Denford Mirac conversion help

[Mad Professor]

Hellfire: I also own a Denford Mirac, but mine does not have the ATC.

Does your Mirac use the newer control board or the older LCB3?
Mine uses the LCB3, and I am using a Ethernet Smoothstepper in combination with the LCB3.

Best Regards.

[Hellfire]

Thanks guys, I think it is a Barafuldi TOE80 turret.
Regarding the turret, would it be possible to use the positional switch inside for indexing

[John S]

Smooth stepper can't thread yet either, It was promised 4 years ago mind you .........................

[m_c]

If you go to the Denford forums (www.denfordata.com/bb), you can download the TOE80 manual in the Mirac section (it's also in the Cyclone section).
It gives all the details for inputs/outputs and the required timings.
.
John, the Smoothstepper can do threading using a single slot sensor as I used it on my old Conect lathe.
It's encoder threading that still hadn't been implemented the last I checked. I suspect the real reason for the lack of progress is the physical hardware doesn't have the capacity to implement it. I know the last discussion I seen about it, Greg was talking about optimising/freeing up resources, so I think it's another case of underestimating the hardware requirements, aka Gecko GREX and various others.

[Hellfire]

Hellfire: I also own a Denford Mirac, but mine does not have the ATC.

Does your Mirac use the newer control board or the older LCB3?
Mine uses the LCB3, and I am using a Ethernet Smoothstepper in combination with the LCB3.

Best Regards.

d411 issue 3 on the control frame, mint 3.28 on the chip

[Hellfire]

Came across these, are they worth having.
https://www.cnc4you.co.uk/Stepper-Mo...or-8Nm-Nema-34

[m_c]

Closed loop steppers are one possible option, and are a pretty good compromise between the existing standard (open loop) stepper motors, and a proper servo system.

[Hellfire]

Thanks for the help, got the servos and drivers. Went for uc300 and 3 bobs.
bm01
cp0-12v
kk01

needed additional inputs for the rotary switch on the back of the turret.
one question though, why do bobs only come with one relay. I need to be able to reverse the spindle, is it possible to use the relay on one bob for fwd and the relay on the other bob for rev.
cheers

[m_c]

Yes.
However the exact implementation will depend on how the spindle forward/reverse is controlled.

[Hellfire]

Scrub that, forgot I had two vfd's to control. One for the turret and one for the spindle. Both need to reverse. This is going to be fun