Hi Matt, pm sent.
If anybody else is interested I am giving the machine back to my mate as I have run out of time and money for this project, sounds bad but he is going to retrofit it to use as a gear hobbing machine, if there is enough interest I will keep updating this thread with his progress, it should be a beast once it is finished.
Cheers.
Russell.
Hi All,
Just found another Zenford on Gumtree. Would be great to see another one being bought back to life. $2000
https://www.gumtree.com.au/s-ad/char...de-/1182921357
Matt
Here is a quick pic of mine. Been flat out at work, so havnt had much chance to have to much of a play with it. Bought the mesa cards for the retrofit. cant wait to get her going again.Attachment 393442
Any more updates Russell??
Hope all is well.
Matt
Hi Matt, well funny you ask, I had mentioned that I was going to give the machine back to my mate, well turns out he went cold on the gear hobbing idea and we discussed dismantling the machine for parts.
That seemed a bit of a shame, I was after a smaller size machine as shed space is always at a premium. So instead I did a brutal shed clean out, made some room and now I think I am going to stick with plan A and retrofit it.
I have a couple of other things on my plate at the moment that will probably take the rest of the year but I plan to get stuck in once I can, probably in the new year.
Don't hold your breath for a finishing date but at least things are looking promising.
Cheers.
Russell.
Last edited by epineh; 10-23-2018 at 08:11 AM.
At this stage the plan is to use closed loop to the controller, for all 5 axis (future trunnion table) plus spindle, this way I just build power stages, all tuning is done in controller software. My mate that was going to take the mill retrofitted a machine this way and it held to a micron without issue, I'd be happy with that.
Out of curiosity, how much space does the Zenford occupy? In particular how tall is it?
I had to let the gumtree one linked a few posts back pass, though I thought about it ages. I'm based close to where it was, but away for work. Was sooo tempted to snap it up.
Thats great Russell, back into it. I have been so busy with work and family, my retrofit is at snail pace. Been playing with a test setup in the shed. Servo drives, motor, mesa cards and linuxcnc. Really enjoying it. Like you told me 6 months ago, will do my head in.... Haha, but slowly learning.
The Zenfird is quite tall. 2.3ish from memory, will look up the specs tomorrow.
Looking forward to any updates.
Matt
Sent from my LG-D855 using Tapatalk
Machine dimensions with tool changer are approx 1750 (l)x 1750(w) x 2.6(h). The cable tray run is really high in these old girls.
Sent from my LG-D855 using Tapatalk
I don't want to get anybody's hopes up but I am thinking of how to attack the re-build. At this stage I am thinking of making each component modular, so starting with the servo drives I will make them bolt on or near to the servo's. Using some kind of terminal/electronics enclosure I will be able to run an axis independent of a centralised controller. Going to do the same for the spindle drive. Spindle is DC so should be fairly easy to control, will start designing a drive to power it, capable of encoder feedback, hopefully to allow for rigid tapping, not that I have a need for it.
For the controller I an actually looking at GRBL, while I have used Linuxcnc on my two previous machines, one using a MESA card, I think I will try out GRBL and see how that goes, there are a few ports of it using faster STM32 processors that claim 180 000 pulses per second, very respectable speed for a 4 dollar board.
If that falls through I will stick with LinuxCNC and purchase MESA cards, since everything is going to be modular a change of controller will be trivial (I say after a couple of beers!)
Again I do things slowly so heres hoping something happens this year.
Russell.
Hopes are officially up.. Haha. Great you are thinking of getting a start on the old girl again.
Sent from my LG-H870 using Tapatalk
Yes some time has passed since any activity, I try not to look at the dates on previous posts, makes me think I am bad at finishing projects for some reason!
Any Hoo I have designed a servo drive based on a DsPIC servo controller and the PCB's are being built as I type. I hope they will be up to the task of running the mill, and any other CNC project I build in the future, the firmware will drive both brushed DC servos and BLDC servos as well so should future proof things a little. The drive is ster/dir based, I have thought of going closed loop to the controller, but a standard servo drive will always be useful.
Will post updates as they happen, probably be a month or so before the drives are ready to test.
Russell.
Looking forward to following along.
Sent from my CPH1979 using Tapatalk
This isn't really an update but tonight I was in the shed and decided to wipe the neglect off the T Slot Bed, and give it a nice coat of lanolin to keep it looking nice.
Need to work out what the pull studs are on the toolholders so I can get onto the tool release mechanism. I don't have any toolholders at all so plan to borrow one from a mate for testing.
Going to use a small hydraulic pump to power the release, I don't plan to build a toolchanger, just a pushbutton activate the release and grab it manually.
Since I am starting from scratch electrically I also plan to properly document everything, its surprising how much you forget after 6 months.
Sooooo, If Phil or Raymond happen to read this, I wouldn't mind a little help. Tonight I looked into the spindle encoder and also the clutch pack. As my machine was gutted, I only have the mil-spec looking plugs with a couple of metres of cable on each.
These are quality plugs and sockets and I plan to re-use them.
My issue is I don't have any drawings for either. The clutch pack looks straight forward, there are two pairs of connections, and with neither energised the spindle is free to move from the motor, my guess is that one is the high speed and one is the low speed range.
My problem is I don't know their voltage, my gut tells me 24dc but if somebody could look at their diagrams and check or maybe knows off the top of their head that would be awesome. Last thing I want to do is to burn them out. There is also a limit switch in that group that seems to be the tool release signal, that will be simple for me to work out, no stress on that one.
The encoder has four wires, red black, yellow and blue. my guess is red is 5v positive, black ground, then yellow/blue are A/B quadrature. I don't really want to pull that out as it is nicely encased, not sure if I can probe the connections easily. Again I don't want to burn out the encoder, the A and B wires would handle 5v on them as most drives have a pullup and the encoder switches to ground. I just don't want to reverse polarity the encoder. Biggest issue is the drawings may only show wire numbers, and I only have the connecting cable, the drawings may not include the multicore colours but its worth a shot.
I'll attach pics of the encoder and its connecting cable.
Can confirm 24v for the clutches, originally through CR1 and CR2 relays. Im still running resolvers but think one of my drawings have the encoder details. I'm home on the weekend from family holiday if nobody else has passed on the info you need before then
Cheers
Matt
Sent from my CPH1979 using Tapatalk
Also have the details of the pullstud from the manual.
Sent from my CPH1979 using Tapatalk
Thanks Matt, I'm assuming it would be DC not AC for the clutch packs?
Pullstud info would be awesome, can't wait to test that out.
Cheers
Russell.
Yes mate 24v DC. Pretty sure the original relays are wired so that only 1 clutch can be on at a time. Could actually be relays CR2 and 3. Not that it really matters if you don't have the original relay setup.
I've also just seen your post on the linuxcnc thread. I didn't get notified about that post for some reason, so I missed it.
My retrofit stopped for a while because I was working away from home. Also waited for 7i29 servo drives for a fair while. I've just started getting into it again recently. Also ended up buying some mesa ethernet cards to experiment with, rather than using the PCI card.
Great to see you also back on your machine as well.
Sent from my CPH1979 using Tapatalk