Advice Needed, Converting a Boxford VMC 190

[m100]

Comparing my 190 to the Boxford 160 lathe that uses a similar stepper driver board as the 190, and a similar MW Controls processor board underneath (in the case of the 160 the steppers are assigned to the x axis, the z axis, and the turret for the lathe toolpost toolchanger rather than X Y Z for the 190).

The Bradford instruments board is possibly also a limit switch interface, the ribbon cable is labelled PL1 fast serial link at its connection to the main processor board and contains very similar components to the main processor board. Comparing the photos of my machine (without a toolchanger) to yours I have a total of 5 wires and a loop on the orange connector, you only appear to have two. Where you have two white wires I have an orange and purple connected to CL5 and CL6 respectively on CONN1 on the stepper board. Suspect these are the clock and direction for one axis.

The additional wiring I have, a 3 core small diameter cable eventually goes through a conduit that leads, I think, to the motor head. That PCB also carries three LEDs L1,L2, L3 attention, limit plus and limit minus respectively.
I suspect these are may be the Z limits, the wiring looks the same as the x and y limits and yours does not have a z limit switch or it does it is implemented in a different way.

Below is a photo of the connector between the processor and the stepper board, at the stepper board end, with the two wires on the end that go to the standalone bradford instruments board

The underside of the stepper board has a factory fitted 'bodge wire' to connect CL6 to pin 6 (step) on the GS-D200S stepper drive on the Z axis. Given that the stepper board is 'universal' there might be some confusion about the allocation of the pins and the silk screen.

The terminal assignments for the 190 should, I think, be as follows:

xd = x direction
xc = x clock
zd = y direction
zc = y clock
cl5 = z direction
cl6 = z clock

[swood1]

The Bradford instruments board is possibly also a limit switch interface, the ribbon cable is labelled PL1 fast serial link at its connection to the main processor board and contains very similar components to the main processor board.

I have the original manual for both the 160 TCL and the 190 VMC, the manual for the VMC says the small board is the 3rd axis microprocessor board.

Do you have yours running with original software?

[swood1]

PS> I may have the wiring diagram for the lenze board

[Subash]

Hi Everyone,

I am trying to convert a Boxford VMC 190 using aCNC-USB box from Eding. I found that the output voltages to the motor drives from the boxford processor (xd, xc, zd, zc, cl5 and cl6) and the Eding CNC-USB box to be similar. Since the eding software has some setup functions it is also possible to tweak these voltage vales to match the Boxford processors voltage. While I still haven't checked the spindle voltage levels, My idea is to simply replace the boxford processors pins with the Eding CNC-USB box pins since the signals they both output seem to match. However I am new to this and any advice would be great. By the way do any of you guys have the hardware wiring schematics of the Boxford VMC 190?

[swood1]

Hi Subash,

I am not aware of Edin or CNC-USB. For mine I ended up using a Ethernet Smoothstepper and a PMDX-126 Breakout board. I removed the main processing board but retained the board with e stepper drives on and tapped directly into that. With this I have obviously lost my tool change facility and the ability to use the control panel on the machine but I can atleast run the machine as a CNC machine including spindle.

I need to learn more about how to setup the I/O on the breakout board, maybe then I can work out how to integrate the emergency stop etc.

But overall I believe the best way to actually upgrade this machine is to do what others have done and that is to rip out the whole interior and upgrade the lot. This will unfortunately cost a bit of money if you want Gecko drives etc.

Regards

Steven

[murrayg]

Hi Subash,

If you would like to upgrade to Geckodrives then you might be pleased to know we have a special offer giving 30% off basket total. You can find the Geckodrives on our site here

Please use discount code "ccxmas2016". It is only valid once so please make sure you have everything you need in your basket before checking out.

As a member of this forum you can also get 15% discount on all Geckodrives by using discount code "mycncuk" on any future purchases.

Regards

[swood1]

Hi M100,

Sorry for the delay with this. Can I ask have you managed to get the Boxford to run using Mach3 without upgrading all the stepper drives? I did look at this but it looks a bit messy trying to tap into the original stepper drives. I have managed to get my machine running by just bypassing the main stepper drive board and installing my own stepper drives in the cabinet. I have disconnected the power from the original board. The Bradford board I believe is something to do with the tool change system (Z axis), although I think there is a sensor on the spindle for possibly height and angle to aid tool changing which I belive could be performed using a macro in mach3 (apparently).

On running my machine the stepper drives keep missing steps (so a circle becomes a spiral), I think this is mainly due to them being really cheap ones off fleebay. I am thinking of upgrading the stepper drives and totaly ripping out the original boards and starting again.

Happy tinkering.

[SimonD]

To those of you who have been trying to contact me to get the wiring diagrams. I do still have them but cannot reply to your private messages as your accounts are set to not receive replies!
I do not frequent these forums regularly so you will have to contact me offline. I can be reached on simon (at) byte (hyphen) sized (dot) com

[uli12us]

Hi Simon, if you can send me the wiring Diagram of the 190, than this will help me a lot, with the modifications of my new 165HMC. It seems, it has the same controller Board, but for the 4th axe it use the same external board double (but why, it seems, the board can control 2 stepperdrivers) , like in the 190. Today I tried to make a single step with a separate momentswitch, but unfortunately without success. The driver for the tool turret seems the same as from the 125 and 160TCL. Only a DC supply with not many regulations, that stops after each 45°, with a simple NC switch. I have 4 relays and a bigger one for the switch on of the control unit. One is for the doorswitch, the second one switch the spindle motor on or off, i can regulate the controller with the switch on the front control panel. But I don't know, what the 2 other do.
Ok in the meantime I know what are the other relays.
the middle switches the spindle Motor on and the last (near the On relay) changes the direction. The complete machine runs, without any issues in Tipmode.
of the spindle.