Tree325 Retrofit Started

[PeterTheWolf]

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mmurray70,

I was going through the Tree 325 Schematics and tracing the power supplies today. I see exactly what you stated below. Except for the servo drive chassis (rectifier and capacitor) being half of the servo motor's power supply.
I now want to start removing what I don't need since I am going to be using the Dynomotion Kflop / Kanalog boards on this machine.

Steps:

1.) My first step is remove the servo drive chassis. But now that you mentioned that this is half of the power supply for the servo motors I am now confused again.
Wouldn't I be able to disconnect the six connectors in this pictures and then remove the drive boards and still have the power supply I need for the motors and the Kanalog borads?
And maybe remove the fans too.

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If you still want to use original drives you should use the original power supply too. Half of your power supply is actually located on the servo drive chassis (rectifier and capacitor). The other parts are the really big transformer which takes 230vac and drops it down to 72VAC and the small transformer to the right of your servo drives takes 230VAC and steps it down to 115VAC. Both these voltages (the 72VAC and 115VAC) are what power the servo drive chassis and servo drives. These voltages connect to the screw terminal on the right hand side of the servo drive chassis. 72VAC goes to screw 9 and 10 and 115VAC goes to screw 11 and 12. So really in terms of power supply all you need to do is get 230 VAC to both these transformers, and your servo drive chassis is all powered up. This 230 is a single phase. Can be one of the 3 phases or a single phase only supply. All the factory wiring to supply these transformers should be able to be reused without much or any modification. There is a contractor switching the big transformer on and off, you will have to figure that out to get 72VAC out.
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[mmurray70]

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mmurray70,

I was going through the Tree 325 Schematics and tracing the power supplies today. I see exactly what you stated below. Except for the servo drive chassis (rectifier and capacitor) being half of the servo motor's power supply.
I now want to start removing what I don't need since I am going to be using the Dynomotion Kflop / Kanalog boards on this machine.

Steps:

1.) My first step is remove the servo drive chassis. But now that you mentioned that this is half of the power supply for the servo motors I am now confused again.
Wouldn't I be able to disconnect the six connectors in this pictures and then remove the drive boards and still have the power supply I need for the motors and the Kanalog borads?
And maybe remove the fans too.

Dont remove the servo drive chassis. You need to keep everything in this picture, and leave drive boards on that chassis. Yes, the servo drive chassis is also part of your power supply. Servo drives need DC power, and your machine only sends AC to the servo drive chassis. There is a rectifier buried somewhere in that servo drive chassis that converts AC to DC and that huge capacitor filters and stores the DC power that is used by the servo drives. Most small DC power supply's consist of a transformer, rectifier and capacitor all in one unit, but in your case the transformer is separate and the rest of the components are on the servo drive chassis. My Fadal works the same way.

All the wiring on the right terminal servo drive chassis will stay just as it is. Bottom four wires are AC power input to servo drive chassis. The other 6 wires are the 3 pairs of power wires to servos based on your schematic. Note that your Y motor connections are in pin 7 and 8 instead of 3 and 4 like shown in manual. Im guessing your Y axis drive was originally in the empty place between Z and X (which uses pin 3 and 4) and somebody moved it to the end for some reason. Or maybe the machine came with a 4th axis drive installed and the Y drive died and the 4th was used instead. Dont worry about this, its fine the way it is, just pointing this out in case the mismatch is confusing.

The three bottom connectors (red ovals around them) will also stay just as they are, without needing to be touched at all. Pretty sure anyway. Only thing you will be modifying will be the top connectors (circled in red). This is shown in page 5 of schematic. Pin 1 and 2 is where you will be sending input signal from Kanalog as Tom said earlier. The other wires in this connector are for the tach (this will stay) and a reset according to manual. Im not sure what reset does. So really to get things moving, all you need to do is figure out that contactor for the transformer to output 72 VAC, and connect Kanalog outputs to pin 1 and 2 of each drive. These two pins are also where you apply the test voltage Tom mentioned. I think you are supposed to use a AA battery and a resistor. Do a search or wait for Tom to post specific details. No need to connect a car battery.

Edit: I said this is all you need to do to get things moving, but of course you will need encoder signals to Kanalog too. This is the only mods you have to do to drives to get moving anyway.

[PeterTheWolf]

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Ok ... I had to go back and re-read what Tom wrote earlier in this thread:

"Testing_Analog_Amplifiers"

I will try this ... now that I better understand.

Question though: In this test will the servo motor removed from the machine? Or can a 1.5V battery in series with a 1K Ohm resistor really move the X-axis (saddle) servo motor at 15% of its speed?

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Tom,

After doing what I could to figure out how to test these motors according to your suggestion ... I am still unsure how to go about this. Please correct me in my understanding this test.

The “Velocity Command” wires coming from the Kanalog is the +/- 10 volts applied to the amplifier and the amplifier has some gain to increase the voltage which is what is applied to the server motor to make it move. Now I am not sure what the gain of the amplifier is.
So, if I were to use a simple 12 volt car battery for this test, then I would need to apply a resister in series between the positive side battery lead and the Red velocity command lead such that I would be applying, let’s say, 8 volts. Since this is DC, this voltage being applied at these two leads would also provide the amplifier with the needed current to move the motor? So I am not sure what size resister to use. How much current should I being calculating for?

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[mmurray70]

Well the 1.5v battery and resistor is just creating a signal to move. The drives obviously need to be powered up from the power supply and the power to move comes from there. So yes the 1.5v battery should certainly move the machine. Be careful to start with axis in middle and avoid running out of travel and hitting stops.

[PeterTheWolf]

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....Yes … I see that. As I got nothing doing this test with the machine power off. So I tried it with the machined powered up. I still got nothing. So, in my ignorance, I thought I would get out the machine’s schematics I posted here, and give them a look over. Reading these things does not come easy for me at this time … as I have very little experience doing so. However, I am into this retrofit by $1700 and I have a discouraging long way to go.
In any case, on page 1 (Frame D28) there a “1CON” relay. And I can see that this goes to the Axes Drive Chassis at #11 (hot side) and #12. When I power up the machine I do not hear this 1CON relay engage, so I assume I still have no power to servo motors during this test. Since I have no CRT when I power this machine up I have no way of referencing the axis and so closing all the necessary coils (1CRE & 12CRE) and/or satisfying other components to bring in this relay. So I manually pushed the relay in by hand with the power on and the 1.5V / 1K Ohm resistor in place on the X-axis and the axis actually moved in the negative X-axis direction (saddle moved to the right from the front of the machine). However, I tried reversing the leads on the battery and re-pushed the relay in and the axis moved in the same direction (saddle moved to the right from the front of the machine). So I am confused why the axis did not move in the opposite direction when I reverse the 1.5V battery leads. As Tom suggested it should. Is it because I disengaged the 1CON relay, switch battery leads , and then re-engaged the relay?
Question: Is it advised to test each axis with this Amplifier Test before moving on to my next step in this retrofit? If so, I will have to move the ball screws by hand to get the Y & Z axis off their limits before testing since I will not know exactly which way it will move.

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Well the 1.5v battery and resistor is just creating a signal to move. The drives obviously need to be powered up from the power supply and the power to move comes from there. So yes the 1.5v battery should certainly move the machine. Be careful to start with axis in middle and avoid running out of travel and hitting stops.

[TomKerekes]

Hi Peter,

You are doing it backwards. You disconnected the connections from the motor drive and are feeding the 1.5V from the battery back to the old dead controller. The idea is to feed the voltage into the motor drive amplifier to tell it how fast it should move the motor. See if you can remove pins 1 and 2 from that white connector and insert the battery connections instead. Then put the connector back on the amplifier board as all the other connections need to remain connected to the amplifier along with the battery connections, If you can't figure out how to pop the pins out of the connector you might cut the 2 wires going to pins 1 and 2. Make sure to leave enough wire to be able to splice new connections onto the wires.

I don't really follow which relays you are forcing closed. We might want to go off and figure out that first. You will eventually have to figure out a way for that to happen without the old controller. But I guess you already did this and nothing blew up.

HTH
Regards

[mmurray70]

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....Yes … I see that. As I got nothing doing this test with the machine power off. So I tried it with the machined powered up. I still got nothing. So, in my ignorance, I thought I would get out the machine’s schematics I posted here, and give them a look over. Reading these things does not come easy for me at this time … as I have very little experience doing so. However, I am into this retrofit by $1700 and I have a discouraging long way to go.

No turning back now. It is alot of work, stick with it, and you will get it going eventually with help from everyone here. It takes alot of time to make a good machine for cheap. It takes alot of money to buy a good machine that already works. You cant save on both, need to spend one or the other. I think you are closer to having the axes moving then you think. If it gets overwhelming take a break for a few days and pick it up later. You need patience for this stuff for sure. Takes a while to figure everything out.

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In any case, on page 1 (Frame D28) there a “1CON” relay. And I can see that this goes to the Axes Drive Chassis at #11 (hot side) and #12. When I power up the machine I do not hear this 1CON relay engage, so I assume I still have no power to servo motors during this test. Since I have no CRT when I power this machine up I have no way of referencing the axis and so closing all the necessary coils (1CRE & 12CRE) and/or satisfying other components to bring in this relay. So I manually pushed the relay in by hand with the power on and the 1.5V / 1K Ohm resistor in place on the X-axis and the axis actually moved in the negative X-axis direction (saddle moved to the right from the front of the machine). However, I tried reversing the leads on the battery and re-pushed the relay in and the axis moved in the same direction (saddle moved to the right from the front of the machine). So I am confused why the axis did not move in the opposite direction when I reverse the 1.5V battery leads. As Tom suggested it should. Is it because I disengaged the 1CON relay, switch battery leads , and then re-engaged the relay?
Question: Is it advised to test each axis with this Amplifier Test before moving on to my next step in this retrofit? If so, I will have to move the ball screws by hand to get the Y & Z axis off their limits before testing since I will not know exactly which way it will move.

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Yes as Tom said you are doing it backwards. Seems like you did find the right relay to power up the drives, thats great! But with connector off and 1.5v to the wrong side, the servo drive was probably just drifting when enabled which is not uncommon with no signal.

Move ballscrews back to center somehow, put connector back on so drive has tach feedback, and chop the two wires (or pull pins) and try test again with signal feeding into drive instead of away from it.

[PeterTheWolf]

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Thanks men ..... for your patience ... I am sure it will be tested.

Ok ... retest as advised in the next couple of days. I will test all axis to make sure I have correct movement.

I started to try and figure out these machine schematics since, as Tom said, I will need to find out what is needed to be shorted out to get this relay pulled in to power the servo motors with the Kflop/Kanalog anyways and what wires will cut power.

Thanks again Men.

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Yes as Tom said you are doing it backwards. Seems like you did find the right relay to power up the drives, thats great! But with connector off and 1.5v to the wrong side, the servo drive was probably just drifting when enabled which is not uncommon with no signal.

Move ballscrews back to center somehow, put connector back on so drive has tach feedback, and chop the two wires (or pull pins) and try test again with signal feeding into drive instead of away from it.

[PeterTheWolf]

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Well I re-connect the X-axis connector back to the drive board and re-tried the 1.5V / 1K Ohm resistor in place on the X-axis wires to re-test movement. No movement at all and I am sure it is because the 1CON relay was not pulled in and powering the drive.
I tried manually pushing the in the relay; however, this time, still no power.
With the X-axis connector plugged back into the drive board and the existing controller not being satisfied with all condition for power to drive boards .... this thing will not move on this test.

To me, it would seem that the controller needs to be completely remove and wired to ensure this 1CON relay engages since I no longer have a CRT to see what the controller errors are on powering up this machine as is.

For now I am at a loss for what to do next.







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[TomKerekes]

Hi Peter,

I wouldn't worry about removing the old controller yet.

Let's focus on 1CRE relay. I think that might be all hard wired stuff and have little to do with the cold controller. All you should need to do is push the "Reset" Button. It would be helpful if you explained in some detail what parts you understand and then ask specific questions on what parts you don't. Otherwise it is hard to help. I believe the way it works is that if you push the momentary reset button 24V should flow through the momentary Reset button and through a whole bunch of stuff: EStop, Limits, Coolant Flow Sensor, etc to verify everything is safe and eventually activate 1CRE. One of the relay contacts of 1CRE is in parallel with the reset button so once 1CRE comes on you can release the Reset Button and 1CRE will remain on. If anything opens in the circuit like a Limit switch then 1CRE will turn off and will never be able to come back on without fixing whatever the problem was and pushing Reset again.

Do you understand this?

Are you capable of using a voltmeter to determine how many of the things in this circuit are passing the 24V and which of them are preventing 1CRE from turning on?

Regards

[mmurray70]

I would probably setup Kanalog to switch 24v on and off and connect it to this point and control the relay. So basically remove the reset wire and everything to the left of that point and use a Kanalog output to enable everything from there. This would still keep the safety of E stop, overloads and limit switches. This would get rid of the latching part of the relay, but I think you would be fine with just using Kanalog.

[PeterTheWolf]

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Hello Tom,

I do have a quality voltmeter.
I do understand, somewhat. What confuses me is where the heck these wires are physically on the machine and where to take the readings at.
What I think I understand is 24V Hot wire is being feed into the user panel with line #200. Which means I can take a DC-V meter reading from (one of the terminals) labeled #200 (Pos-lead) on on the wire bus to the left and the #4 (GND) (Neg-Lead) terminal on the wire bus and I should get 24V no matter what the state of the user panel. However, If I take a reading from the terminal #203 on the wire bus and the #4 (GND) and do not get 24V then something on the user panel is preventing the circuit to close and feed 24V to 1CRE. If the user panel is not allow the 24V to #203, then here is where I do not understand what is preventing it. The monitor screen is dead, I cannot see what is happening on it. The reset-button, I think will have no effect on the results of this reading; however, I have not tried it yet. I am first just trying to confirm what I think you are asking me to check for 24V.
As I said, it become confusing to me where on the machine I am to make this checks.
Here are some pictures of where I think I should be making my first 24V check at.

On the Machine's Schematic:



The physical location on the machine:



Front User Panel Reset Button:

Hi Peter,

I wouldn't worry about removing the old controller yet.

Let's focus on 1CRE relay. I think that might be all hard wired stuff and have little to do with the cold controller. All you should need to do is push the "Reset" Button. It would be helpful if you explained in some detail what parts you understand and then ask specific questions on what parts you don't. Otherwise it is hard to help. I believe the way it works is that if you push the momentary reset button 24V should flow through the momentary Reset button and through a whole bunch of stuff: EStop, Limits, Coolant Flow Sensor, etc to verify everything is safe and eventually activate 1CRE. One of the relay contacts of 1CRE is in parallel with the reset button so once 1CRE comes on you can release the Reset Button and 1CRE will remain on. If anything opens in the circuit like a Limit switch then 1CRE will turn off and will never be able to come back on without fixing whatever the problem was and pushing Reset again.

Do you understand this?

Are you capable of using a voltmeter to determine how many of the things in this circuit are passing the 24V and which of them are preventing 1CRE from turning on?

Regards