If you find out about the Acorn expansion module or some other strategy for getting the changer to work I would really like to see that.
Dan
Re: DM 4400 rebuild
Hey Dan and thanks!
Nice job on scoring two machines.
I am truly happy with mine, and if I had the space and could find another one for a reasonable price I would not hesitate with getting myself a second machine. But I reckon these machines being a rarity in Norway.
Unfortunately I did not do a thorough build log, but I am planning on doing a better job of documenting my rebuild this following year. If or when Centroid releases a extension board I will try and get the ATC working. Not that I need it for what I am doing, but it would be a fun project I think.
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