Denford Triac Euro Card, 2.1 Eprom or USB Rack card

[m_c]

The limits are mechanical, but all the home sensors are a NAMUR type. The current Denford guys have no idea why NAMUR output sensors were used. They would of made sense to somebody at the time, but they also used a very compact size, which are expensive to replace.

Chaz, what sensors do you use to home your machine?

[Chaz]

The limits are mechanical, but all the home sensors are a NAMUR type. The current Denford guys have no idea why NAMUR output sensors were used. They would of made sense to somebody at the time, but they also used a very compact size, which are expensive to replace.

Chaz, what sensors do you use to home your machine?

Mine has normal plunge type mechanical ones. Normal electrical contacts, NC etc. Nothing fancy.

[Sooty]

looks like i have the same mechanical switches. possibly the difference in year of manufacture?

[m_c]

I'm going to guess that because Chaz's is a (later?) servo machine, with what would of been a pretty much totally different controller, they used different switches.

Sooty, are you sure there's not proximity sensors?
On the X, you have to either remove the front panel of the table, or unbolt the switch mounting panel from the cross slide, and the home sensor is at the right hand end of the panel.
On the Y, you have to move the table pretty much fully back, and if you lift the bellows, the prox sensor is at near the front right corner pointing straight up.
On the Z, you have to fully lower the head/spindle, and with the motor cover removed, the prox sensor is mounted inwards of the right dovetail, and should be visible just above the head/spindle casting.

The carousel has a single inductive sensor that pulses on each rotation of the Geneva mechanism, which has to rotate twice to move between tools. This is probably the most problematic part of the ATC, as you need some form of verification that the correct tool position is set on initial power up, and if the tool is currently in the spindle or not. Mach does have the option of persistent DROs, but I've got an absolute encoder which I'm going to add so I don't need to manually check tool numbers.

[Chaz]

I'm going to guess that because Chaz's is a (later?) servo machine, with what would of been a pretty much totally different controller, they used different switches.

Sooty, are you sure there's not proximity sensors?
On the X, you have to either remove the front panel of the table, or unbolt the switch mounting panel from the cross slide, and the home sensor is at the right hand end of the panel.
On the Y, you have to move the table pretty much fully back, and if you lift the bellows, the prox sensor is at near the front right corner pointing straight up.
On the Z, you have to fully lower the head/spindle, and with the motor cover removed, the prox sensor is mounted inwards of the right dovetail, and should be visible just above the head/spindle casting.

The carousel has a single inductive sensor that pulses on each rotation of the Geneva mechanism, which has to rotate twice to move between tools. This is probably the most problematic part of the ATC, as you need some form of verification that the correct tool position is set on initial power up, and if the tool is currently in the spindle or not. Mach does have the option of persistent DROs, but I've got an absolute encoder which I'm going to add so I don't need to manually check tool numbers.

I find its fairly easy to just update mach 3 with correct tool at the start. Not sure how you would code around that issue. Suppose it could be done but a pain.

[m_c]

I find its fairly easy to just update mach 3 with correct tool at the start. Not sure how you would code around that issue. Suppose it could be done but a pain.

I've been spoiled by my lathe though, I turn it on, hit Init and Home, and it's good to run. I'm aiming to achieve the same with the mill.

It's running the extra wires that's going to be the hard part, as I'd like to keep everything pluggable. My current plan is to use the original display/control panel cable/connector shell, but I need to go through the Harting catalogue to see if that will be doable with their modular options to squeeze more terminals in the connector.